Blogs.longwood.edu



Meghan WestMs. PetersonPHED 101-06May 2 2014Progression over a Semester: Self-Reflection PaperOver the course of this semester, I have obtained a greater understanding of the importance of fitness and nutrition in order to lead a healthy lifestyle. I already had background with some areas of this course, but it was nice to learn new information that I can continue to use over my lifetime. This course gave me insight into fitness and exercise and helped me find weaknesses in activities that I didn’t even know I had a weakness in.Throughout my whole life I have kept pretty up to date with the state of my health and wellness. As a child I was never one to sit and play video games or be consumed in technology. I was constantly either outside playing with my younger brother or walking around looking for something to do. I played softball for 2 years and soccer for one, then as I continued in middle school my only physically activity was during recess or gym. I never was overweight, but decided at this point that I needed to become active in some activity, therefore I ended up joining Marching Band for two years. After this I decided I wanted to play school sports and tried out for JV Volleyball and Varsity Track my sophomore year. I enjoyed running so much that I decided to become a full time runner on both the Varsity Track and Cross Country teams. So basically for 6 months of the year I was running competitively and for the other 6 was training in between seasons. As for my other habits, I always made sure to get enough sleep each day and I also ate three well-balanced meals cooked by my mother. Now that I am at college I want to continue my healthy habits and continue running or exercising in order to stay in shape and reduce my risk for diseases to develop. I would say that I have an amass amount of knowledge on health and wellness and the importance of both in daily life. I view my body in a positive way and do not consider myself obese or underweight and I’m happy with my weight. Yes I would like to tone up certain areas, but I know with effort put into it I will be able to see the small changes and toning of my muscles. In the future I hope to continue being activity and making sure my future family is active as well and eat well-balanced diets each day.When I completed the Chronic Disease Risk Assessment, I was surprised to see that I was at risk for certain chronic diseases since I am a healthy individual. I completed assessments on heart disease, breast cancer, and diabetes. I chose these assessments because I have family members who have cancer, have diabetes, and who have died from heart attacks. There are more than 18 million Americans that are currently suffering from diabetes (). My grandmother suffered from diabetes when she was living which I thought put me at risk for developing the disease. According to my results on I have a low risk of developing diabetes and that is mainly due to physical activity, not smoking, not being overweight, and eating three or more servings of whole grains on most days. My risk of developing this disease is very low and if I maintain physical activity and healthy eating habits, then I will keep my risk for the disease down. The second risk assessment I decided to take was for heart disease, which is the number one killer in the United States and is easily preventable (). I took this assessment because a little over five years ago my grandmother died from a massive heart attack and I wanted to do everything I could to prevent the same thing from happening to me. My risk on the heart disease assessment was low and was not far off from the lowest possible risk. While I am already doing a lot of the things that keep my risk down, there are five other things I can do to make my risk level even lower. These factors are decreasing the saturated fats in my diet, decreasing the trans unsaturated fats in my diet, eating more fish, fruits, and vegetables, and taking a multivitamin. I have since started taking a One Daily multivitamin because I was also suffering from low iron or what we thought was low iron. The last assessment I took was for Breast Cancer. I chose this assessment because a little over a year ago my aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was interested in seeing how my risk level was. The results on this assessment were higher than the other two, but my risk was not high, rather it was average. Apparently breast cancer contains very few controllable factors and that I was taking all of the precautions I could to lower my risk. For me it is scary to know that you cannot really control the risk factors for breast cancer and if it happens then you just have to go through treatment and try to get better. From the recent assessments I have realized that I am at risk for breast cancer and after discovering risk factors, I already want to take precautions to ensure that I lower the risk of being diagnosed with the disease. These results were a little shocking to find out, but at the same time I am happy and somewhat relieved that I now know the risks and precautions to take in order to be healthier and more in shape. As of right now I am sure that I could eat better food and exercise a little more than I currently am, but breast cancer is also hereditary. I am confused though because my mother does not have it and the only person I know who has it is my aunt, but she is an in-law. I am very interested to see if taking these same assessments again would give me any different results and if so why that may happen. In the future I should continue to eat healthy, exercise, and get regular mammograms and check-ups to make sure everything is alright and no issues have come up. With my aunt having had breast cancer and beaten it, I look up to her as a role model and admire her courage especially going through treatments and taking care of my three younger cousins. As for knowledge of the chronic diseases, I did not know a lot about them or what the causes and risk factors were. Now that I know I am looking ahead to the future and to maintaining healthy relationships and a healthy lifestyle so that I can be around for my children and grandchildren in the near future. I feel that if I do all of the above I will greatly diminish my chances of developing breast cancer and my chance of passing it on to my children. I identify most with being a pro-longer because a lot of the time I am up walking around or moving from class to class during the day which takes up a lot of time as I am taking six classes and traveling across campus in a short period of time. I am also fairly active to begin with and just like being up and about rather than sitting around being lazy. I need to improve some on deliberate activities and going for walks or going to the gym regularly. On the days I completed passports my steps, activity, and calories burned skyrocketed as I was being more active and getting in more mileage by completing the passport workouts. The passports did change my activity routine slightly as I had not been going to the gym so I may want to space them out or continue to do them as part of my workout at the gym. I was somewhat shocked to see that I completed more than 70,000 steps this week and can’t wait to become more active and make that number increase and my activity level go up.Before taking this class I knew some about nutrition, but never really worried about it or my weight. My mother played a large role in my knowledge of nutrition and she would pack us healthy lunches instead of letting us buy them from the school. Most every night she prepares a home-cooked meal that is very well-rounded and contains food from each of the food groups. She would also make sure that we drank milk with almost every meal unless we went out to eat. As a family we tried not to go out to eat very often not only to save money, but also in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. In class we looked at the “MyPlate” which used to be the Food Pyramid until the government decided to change it and make it easier for Americans could tell how much of a serving they need. Each food group contains a different recommendation as to how much one should eat daily and I am going to break down each of these groups and give the recommended servings by age group. The serving size depends on sex, age, and the amount of physical activity one does daily or weekly. It is recommended that women age 19-30 should consume two cups of fruit a day, but as you get older that serving size drops to one and a half cups of fruit. Vegetables should consume about half of your plate and for the 19-30 age group for women, this value is two and a half cups of vegetables. For grains there were two different categories on the chart because they put the daily recommendation and the minimum amount of whole grains to eat in a day. The daily recommendation is six ounces and the whole grain minimum is three ounces. The amount of protein to be consumed daily is five and a half ounces. Protein includes meat, fish, nuts, eggs, and beans. Recommended dairy values are three cups of either milk, cheese, or other dairy products. Oils are not considered to be a food group, but they are suggested as they provide nutrients that our body needs. Most of these oils are used in cooking food therefore it is not that hard to consume them and since they are not a food group we don’t need to worry about making sure we consume them. As for my own nutrition there is a lot I can improve on and while I try to eat healthy most of the time, I do not eat the recommended daily values that I should. I could start by eating more fruits and vegetables and even including healthy snacks such as nuts or trail mix instead of the brownies, cookies, and candy I tend to eat. I could also drink more milk and when I was younger would drink milk for every meal. As I have gotten older I have tended to drink more soda which is not a very good habit and one that I should cut back on. I normal drink one soda in the morning to give me the caffeine I need to start my day, but as the day goes on I tend to feel tired and consume more caffeine in order to feel better and more awake. Instead of soda I should start drinking more water and milk and make healthier choices when it comes to my food.FMS stands for Functional Movement Screen and were a series of tests we completed in class to identify functional limitation and asymmetries (). The scores we could receive ranked from zero to three with zero being your inability to complete the test due to pain and three being that you completed the test almost perfectly and to the standards listed on the worksheets. I had never heard about FMS until taking this course and was interested to know that there were tests you could complete to see areas of improvement during physical activity. For the Functional Movement Screening Tests I scored relatively well, with most of my scores being three’s. I feel like my scores were this way because I am very active and having been a runner we stretched and completed exercises in these various areas. I did have asymmetry on the Hurdle Step due to slight hip movement in my right hip, yet all of the other tests were symmetrical. I was honestly surprised that I did not get all three’s on every test, but after going through each one some of them were difficult to get perfect scores on. My lowest score was in the Trunk Stability Pushup which was a score of a one. I was surprised because I thought I was a lot stronger in those areas than I actually was so when I scored the one I was shocked because I thought I could do better. I did have some experience with some of the tests due to working out in the gym in high school for cross country and track. A lot of the tests were new to me in how to do them, but were movements I was used to and I think that played a huge factor in the scores I got. I do not have any previous injury or medical condition, but I would say that I am weak in the upper body area. I believe my group did a great job at supervising and recording each test and accurately recording the results. I really enjoyed completing the Functional Movement Screenings because it showed areas that I am weak in and need to work on to improve my mobility and stability in the future. I will most likely use the exercises we have been learning in class in the future to help with the certain areas that I am lacking strength. After the results of the Functional Movement Screening I decided during Lab Activity that it would be beneficial to complete workouts that would improve my scores in the Hurdle Step, Trunk Stability Pushup, and Rotary Stability. These three tests were my lowest scoring and I was interested in seeing if I could improve my scores within the six weeks of activity. In addition to completing exercises I completed activities in order to strengthen my upper body and my flexibility. Some of these activities included using the Bosu Ball, hand weights, medicine balls, and the stretchy bands. For most of the exercises I completed two sets of ten repetitions each and after the first set I would add in resistance by using weights, or medicine balls or challenging myself to complete the exercises while balancing on the Bosu Ball. A majority of the exercises I completed were new to me and required me to consult the professors or other students who had learn the exercise in order for me to complete the exercise correctly. Some of the exercises were hard for me to do and I often tending to complete exercises I was somewhat familiar with, which has both positive and negative effects. The positive effects are that I know that I am completing the exercise correctly and it takes me less time to complete them because I do not have to learn how to correctly conduct the exercise. The negative effects of completing exercises I am familiar with is that I am only focusing on toning certain muscles in my body and that I would not be focusing on the areas I need to in order to improve my scores on the Functional Movement Screening. Not only did the In-Class Physical Activity help me with finding different exercises to utilize different muscles, but the Passport Workouts also introduced me to different workout machinery and in particular to the rock wall in the Health and Fitness Center. The Passport Workouts were helpful to me because they provided me with a structured workout and I didn’t have to decide on a whim what activity to do, I knew based off of the sheets provided. I had never climbed the rock wall here at Longwood and it took a lot of strength not only physically, but also mentally in order to climb to the top. I only completed the easy wall, but to me that was an improvement especially since I had not climbed a rock wall in years. Each week when completing the Weekly Steps, I sometimes found it difficult to actually reach 10,000 steps per day and the 70,000 steps for the entire week. Most weeks I was able to reach 70,000 steps or higher, but there were also weeks when I got between 60,000 and 70,000 steps. I was surprised that I wasn’t able to walk 70,000 steps in a week because I considered myself very activity. I noticed that I had the greatest amount of steps on days when I had a lot of meetings to go to or when I went to the gym to workout.After completing this course, I have discovered that I was not quite as healthy or active as I thought I was and that there are areas of improvement to be made. I am interested to see how I progress if I continue to wear my FitBit and record the weekly steps online. I also would like to set goals for myself in order to make myself reliable and to obtain healthier habits. Some of these goals include eating healthier, going to the gym more often, and working on perfecting exercises or weight machines that I have not really used in the past. Another goal is to strengthen my upper body and tone muscles all over my body, but not focus on just one or two areas of the body. I feel that at the beginning of each week I should sit down and write workouts for the entire week so that I know what I want to focus on and make sure that I equally hit exercises for each part of the body I want to.When first coming into this class, I personally thought I knew most of what this course had to offer, but shortly into the class, I realized that this course went greater into depth and was different than a regular gym class in high school. I personally learned a lot throughout this course and wish to use the material I have learned in this class to better my lifestyle and decrease my vulnerability to chronic diseases. While exercise and nutrition may help prevent these diseases, some diseases are due to heredity and one cannot stop the genes or DNA that contain the material that makes up the disease. That is why it is important to not only be healthy and active, but also to be educated on what causes certain chronic diseases and see which areas that are able to be controlled.Bibliography"FMS."?What Is?.?Web. 01 May 2014"MyPyramid."?MyPyramid. Web. 01 May 2014.“What Are "Oils"?"?What Are Oils?.?Web. 01 May 2014"Your Disease Risk."?Your Disease Risk. Web. 01 May 2014. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download