12th Annual Children's Sports & Fitness Expo

Will You Donate To Our Indiegogo Campaign & Help Us in the Fight Against Childhood Obesity?

We've all heard the terms, some of endearment..."he's just a little husky, she's big boned, it's just baby fat." If not checked, this condition can lead to childhood obesity and cause a host of problems from diabetes to high blood pressure and ultimately a premature death. 

For the last 11 years, Body Sculpt of New York has organized the Children's Sports and Fitness Expo in Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City. Tens of thousands of families have enjoyed trying out more than 25 sports activities such as fencing, tennis, archery, gymnastics, volleyball, golf and much more, as well as attending nutrition workshops, health clinics and getting their face painted. 

In the midst of all these activities, we empowered families by giving them resources on how to foster a healthy and active lifestyle. From mother to daughter, father to son, we are helping to pass along healthy habits in the hopes of eradicating childhood obesity. 

Now we are asking for your help. Please visit our Indiegogo campaign and make a tax-deductible contribution so we can continue on with our work. With your donations, we will be able to bring the 12th Annual Children's Sports & Fitness Expo to Boys & Girls High School in Brooklyn, on Saturday, June 27, 2015 - totally free of charge to the community. 

No amount is too small! Please share our campaign with your friends, families and co-workers and let them know that you've joined Body Sculpt of New York to fight childhood obesity. 

  

Will you help us? Will today be the day you decide to make a difference? Click here to find out more about our campaign.

Recent News: Documentary on Obese Teenager

Documentary focuses on teenager as it looks at national childhood obesity crisis

Pam LeBlanc, Fit City

When Ashley Castoreno was a baby, her parents put Big Red soda in her bottle to quiet her. Growing up, she never learned to bike or swim. At school, someone once taped a sign on her back that said, "Don't feed the cow."

By the time she was a senior in high school, Castoreno was more than 100 pounds overweight — and typical of a growing segment of American children.

But in the past year and a half, Castoreno, now 20, has shed weight, gotten hooked on running and traveled to Washington, D.C., to tell legislators what it's like to grow up obese and why it's important to keep physical education in the classroom.

Her story is featured in a new documentary by first-time Austin filmmaker Jen Ohlson, a former Austin sports reporter and author of the coffee-table book "Every Town Needs a Trail."

Ohlson founded the nonprofit PE3: Mind, Body, Spirit in 2009 with the goal of improving physical education in public schools. One way to do that, she decided, was to tell the story of childhood obesity by focusing on one student.

Read more...

DJ Diamond Kuts Supports Our Children's Sports & Fitness Expo

 (Pictured: Dawn Hardy, Publicist; Vincent Ferguson, President/CEO of Body Sculpt of New York, Inc.; DJ Diamond Kuts)

Monday, May 9, 2011, DJ Diamond Kuts came out to Boys & Girls High School to show her support for our upcoming 8th Annual Children's Sports & Fitness Expo and filmed a short promotional video. You'll soon be able to check out her video once we launch our revamped website: www.bodysculpt.org

Recent News: The "Friend Effect" of Obesity

How Obesity Spreads Among Friends

May 5, 2011 | 4:09 PM ET | By Rachael Rettner, MyHealthNewsDaily Staff Writer 

 

Obesity is known to spread among friends, but how does this transmission happen?
Obesity spreads socially not because friends have shared ideas about acceptable body size, but rather because they share environments and carry out activities together that may contribute to weight gain, a new study suggests.
 

In other words, shared social behaviors, such as eating out at restaurants, and shared surroundings, likely play a bigger role in the obesity "friend effect" than do shared social norms.

The study suggests ways public health professionals can best combat the obesity epidemic in America. For instance, it suggests interventions that try to change people's ideas about how fat or thin they should be won't be very effective.

"What people think about others' bodies is not that important to protecting them against weight gain," said study researcher Alexandra Brewis, director of the Center for Global Health at Arizona State University. "There's a lot of assumption that you can shame people into losing weight through social pressure," Brewis told MyHealthNewsDaily. "That strategy is probably not going to work very well," she said.

Instead, efforts should focus on promoting healthy environments, for instance, making people's neighborhoods more walkable and increasing access to healthy foods, the researchers say.
"We need to focus on what people do together, rather than what people think," Brewis said.

 Read more...

Recent News: Man on a mission across America, and on Staten Island, too

By Jodi Lee Reifer  

Published: Monday, April 25, 2011, 6:02 AM

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Blisters punishing his feet and with dehydration a constant threat, Dean Karnazes could easily give up on his 3,000-mile run across America. And no one would blame him.

But the ultramarathoner — whose trek began in California and will end in Manhattan, after taking a turn through Staten Island — never really considers quitting.

He knows the road hazards are minor compared to one of the biggest dangers facing this country: Childhood obesity.

“It’s an epidemic,” Karnazes says, by cell phone about two miles from the Indiana-Ohio border, 53 days into what is expected to be a 75-day trek.

“It’s very important to the future of this country. The healthcare costs are staggering, but even beyond that, the quality of life costs are higher.”

The 48-year-old New York Times best-selling author of “Ultramarathon Man,” set out on his cross-country journey after the producers of ABC’s “Live! with Regis and Kelly” invited him to undertake the challenge to inspire Americans to become more active and healthier.

Officially, the effort is dubbed “Regis & Kelly’s Run Across America with Dean Karnazes.” The show is following his progress on air and on the website, liveregisandkelly.com.  Read more...

Recent News: McDonald's grimaces at Happy Meal lawsuit

By DAN LEVINE Reuters
Published Wednesday April 20th, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO - A lawsuit seeking to stop McDonald's Corp. from offering toys with Happy Meals must be dismissed because parents can always choose not to buy the meals for their children, the hamburger giant said in a court filing late Monday.

A lawsuit is seeking to stop McDonald's Corp. from offering toys with Happy Meals.

The lawsuit accuses McDonald's of unfairly using toys to lure children into its restaurants. The plaintiff, Monet Parham, a Sacramento, California mother of two, charges that the company's advertising violates California consumer protection laws.

The Happy Meal has been a huge hit for McDonald's - making the company one of the world's largest toy distributors - and spawning me-too offerings at most other fast-food chains.

One recent and very successful Happy Meal promotion was a tie-in with the popular DreamWorks Animation film Shrek Forever After. The meals included toy watches fashioned after the movie's characters Shrek, Donkey, Gingy and Puss in Boots.

McDonald's use of Happy Meal toys also has come under fire from public health officials, parents and lawmakers who are frustrated with rising childhood obesity rates and weak anti-obesity efforts from restaurant operators, which are largely self-regulated. Read more...

Recent News: For schoolchildren, where's the water?

By William Hudson, CNN

April 18, 2011 8:19 a.m. EDT

(CNN) -- When 12-year-old Mason went to lunch each day last year, he could choose between orange juice and milk, but he couldn't get a cup of water.

Like many public schools, his doesn't provide cups. To have free water with his lunch, Mason would have to wait in line at a water fountain shared by hundreds of other middle-school students and take a few sips of water before returning to eat.

Not surprisingly, he usually didn't bother.

His mother, Johanna Whittlesey, like other parents across the country, assumed her child had enough water, but nutrition advocates believe schoolchildren's access to water is a national problem the federal government has only begun to address.

Fifteen percent of kids in Mason's age group consume adequate amounts of water, according to the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

"Since children spend a large percent of their waking hours at school, they should be consuming at least one-half their total water intake at school," says Dr. Melina Jampolis, CNNHealth's Diet and Fitness Expert.

Read more...