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Enhancing Fitness Can Be Contagious
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Published: April 18, 2008
Carole Carson has no use for weight-loss secrets.
She would rather see the world join her in a very public crusade to make the Earth and its inhabitants leaner, fitter and healthier.
The California retiree's experience with chronicling her own weight loss in a local newspaper convinced her that diet and exercise are most successful when people team up and hold each other accountable. Strangers supported her personal wellness journey, and she in turn saw how ordinary people can change their community and even the world.
"Is there anything better than feeling like you've contributed to someone else's life?" says Carson, author of "From Fat to Fit: Turn Yourself Into a Weapon of Mass Reduction" ($14.95, Hound Press).
Her book relates how she was inspired to broaden her personal experience to a grander scale. Four years ago, Carson gathered 1,000 people in her hometown, placed them on teams with friends, neighbors and strangers, and launched a weight-loss program. The result: Nevada County, Calif., weighed 8,000 pounds less than it had seven weeks earlier.
"Our behavior is contagious. ... If I overeat and indulge, you will be influenced by my behavior," Carson says.
Now, as she prepares to take the concept national this summer with the AARP Fat to Fit Challenge, Carson also is pushing for people to reinvent their fitness lifestyle in an environmentally friendly way. She says if everyone applies simple changes to their routine, such as reusing and recycling water bottles, it will make a difference on a global scale.
"That's the place where we can start," she says.
Carson, who also loves tying acronyms to her favorite word - fit - suggests celebrating Tuesday's Earth Day by evaluating your own "fitness footprint" by:
•FILLING your kitchen with locally grown foods that don't need to be hauled from out of town; recycling and reusing products to avoid waste.
•INTEGRATING green practices into your physical activities, such as walking instead of driving a car and donating old athletic shoes to charity (oneworldrunning.com; soles4souls.org).
•TURNING off the television and heading outside. Coordinate groups to pick up garbage or clean up local parks as part of a "green gym" concept popular in the United Kingdom (www2.btcv.org.uk/display/greengym).
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