What Is Your Child's Ideal Weight?

"My kid isn't fat! He just has some baby weight that he hasn't gotten rid of yet." Don't fool yourself. Your child is overweight or obese. Is he or she healthy? Maybe. Don't think that they will grow out of it.

Get your couch potato off the couch! Research shows that most parents can't judge whether their children are at a healthy weight. If they are overweight they tend to rationalize it which is the worst thing they can show their child. Don't teach them that being healthy is out of their control, not a choice, or not their responsibility. A recent study showed that most preschoolers don't move around very much. Is it just me or does that just not sound right? It showed that 89% of all their "activity" during day hours occurred while the kids were barely moving or sitting. Those children who had sports equipment available and could go outside were a lot more active.

They need to make lifestyle changes or they will never lose the weight and they will end up with some of the lifestyle diseases that are linked to obesity. Do you want them to have Type 2 diabetes or heart disease? Do want them to have a compromised immune system and end up sick or disabled from something that their body should have been able to fight?

The best thing you can do for your kid is to get him or her up and get them active. Limit the TV, computer, texting, and video games. Get them outside and having fun!

MSG - The Evil Little Ingredient

Most people don't understand a lot about monosodium glutamate (MSG). They think it is that stuff in Chinese food that their neighbor can't eat because of allergies. Truth is that a lot of people are sensitive to it and don't even know it. Worse yet, it is in MOST of the foods we eat because it is hidden. It goes by the names "natural flavors," "hydrolized protein," "natural meat tenderizer," and "spices."

It is used as a flavor enhancer. It chemically tricks your taste buds and your brain into thinking that the food tastes better than it really does. Most restaurants use it. It is in most packaged foods. All natural foods can list it because it is a natural product that comes from wheat and also some comes from kelp. It is even in most vaccines as a side product of the manufacturing.

So what is so bad about it? Well, studies have shown that MSG is linked to obesity (can triple insulin output which packs on fat). It is also an excitotoxin that has been shown to aggravate neurological disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. Studies have also shown that people get seizures and tumors from MSG consumption. Do you get a lot of unexplained headaches? A lot of researchers think and are proving that there is a link between MSG and these headaches and some pains that come out of nowhere for no reason.

So why is it in our food? You can thank the unholy (and little understood) marriage of Big Food/Big Ag and the FDA. The FDA considers it safe even though there is so much research against it. Why? Because of money! I was always a pro-government guy but as I did my unbiased research into this area, I became very disappointed about how business controls some parts of our government and the FDA is really bad.

So what can you do? At a bare minimum, read your labels and don't by it. Better yet, just don't eat junk food and prepared foods! You will lose weight and feel better almost immediately. I have worked with hundreds of people who have followed this advice and ALL of them said it was the best thing they ever did.

Does A Professional Karate Competition Career Mean MMA?

For those of you who don't follow Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) competitions, most of the people who are successful use a combination of three other competitive styles: wrestling, Muay Thai, and Brazilian JiuJitsu (BJJ). Most traditional karate people realized years ago that most MMA skills and techniques are also found in traditional (not modern sport) karate but the way we always trained didn't transfer skills very well to MMA competitions. Traditional World Karate Federation (WKF)-style competitions develop a lot of skills and attributes necessary for successful striking and takedowns in MMA competitions. A lot of top American competitors that I spoke to either had fought Muay Thai and/or MMA fighters or trained with them and felt that karate was superior in a number of ways. The only problems we had were adapting our "ground game" to MMA competition because when we train we stay on our feet and control the other person on the ground (think law enforcement).

Years ago, I started realizing that you can easily adapt karate techniques to the MMA arena. Someone who is well versed in traditional karate principles of timing, distancing, positioning, and leverage can apply their striking, takedowns, arm locks, and leg locks to fighting standing up or on the ground. I started showing in classes and seminars how karate form (kata) applications were easily used in MMA fights. I always looked at it as nothing new since these were techniques that I had done for many years and people were always curious about this new creature called "MMA." To me, MMA was just another expression of karate fighting.

I first saw Brazilian Lyoto Machida in UFC 79 when he fought Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, a very large African who was coming off of big upsets in Pride competitions in Japan. As soon as the fight started and I saw Machida move, I immediately said "That's a karate guy!" Since then he has risen to the top of his weight division using mostly "karate" fighting even though he has also trained a little in Muay Thai and has a black belt in BJJ. He uses expertly-honed timing and distancing to dominate his opponents while rarely getting hit himself. Other successful MMA fighters that have a karate background include Dutchman Bas Rutten and Canadian Georges St. Pierre. I have seen others use a karate background become successful in MMA but not to as high a level as those three.

So this brings up an important issue. Amateur athletes always have the option of going pro to do what they love and get paid for it. Most sports have this career track. Wrestling, as popular as it is, traditionally has only had the "pro-wrestling" track for it's amateur athletes to go pro. Otherwise, you coach. You really can't wrestle Freestyle or Greco-Roman professionally. Now, a legitmate career path is to get into MMA but you have to learn a whole bunch of new skill sets to be successful but a lot of wrestlers are doing this now fairly easily. These wrestlers are now some of the best fighters in MMA.

Karate is in a similar predicament. You can be a World Cup gold medal champ but the only thing that you can do afterward is coach. Lyoto Machida has shown that you can take a traditional karate competition background (he was a Pan-American champ) and transform that into a successful professional MMA career. Cross-training with good coaches is essential but the base from a strong traditional karate competition background is an absolute.

Could traditional karate make a separate break onto the pro scene like judo did about fifteen years ago with Pro Judo? This was an attempt to make judo more palatable for the general public and turn it into a legit professional sport. They changed the rules to promote more action and make it more dynamic. It wasn't enough. The movement only lasted a couple years at the most and it was never heard from again. Could karate come up with a format that could catch on with the general sports public and offer a different option than MMA? Would it be similar to a Shidokan tournament format that combines rounds of knockdown full-contact karate, kickboxing, and grappling? Or could we use a variation of current WKF rules? During the first Titan Games against Mexico a number of years ago, many spectators and other sports athletes said that karate was the most exciting and dynamic of the other sports. The Titan Games was an Olympic-style amateur format that pits the US against another country in combat-type sports, i.e., karate, wrestling, boxing, judo, tae kwon do, Olympic weightlifting. Multiple cameras were placed around the stadium to catch the action and put it up on huge screens around the arena along with a lot of WWE-style bravado. It also, unfortunately, didn't last very long but it did show that the current WKF rules were exciting and dynamic for a wide audience.

Right now, the only thing an aamateur karate athlete can plan for as a profession is teaching and coaching other amateur athletes. Unless they own their own successful club or dojo, they will have to maintain a primary job to pay bills. Even if they own their own place, their time will be spent mostly on business things and not training or coaching.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.....

Lyoto Machida Fights Like Traditional WKF Karate

For the record, MMA champ Lyoto Machida is an awesome fighter. Yes, he is a Shotokan stylist from Brazil. The thing that gets me is how now everyone thinks that is how all Shotokan guys fight.

There are different organizations that fall under the umbrella called Shotokan karate. Only a few fight with the techniques and skills used in World Karate Federation (WKF) competitions. This is the style of karate sparring that Lyoto Machida uses very successfully in MMA fights. WKF encompasses all karate styles but is centered around Goju-ryu, Wado-ryu, Shito-ryu, and Shotokan. They style of fighting they all use for competition is the same which you can see in how Machida fights. So it is not just a "Shotokan-style" of fighting. As a matter of fact, I have seen a lot of Shotokan fighters that look more like American point-style karate than what most traditionalists are used to. I also know of some Shotokan fighters that don't move hardly at all as they engage their opponent and they don't look anything like Machida.

I just wanted to clear up this little fact that most folks in the media don't understand. Machida doesn't necessarily fight like a "Shotokan fighter" he fights like a "WKF fighter." There are a lot of non-Shotokan WKF fighters who fight like Machida that probably take offense at those statements.

Related forum discussions:
Machida, Karate, and Closing The Distance
Karate and MMA

Junk Food Tax?

Should there be a junk food tax? The premise is simple enough: if you eat it, you have to pay more for it and, hopefully, that money gets funneled into public health care programs or it may make people stop the habit. It has worked somewhat well for smoking and the cigarette taxes around the country. Could it make people cut down or give up on crappy junk food that eventually makes them obese, diabetic, full of heart disease, and possibly cancer-ridden?

If we were to tax crappy food, what would justify a tax? All fast food? I would love to see state representatives arguing about what qualifies as fast food while they are shoveling down a take-out Big Mac at their desk on the chamber floor. Especially here in Iowa, I can foresee the legislators that represent more rural counties go against it because junk food is loaded with highly subsidized high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and soybean oil both of which are terrible on the body.

Would we tax junk food grocieries? Things that are loaded with excessive sugar, corn syrup, soy fillers, MSG, and preservatives that break down a person's immune system make up most of what is in a grocery store. Candy would be affected. So would just about anything in a box or a package. Some of the organics and health foods would be OK depending on what they put in the food. Organic HFCS is still HFCS and it has ill effects on the body. Ditto for organic sugar and soy oil.

Would this overhaul the whole food system? Possibly. Would the big food conglomerates such as Con-Agra and Monsanto allow that? Hell no! They profit from the way food is now and forcing change through taxation would deeply effect their bottom line.

So what can you do? Just eat right as a personal choice. Don't buy junk and eat decent, wholesome foods. Get educated and encourage your friends and family to do the same.