 your Fort Worth. I'm Mayor Betsy Price and I'm ready to pump you up. We've got a great show for you today. We're going to talk about health and wellness in Fort Worth, a couple of my favorite subjects, and we're going to try to break a sweat while we're at it. Since taking office we've been pushing hard to build a city that supports healthy lifestyles. Today Fort Worth is recognized as a wellness capital of America. We're setting the pace for getting people more active and more fit. Both children and adults are getting involved. It's great for our citizens and our businesses. Everybody wins. I've got two of my good friends here today to talk about how we're building a healthy and naturally active city. With me today is Julie Wilson from Blue Zones and Leslie Casey with Fit Work. Thanks for coming and welcome to the show. Thank you Mayor. Happy to be here. Julie and Leslie thanks again for coming. We're going to talk in just a second. First let's hop on these ellipticals over here. All right. Leslie tell me a little bit about Fit Worth. Fit Worth is an attitude that anyone can adopt. It's a healthy city initiative that it really actively promotes existing resources. It creates opportunities for families to try something new, sustain it for a little while, and then be rewarded for their healthy choices. And we really focus on education as a foundation and building kids as role models. So our challenges and our events are really a great active way for families to take part in feeling healthier. And we've had some fun ones. We've done some fun things. We sure have Mayor. Come join us. Julie why don't you tell us since you're down there working hard a little bit about Blue Zones. Well the Blue Zones Project Mayor is a community wide well-being improvement initiative. So we work with a lot of different sectors throughout the city from schools to businesses to faith-based organizations, neighborhood associations, restaurants and grocery stores to try to help encourage healthy choices becoming the easiest choice. Yeah this is not about a nanny state with Blue Zones. This is about offering options right? It is. It's about creating awareness that healthier options do exist and they can be fun and nutritious and easy and just part of our regular lives. So being aware of those options as I said making the healthy choice the easy choice is what we're all about. Yeah because we tend to want to take it easy except when we're on these ellipticals right? Absolutely. And Leslie Fit Worth will fit nicely in with the Blue Zones Project. It really will. Fit Worth challenges and events really set a stage for people to be able to achieve several of the Blue Zones goals including more movement and eating healthier. Right. So how are we gonna get businesses healthier and more active and engaged? You know businesses have such a great way to get more engaged with this. One of the things we really encourage is to move naturally throughout the day. So businesses who are on a third floor for instance may really encourage their employees to take the stairs instead of the elevator. We sometimes laugh that the employee of the month shouldn't get the parking spot closest to the door but the one furthest away because you're helping incentivize that employee to walk a little further move more naturally throughout their day. You want a little organic movement not you know this is great but it's for people to just be able to move during the day and our Fit 15 we've done that for businesses to get them up. Absolutely. A prime example of how Fit Worth really dovetails well with Blue Zones is if businesses take the Fit 15 pledge the mayor and city council will actually come help launch the program and all it is is offering 15 minutes of activity during the regular business day to all employees. And how about get kids fit and active and engaged. Well Fit Worth has some excellent programs. We have capitalized on how the PE teachers are already champions along with wellness coordinators at Fort Worth Independent School District and some of our other surrounding schools. We have a kids challenge in the fall where kids about 20,000 of them in fact track their minutes of activity fruit and vegetable consumption and water intake. Then we also have a high school cooking competition that really sets a bunch of high school kids up as role models for healthy eating. And the cool thing about that is it hits Blue Zones because if we encourage our businesses and encourage our kids our future workforce will be so much stronger and that attracts businesses don't you think? It absolutely does and another way we can help with kids and their fitness is to encourage them to walk to school like we did when we were growing up and that involves maybe thinking about walking school buses instead of a bus driver coming by with a yellow bus to pick them up. You have a chaperone come walking by to escort them to school. So some pretty fun ways for businesses to volunteer to get engaged in that and parents as well. We did a walk school bus a couple of weeks ago at Daggett Montessori and had a great time. There's the bell, ladies. I don't know about y'all. I've worked up quite an appetite. You're ready to go try a little cooking? I see we've got some great fruit out there. It looks fabulous. Welcome back to It's Your Fort Worth. We worked up quite an appetite on those ellipticals. We're here to talk a little bit about healthy eating and Julie's already chopping. What you see today in the smoothie we're going to make is courtesy of our friends at Simply Fit Meals and we thank them for helping us provide what we need for this episode. Julie, tell me a little bit about how bluezones might affect people's eating. Well, you know, healthy eating is all about making the right choices. So working with families, working with restaurants, working with grocery stores to make sure that there's a good supply of fresh fruit and vegetables available and how you incorporate that into your diet. That's what we're all about. That's great. And Leslie, how's that fit worth and bluezones going to impact the way kids eat? Absolutely. With all of our challenges with the kids, we have them pay attention to their behavior by tracking their fruit and vegetable intake or how many fruits and vegetables they eat on a daily basis. Their PE teachers help them. They teach them about what a serving size is and how many fruits and vegetables you need daily in your diet to be healthy. But it's not just about portion control. It's about quality of their food too, right? Absolutely. Fresh produce is so much more nutritious than anything that you can buy processed or canned. And so we really try to help the PE teachers showcase fresh ingredients like this. I love that. You know, one of our principles is a plant slant to eat more fruits and vegetables in your diet. But it's also about being mindful of how much you eat of all of your food. You know, back in 1970, our dinner size plates were 10 inches. Today, they're usually about 12 inches. And so if we keep filling our plates, that means we're eating 22% more calories without even thinking about it. And most of us fill that plate. We do feel that way. We do feel that way. We keep eating because the food's there and it takes 20 minutes for our minds to know that we're really full. So if we just keep eating long after we're full, we're just consuming more calories. And we rush our food intake more likely than not. One of the fun things that we're doing right now is a nutrition challenge with families. It's adults and children. And we're working with the restaurants downtown to do a little restaurant crawl. So they're over over four weeks. You can actually go to restaurants who have chosen fit worth or healthier meals. And they have taken their staple menu items and made them healthier for people to choose. I was in a restaurant the other night and they offered me a fit worth menu. Absolutely pretty cool. And that segways nicely into our mailbag segment. We had a question from Kyle Jensen came in the email and Kyle said I'm on a limited budget. Are only the restaurants that are high in going to have healthy choices and afford or will affordable restaurants have healthy choices? Oh heavens, affordable choices and healthy choices can be at all ranges of restaurants. So whether it's high and low and medium in or your own kitchen at home, there's lots of ways to incorporate good healthy eating without experience. It's really about education education and making the right choices. That's exactly right. And in the mailbag Leslie, we had a question from Richie C and Richie asked what are we going to do about fighting childhood obesity and footwork? That's a fantastic question. And it's a multi prong problem. It's complex. And one of the things that we're really trying to focus on is education and empowerment of our children as role models for their parents and for the business community. So with our challenges and with something that we do over the summer an art poster contest, we challenge kids to teach adults to use the stairs or think about your drink or talk about bike safety and the kids actually feel like they are teaching and have a voice that really helps. And people don't have to be thin to be fed. I'll never be thin in my life, but I'm very fit. And I think that's a message we have to convey to people. It's not about getting people skinny. This is just about making you healthier and making better choices. Exactly right. That's exactly right. Moving naturally throughout your day, making wise food choices, finding opportunities to keep your mind and your heart engaged. It all goes to your overall will. It does indeed and connecting with your community connecting with your community, connecting with your neighbors and always putting your family first. Alright, and I think we're going to make a smoothie over here on the bicycle of all things for my friends. It simply fit. We're ready. Awesome. And I get to do the pedaling. You do. Alright, Mayor, we're going to put the leafy greens in first. I guess I shouldn't paddle with the lid off the blender. Should I? So this is fresh kale. We have a little bit of ice in the blender already. And you can make this at home. And we've got the juice. Little orange juice. And I think it's got probably a blend there. Several fruits. The juice. This is looking yummy. Alright, and then here's a great blend of fruit. We have strawberry, peaches, pineapple and mango. And actually, these were chopped last night, we just threw them in the freezer so that'd be nice and cold and ready to go to bed, chop up some fruit and get ready for your smoothie in the morning. Or if you're really pressed, you can buy the organic fruit that's already pre chopped and mixed at most of the grocery stores and most of our markets. I am filling this really full. So you're gonna have to work. I'm gonna have to work hard on this. There we go. All right. All right. Are we ready? Yep. There we go. Now we're in business. But not everybody's gonna make their smoothies this way in the morning, right? Most people are gonna put them in a blender. I think we're there. What do you think? I think that's great, Mayor. Alright. Oh, that looks good. All right, let's try it. All right. Looks good. Cheers. Cheers to helping living. Absolutely. Delicious. Really good. You blended it well. I'd like to thank Chisholm Trail Community Center for having us today. This is our beautiful new, our newest community center. Great exercise facility. Julie, Leslie, thank y'all for being with us. Thank you. Absolutely. Happy to be here. Before we go, I want to deliver a message about water safety. All this working out to keep our bodies beach ready. Summer's finally here and it means it's pool season. Some of my best memories are spent around the pool hanging out with friends and family. But we need to safeguard those little ones. Texas leads the nation in backyard pool drownings. And Tarrant County is second in the state in the highest number of pool drownings. There are a few simple steps you can take to prevent drownings. We call them the A, B, B, C's of water safety. A is always having adults supervising kids anytime they're in or around the water. B have a barrier around your pool. Make sure they can't get in it alone. B always swim with a buddy. And just as importantly, C is learn CPR. A trip to the pool is a treasured time spent with family and friends. Make it as safe and fun as possible. Have a safe and happy summer. We'll see you next time right here on It's Your Fort Worth.