SUMMERTIME and family vacations, a combination notoriously cataclysmic to diet and exercise, presented a recent challenge for Julie and Steve Erck and their two sons.
June began with a road trip to the Ercks’ relatives in South Dakota. While they were there, one family member’s basement flooded, and a violent hailstorm shattered other relatives’ windows and car windshields, trashed a roof and destroyed a newly installed gutter.
The Ercks comforted themselves with a huge tray of cut vegetables from a grocery store.
“It cost $30 for a tray that fed us for three days, and I thought that was a good deal,” Julie Erck said, smiling as she remembered one little girl who positioned herself next to the celery sticks, crunching through more than a dozen.
It marked another dramatic change for the Ercks, whose lives took a sharp turn in April when they were chosen by The Denver Post for a fitness makeover after nominating themselves for their lack of exercise and unhealthy diet. (The Post is providing nutrition counseling, and a family membership and personal-training sessions at the Apex Center in Arvada, and will follow the Ercks’ progress through the summer.)
Back then, corn dogs and frozen dinners filled the Erck family freezer. They ate fast food for supper at least three times a week, and the boys, Dan, 14, and Aaron, 11, routinely ate big bowls of sweetened cereal every evening before going to bed.
Now, a bowl of fruit or cut vegetables sits on the kitchen table, handy for snacks. Nobody in the Erck house eats corn dogs or frozen chicken fingers these days, and “McDonald’s and Taco Bell just don’t sound good anymore,” Julie Erck said, shortly after returning from South Dakota.
“When we started this, we worried that eating healthy would be more expensive, but it isn’t, especially now that we don’t have the receipts for Taco Bell and McDonald’s any more. I buy these big veggie platters at Wal-Mart, and they’re good for four families.”
Registered dietitian Malena Perdomo, who was visiting the Ercks, beamed and nodded approvingly.
“Wow, that’s very good,” she said, and asked to peek in the kitchen cupboard that once held boxes of sweet, low-fiber cereal and high-sugar juices.
Now, that pantry is stocked with high-fiber cereals, oatmeal, cans of soup and chili con carne. A box of protein bars was missing just one bar.
“I thought those would be good for us, but I don’t really like them,” Julie Erck told Perdomo.
“They don’t have much fiber, and they have lots of sugar and ingredients I don’t know. I’m afraid to eat more of these, frankly.”
Perdomo looked at the ingredients panel on the box and frowned. All those additives!
“I think you are better off with real food,” she said.
“Are you still using olive oil? Good. How about eating fish? If you get some salmon and grill it that day — don’t wait an extra day, or it won’t be good — and brush a little of this olive oil on the bottom of the salmon, then it won’t stick to the grill. How are you feeling?”
Julie Erck smiled broadly. She has lost weight and is visibly toned up.
“I really feel better, eating like this,” she said.
“My pants are loose! I feel thin. I haven’t worn these clothes I have on for two years. I think I’ve dropped a size. When we were in South Dakota and my dad gave me a hug, he said, ‘Wow! You’re so much thinner!’ That felt good!”
Other relatives are skeptical about the Erck family fitness quest. When Julie Erck extolled the virtues of vegetables, one of her nephews shook his head.
“We’re meat and potato people,” he told her. “We don’t need that other stuff.”
Once, a comment like that might have cowed Julie Erck, but not any more.
She thinks her nephew would be healthier and happier if he added some broccoli to that plate of steak and potatoes. Even her finicky son Aaron, age 11, likes cold sliced jicama for a snack. He hasn’t become the veggie convert that his mother is, but on pizza nights, he eats a good-sized helping of vegetables before reaching for a slice.
Before the fitness makeover began, Aaron relied so heavily on an inhaler to relieve exercise-induced asthma that he rarely left home without it. When they returned from the South Dakota trip, he and his mother were stunned to realize that he hadn’t needed to use the inhaler once in the two-week trip — not even when the family went to the local YMCA or played basketball.
Temptations throw up roadblocks now and then. Julie Erck bought a box of cookies for a May camping trip, but the seal remained unbroken. Dan passed on the opportunity to share them with his friends, and when Julie Erck found herself eyeing the cookies, she paused.
“I stopped because I know how much work it is to get rid of the calories from those things,” she said.
Watching calories is the next step in the fitness journey, Perdomo told her.
“When you want to lose weight, every calorie counts,” Perdomo said.
“The easiest way to do it is make sure you get your fruits and your vegetables and your whole grains first. Keep a notebook. Write down your breakfast, lunch and dinner. Mark when you have a bad reaction to something, or draw a happy face when you feel good afterward.”
She advised the Ercks to weigh themselves once a week, record the number, and cross-check it with their meal notebook. That helps pinpoint what foods affect weight, including bloating from sodium-saturated products.
Portion control is essential, Perdomo said, and Julie Erck nodded. She’s switched from buying gallon tubs of ice cream to the premeasured plastic cups of ice cream popular in cafeterias.
Now, Perdomo showed her how to calculate a 150-calorie snack — enough to satisfy a craving without sabotaging a diet.
“Two red apples, 1 and two-thirds slices of cheese, 30 to 35 peanuts, one to three slices of bacon, six to seven slices of Oscar Mayer honey ham, or one and a half hot dogs are all about 150 calories,” Perdomo said.
As a professional dietitian, she uses a high-tech scale designed to measure calories, “But you don’t have to weigh the food; you can look at the box to see that there are nine chips in a serving or 120 calories in a cheese stick.”
