your opinion please

zaskar

i have 2 daughters 12&13, who are not physicaly active pretty
much just in school in PE. they are putting on the pounds
and have bad eating habits just like myself & my gf.
this is what i want your advice on my gf disagrees!!
im gonna bring her here to read your opinions.

this is what i wanna do 3-4 times a week i want to excercise with my girls wether they want to or not, jumping jacks, push ups,
jog, bike, ect i will start them off very easy of course, i think
this is a good healthy way to spend time with them, my
gf disagrees as she is the (excersice lazy one). so am i wrong
or is she right? she says if they dont want to do it i shouldnt
force them to. i think they will enjoy it , i havent asked them yet,
so what do you guys think thanks.

jtfleming

Of course, you need to find fun ways to get them to exercise, and of course they need exercise! Like any other habit, exercise is learned, and ADDICTIVE. Once exposed to the benefits of exercise, they will want to exercise more.

To help make your case, I use myself as an example. I was a manager of a big sporting goods store for 3 years. My job took all my time and I had little time for exercise. I had exercised quite frequently prior to that. I became lethargic and put on weight pretty quickly.

When I decided enough was enough, I got rid of the rat race and began cycling everyday. Now my need for sleep is reduced, I am more alert, and my body craves that exercise to maintain that condition.

It is very clearly not in their best interests to wait until they are old enough that heart conditions and blood pressure are becoming the real concerns of aging in a low activity lifestyle! It will be nearly impossible to motivate themselves at a much later age to do something they have never done.

Seems to me you said they were girls too. It may be of interest that as the business world has been changing, the incidence of heart attacks in women has risen sharply. Gotta keep that muscle in shape!

jitteringjr

I would not recommend forcing them to exercise. They will grow to hate it and your plan will backfire. Instead, limit/prevent them from doing what I call the 'fatty' activities. (Television and computers) Then stop buying junk food and do not even have it in the house.

Then find a physical activity that your girls like and do it with them. If they have a good time with you, they will relate that physical activity as fun and not work and be inclined to keep doing it for a lifetime.

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its_stuart

I definately think they should excersive. But make it fun. Get them some kickass mountain-bikes bikes and hit the trails with them. Once they get a taste for it you wont be able to hold them back

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Mouse Potato

Well, when I was that age I would have hated to be forced to jog, bike, do jumping jacks/push ups etc., even though I jog/bike several hours every day now. Apart from not enjoying those things at the time, the idea of having to do what my parents said has always put me off. In fact, I usually refused to do things I liked if my parents said I should do them or made them compulsory. (I was a difficult child )

I didn't enjoy "ordinary" PE back then either (the usual collection of team sports and general athletics), and I was much more stubborn than my completely-inactive parents too when they forcibly enrolled me in Little Athletics (javelin, discus and shotput were OK -- I like throwing things -- but not much else), gymnastics, judo and (grrrr) ballet . They couldn't handle the frustration/pain/aggro/etc. of trying to get me there for more than a few weeks.

But I chose to do "advanced" PE in high school because it had more interesting sports like squash (incredible fun!), ice skating (also fun), archery (way cool but rather dangerous with me around), horse riding (enjoyable but they didn't let me go as fast as I wanted to), skiing (unfortunately my family moved interstate before I got to try that one, but I think I would have enjoyed it), and so on. I started doing quite a bit of those outside school too, but after moving interstate my new school only had ordinary PE and the sports I liked weren't accessible where I lived so I became rather lazy again.

In my opinion the trick is to encourage them (vigourously if you like, but in a way that makes it more like their idea than something forced by "the olds") to find activities that they'll enjoy. Consider whether they prefer doing things alone or with others when picking sports to subtly direct them to too. (I generally preferred things that I could do by myself, and I didn't have enough patience with other people for most team sports.)

Other than the sports I've already mentioned, the ones I did voluntarily and enjoyed in my lazy days were swimming, sailboarding, rowing (coxed 4s) and inline skating.

JohnO

I have two young girls, not with the same problem but they're young girls and that's problem enough for me. Couple of things that come to mind:

"have bad eating habits just like myself & my gf."

Then you start with yourself. Kids are phenomenal imitators, it never ceases to amaze me the little things they copy from me. If you're eating lousy, so will they. Set the example, good or bad, and they usually follow.

I didn't force my girls to ride bikes, I just ride mine a lot, and always remark on what a great ride that was. Now, they want to go riding.

And you can always remind them that boys don't like fat girls.

chimo

You have the right idea in that you see many benefits to a healthy lifestyle and would like your daughters to also see this but…

I don't think your plan will work. To begin with, teenage girls would not like the program you have in mind. The type of exercise you are thinking of would be "boring" for them and, perhaps more important, probably painful in ways you would not be sensitive to. I think you would quickly find an outright refusal to participate and an unwillingness to articulate (to you) the reasons.

The following is a slight exaggeration - but not much - in order to make a point. I'm not a girl and it has been many years since I was a teenager but I think you will find that teenage girls have only two significant interests. The first is teenage boys and the second is teenage boys. They may have several secondary interests such as cloths, fashions, dance, their appearance, the latest music, certain sports, etc. All can probably be traced back to their two primary interests - teenage boys. Way down on their list of interests is health and physical fitness. Like most teenagers, they think they are immortal.

I suggest you sit down with them and define a set of goals. Something like "To make them into attractive, confident and popular young women within one year." Then agree on how success will be measured and the defined benchmarks along the way. The physical fitness program is more likely to be successful if it includes things like taking tennis lessons, learning to sail, figure skating lessons, dance lessons, skiing lessons, etc. Most of these have the attraction of the presence of teenage boys and you may be successful in implementing a real physical fitness program as a supplement to these.

Don't forget the other two objectives. Find someone to teach them how to dress and apply makeup. Take them places so they know how to behave and have the confidence to do so.

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Ratface

As others have pinted out here, the key to successfully getting your girls to be more active will lie in whether you can find activities that they will enjoy. If not, you're going to go down the path of most resistance and before too long the situation will become unbearable. This will surely have a negative effect.

I would suggest a couple of strategies. 1) Try and pick activities that have a "cool" factor. They may not want to do physical exercise, but them may be interested in going kayaking or learning jazz dance, or trying out pilates.

2) Once you get them even slightly interested, try and get them to suggest the sorts of activities *they* may be interested in trying out.

3) Involve the whole family. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

4) Remember, there are plenty of physical activities that don't *seem* like physical activities. To get your family started down the path f more exercise, you may need to start by disguising the exercise as something else! Also, if they have not been exercising much at all, ease them in gently. Until very recently I was extremely sedentary. I cycled a bit, but that was pretty much it. I the started swimming gently and after a while decided that I should be a bit more active about swimming and cycling. Finally I decided to try a run one day and managed to creak around a kilometre or so course. However this summer I completed my first sprint triathlon and several cycle road races. For me the motivation came from within, but it certainly wasn't there on day one! Take it gently. Use the excuse to spend quality family time that everyone enjotýs and the exercise bit will (hopefully) come naturally.

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zaskar

thanks guys i see the other side of the coin, i will take a differant
approach.

Goldskin

don't drive them everywhere.
don't let them borrow your car.
let them walk! THEN they might think about hopping on a bike or jogging to get places.

Sidi

Definatly limit the time in front of the TV and the Computer.
jitteringjr has a good point of not even having the "bad" foods in the house. If the girls have pocket money let them spend their own money on the junk foods till it is gone and then give them nothing.
If you take the initiative and do things first they might follow if they see you dropping the bad habits and shedding the pounds.

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