Just under a month into the new year it looks like all those resolutions to lose weight and get fit are still holding, at least for the several hundred people who turned out for the third annual Health and Fitness Fair Saturday at the Maryville Community Center.
Hosted jointly by the Maryville Department of Parks and Recreation and St. Francis Hospital & Health Services, this year’s fair attracted 30 vendors and offered a variety of free screenings and displays. The goal was to help area residents monitor their wellness levels and make plans for improving overall fitness and health.
The health fair is an annual opportunity for the Maryville community to check its collective blood pressure in addition to checking on risk factors associated with heart disease, lung disease, osteoporosis and cancer. Other checks included screenings for bone density, cholesterol and blood sugar.
One of the unique features of the fair this year was the availability of free colo-rectal screening kits made available through St. Francis and the Nodaway County Crusade Against Cancer. Fairgoers simply took the kits home so they could follow instructions and send samples to the hospital for free analysis.
If you missed the fair, the same service is offered year-round by St. Francis, which is one of the few hospitals in the region — or anywhere for that matter — to do so at no charge.
The fair also gave people a chance to sign up for the Parks and Recreation Department’s annual New Year’s Challenge in which teams of 12 to 15 people compete to complete exercise goals for the year.
Parks and Recreation director Rod Auxier said the challenge, like the fair, is meant to show local residents the opportunities available at MCC, and in Maryville as a whole, for getting in shape and staying fit.
One of the community’s center’s newest programs, began just a week ago, is called “spinning.”
Spinning is aerobic exercise on a special kind of stationary bicycle designed to simulate the physical requirements of a road bike. The group activity is supervised by a certified instructor, and participants pedal at self-regulated stress levels while listening to music.
In addition to learning about different kinds of workouts available at the center, fair participants also had a chance to get advice from local lifestyle experts such as Hy-Vee nutritionist Deanna Bottorff, who gave out free chia seed samples.
It turns out that chia seeds, besides growing into odd-shaped plants, can also help you lose weight. Once ingested, the tasteless seeds swell inside the stomach and keep people from feeling hungry. For optimum results, Bottorff said, one need eat only a tablespoon of chia seeds daily mixed with almost any other kind of food, from yogurt, to casseroles to peanut butter.
Maryville, Mo. —
