Vacation recap

   As I mentioned yesterday I was going to give a recap of some of the trends that I noticed on our vacation. My family and I did a Disney cruise, which I highly recommend for anyone, even if you don't have kids. But of course, me being me, I was still thinking about stuff I noticed for blogs. If you have ever taken a cruise before you already know that almost the entire staff on board are foreign. One of our waiters was from Spain, the other from Portugal, the captain was Swedish, one of our favorite coffee bar's barista was from Romania, but pretty much everyone is foreign. And guess what... they are all thin!
   As I have said before in my talks and in my blogs, when I talk about weight, I am not trying to be insensitive, but we need a wake up call. That's why I founded Healthcare Intervention Inc. to begin with. If we all don't want to hurt each other's feelings than nothing will change. Two thirds of Americans are currently overweight. That government statistic was done by a phone survey of 400k people where they were asked their height and weight and their BMI was calculated. Do people ever lie about their height or weight? NEVER! Yea right... So this stat is believed to be seriously underestimated. After the cruise I would say that 90% of Americans are overweight. Im serious, 90. Maybe even more. 
   But all the foreign staff, thin. Now I'm not saying they all had 6 packs but Im saying they appeared to be at a healthy weight. And I started to get embarrassed. All of us Americans on this cruise, eating everything we see. All these thin foreigners, serving us, talking to each other in their native languages. What do you think they are saying? You think they don't talk about us eating everything and how big we are? I guarantee they do. You know how I know? Because I talked to my waiter about it. 
   Now when I am on vacation, my wife and I still generally eat pretty healthy. We got two workouts in during the week, less than we usually do, but why do I still get those in? Because I feel like crap if I don't. Now I will loosen my belt a little bit on vacation, and order some things I don't usually order, but I don't order dessert after every meal. On the first night, when the waiter asked us what we were having for dessert, he was shocked when we said we were passing. He said you didn't come on a cruise on a diet did you? I said no, there's just nothing on the menu tonight that caught my eye, that I thought was worth it. Now I did order dessert on the ship, but it was something that I really wanted, or thought looked good. I didn't just order it to order it. 
    Another thing that really bothered me was what we feed our kids. I was sitting at a table with a family who had two kids very close to my daughter's age. This family ordered their kids chocolate milk every dinner, and the kids ate Mac and Cheese and fries almost every meal. And we are wondering why our children are obese? My daughter eats what we do, chicken, fish, asparagus, broccoli, and she drinks water. In fact when I had subbed my daughter's fries for broccoli on the first night, the waiter brought her both. I asked him to please take it back and remove the fries. But why? The broccoli was still there... Because if there are fries in front of her, guess what she will eat? Fries! We are the adults, we are the parents, we make the decisions, we are in charge of creating her healthy habits. The mom of the other family was a nurse too, shouldn't she know what is healthy? What she an her husband ordered wasn't any better. But come to think about it, they probably serve chocolate milk and Mac and Cheese at the hospital too. The medical field is so far from health, they can't even recognize it. 
   Also if you ever been on a cruise ship you know that there are quite a few levels. Ours had 10, but you wouldn't believe the amount of people who would wait 10 minutes for an elevator to go one floor. We made it a point to always take the stairs, if you just took the stairs the whole week and never did any other workout, that would be enough! But even when we had the stroller, which is a big jogger, we would carry up or down the stairs. We have became lazy as a society.
   Not quite the recap you were expecting huh? Haha Im sorry, even on vacation, Im still Dr. Austin. We had a great time though. And some of you reading might think this blog was harsh. But Im not going to be the one standing around watching this go on. In my practice, on the very first visit, I give every single patient an impression on where I think their health is. Im not here to make friends, Im here to get people healthy. And that's why we are good at what we do. 

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