I admire Mr. Andy Staton, a fairly young person, for establishing a foundation that supports healthy life style changes for school age kids, by giving financial support to organizations like the YMCA and Girls on the Run which benefit all kids involved in those activities.
What concerns me is Mr. Staton's apparent personalization of his own striving vs the needs of individual kids. When he said he wants to be "that guy" who kids look up to or consider a role model for having lost 150 pounds, red flags go up. How would kids who benefit from his foundation know about his past and present endeavors?
Perhaps the article was edited in such a way that valuable information is missing. In a foundation, professionals are paid to develop tools, strategies and applications. The person who creates the foundation doesn't do that. Bill Gates does not think that because he dropped out of Harvard and became a success, that other people should or could do the same. Obviously, Mr. Staton struggled and successfully developed strategies that work for him.
The concern is that he will try to globalize his success into strategies that he thinks should work for kids.
As far as I know, he has no background in nutrition, exercise physiology, medicine or psychology. Being a triathlete can be an admirable achivement.
However it can also indicate that a person has simply switched their obsessive fixation from food to exercise. Just as overeating can have negative effects on over-all health so, too, can excessive exercise.
Judith A. Nicholas, RN
Lewes
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