Lifestyle Changes

To all of the Power Up Challenge participants, great job on taking the first steps towards healthy lifestyle changes.  In addition to other aspects of wellness, many people are focusing on making changes in their nutrition and exercise habits either to lose weight or to maintain weight.  While it is great to get off to a strong start, it is also important to take a moment and assess the activities you do each day and be sure you are not doing too much too soon.  As stated above, this challenge is meant to help you make lifestyle changes, ones that are going to be sustainable for the long term.  Some of these changes might include:

• Eating breakfast daily
• Incorporating more fruits and vegetables into meals
• Building physical activity into your daily routine

Sustainable Changes

The goal of the challenge is to promote wellness in many aspects of our lives not just for the duration of the challenge, but for the future as well.  A misstep that people often make is transitioning to new habits too quickly or perhaps to drastically.  Either one of these tactics can be unsustainable in the long-term and may negatively impact end results.  Examples related to nutrition may be making too dramatic of dietary changes, eliminating a food group, or severely limiting calories.  In relation to exercise, one might exercise at high intensities for a long duration every day without allowing for adequate time for muscles to recover.  While at first this may help to promote weight loss, it is often not the type of weight loss that can be sustained for the long term.  These tactics can also be harmful to our bodies.

Reasons a slow rate of weight loss is desired

• We require over 40 nutrients each day and we must eat enough food to obtain these
• A variety of foods from different food groups is important
• Our bodies require fuel for daily activities plus exercise for optimal performance and recovery
• It is important to preserve lean tissue while losing weight by having a diet adequate in protein, carbohydrate, and calories (resistance training can also help)
• The changes made to promote weight loss should be sustainable
• These changes should also be attainable, measurable, fun, and consistent

A variety of foods, especially fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean or plant based sources of protein, low fat yogurt and dairy, and healthy fats are crucial for our overall nutritional health.  Restricting calories is also often very difficult and when we do not fuel our bodies appropriately, it naturally responds with intense cravings for food, it is simply asking for adequate nourishment!  Because it is so difficult, it is not maintainable and many people that go on crash diets will ultimately gain weight back when they revert to their old eating habits.  The latter point made is what is really crucial; any changes that are made must be sustainable and healthy for our bodies for the long term.

Fuel for physical activity

Another aspect to consider is the increase in physical activity that many of you are now doing.  One important aspect of any weight loss program is to lose weight at a safe enough rate (1-2 pounds per week) so we can preserve lean tissue.  When we lose weight we will lose adipose tissue, but we lose some of our lean tissue as well.  To maximize the amount of muscle we retain while still losing fat, and adequate intake of food is necessary to refuel and repair muscles.  Fueling our bodies for everyday activities plus additional exercise is very important.  Each time we exercise we deplete the carbohydrate we store in our muscle to use for energy during the exercise bout.  To properly refuel:

• Consume a post-work out meal that contains carbohydrate (to replenish carbohydrate stores for energy) and protein (to repair muscle)
• Eat plenty of nutritious food throughout the entire day
• Take days off from intense or heavy exercise for extra recovery time

Remember you signed up to make lifestyle changes, not just changes while the challenge is going on.  Focus on adequately nourishing your bodies with healthy foods that you enjoy and listening to your body when it requests fuel and rest.  These are also important aspects of wellness.  I wish you all good luck in your endeavors throughout the Power Up Challenge and after; and please come see the nutritionists at Student Health Services if you would like personalized assistance in any of the above areas!

We will be hosting an informational session about the Power Up Challenge, so if you have questions or would like to find out what it is all about stop by MU 206 at the following times:

Thursday January 14th at 4:00 pm

or

Friday January 15th at 12:00 pm

Join us in the Power Up Challenge, a program designed to help you accomplish your health and wellness goals. 

To learn about Power Up, visit the “About the Challenge” page.

To sign up, click on the “Sign Up” page and follow the instructions.

To meet the Challengers, check out the “Profiles” page then come to the kickoff event at Dixon Recreation Center on January 7th from 3pm -5pm!

As of yesterday, our recruitment process is complete!  In the next week we’ll introduce you to the challengers and soon after that you’ll be able to hear directly from them through this blog.

Even better though?  You can now sign up for the challenge yourself!  The challenge won’t officially begin until January 11th, but you can take this opportunity to familiarize yourself with the idea and the tools.   Check out the “Sign Up” page to learn how to join in and check out the “About the Challenge” page to get the details!

Welcome to the Power Up Challenge page!  If you haven’t heard about Power Up, you need to.  The challenge is an upcoming opportunity for the OSU community to be energized about health and wellness as a community while we all strive to enhance our own individual health and wellness.  And what better place to start this process?  OSU is a hub of research about all-things-health and offers amazing support options for the OSU community as they seek to maintain or improve their state of being.

You can get involved in three ways:

• Apply to be a member of an 8 person featured team (check out our sign up page).  Selected challengers will start the challenge in mid January.
• Join the challenge for the OSU community start in February.  Everyone’s welcome!  Sign up opportunities coming soon.
• Follow the teams on the blogs and media provided on this website and gain inspiration.  Become a fan!

Throughout the challenge, participants will track healthy behaviors and strive for an individual goal which they will set.  Events and presentations will provide inspiration and motivation.

Featured teams compete with each other to come out on top, while focusing on supporting team members in their individual journeys.

Periodically, we’ll all hear from experts in different areas of health and wellness in articles right here.  Be sure to check back for those!

Right now a team of planners is working to assemble the challenge in its final form.  Watch this website to discover resources at OSU, opportunities for involvement, and to stay up to date with the featured teams and their members.  Once they’re blogging, you’ll see their updates right here!