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Bad habits. You know you have them, everyone does. But have you tried to get rid of those bad habits? Nickelodeon is here to help you throw out the bad habits, and bring in the new. Nick at Nite has started a new campaign called Kick One Pick One. This simply means kick out a bad habit, and replace that bad habit by picking a good one. The main focus of KOPO is to improve families and their nutrition, activity, and communication.
KOPO is here to help you, with Kopo, the Kick One Pick One action dog, to kick bad eating habits, and pick fresh and healthy foods. They not only want to help make you healthier, but they also want to help bring families together. Instead of eating dinner alone, they want your whole family to sit together and share a meal. And no more of those meals prepared by Mom, they want you all to join in and help her. There's even an agreement to help you, go to Nickatnite.com/kopo, and click on "KOPO Pact." You can pick which habits your kicking, and find alternatives to those habits.
You may think this sounds cheesy, or maybe even a little pointless, but think about it, in the world today, nutrition is going down hill, and fast. And not only that, but families spend almost no time together. You may think, "Oh, I eat pretty healthy," or, "Our family spends lots of time together." But you could probably do better. I thought my family was one family that spent time together, but we could spend a lot more time together. I'm in good shape, but I guess I'm just lucky, I know I eat way too much junk food, and so do all of my siblings.
Oh, and don't worry, you don't always need your family to do this. You can always do this alone, and your main focus doesn't have to be nutrition, activity, and communication, if you don't want. Any bad habit is worth kicking and theres no reason you shouldn't. When I first saw this, to be honest, I thought it was a little dumb. But once I started thinking about it, I realized how many bad habits I actually have, and I knew I could be trying so much harder to get rid of them. First I made a list of all my bad habits.
- Eating too much junk food.
- Not getting enough exercise.
- Spending too much time on the computer.
- Never spending time with my family, staying in my room or the basement, away from them.
I know I have many more bad habits, but I'll use the ones that go along with KOPO's main goals. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one that has these bad habits, I bet most of you reading this have at least one or two of those bad habits. I decided to find good habits to replace these, even though it might be hard. Instead of eating junk food, why not eat more fruits and vegetables? This sounds easy, but its actually hard for most people. Lots of families have too many unhealthy snacks in their house, and hardly any healthy ones. Looking through my cupboard, fridge, and freezer I found cookies, ice cream, chips, soft drinks, and many more unhealthy foods. When these foods are provided for you to have as a snack, it's harder to kick your habit than if you had fruits, vegetables, granola bars, and bottled water. This habit will be easier to kick if your whole family helps. You can throw out all the bad foods in your house, and go grocery shopping together. Pick out only healthy foods and when you go to reach for a snack, now your only choice is to not eat junk food.
Not getting enough exercise is a hard one for a lot of people, it would be easy for me to kick in the summer, but it's winter. There are no sports going on, and I can't go outside as much. In the summer and fall, I get two hours of soccer practice a day, and even more when we have games. Now, since it's winter I get a whopping two hours a week of soccer practice. In the summer I also am outside for most of the day, which kicks not enough exercise and spending too much time on the computer. It's hard when it's cold and snowy outside for me to get exercise, because my exercise comes from me running around outside with my siblings and neighbors. But, I've found other ways of exercising.
I was flipping through the On Demand channels one day and discovered the Exercise on Demand channel, any exercise you want free. At first I just did it because I thought it would be fun. I didn't even really realize I was getting more exercise, and spending less time on the computer. You could also get a membership to a local gym, and your whole family can go an exercise. You can go swimming or rollerskating. When none of these options are available to you, do your own exercises. Pick up a magazine, most of the teen magazines I read give instructions for a quick workout. What your doing doesn't matter, just be active and soon you'll be having fun and won't even remember your kicking a bad habit.
Whether it be the computer, the TV, or video games you're stuck on, I know almost everyone sits around like a couch potato every once and an while. I knew I spend entirely too much time on the computer, so I'm going to try to cut back, and a lot. When you're exercising, this will be easy but there are other things you can do too. My option was reading. I've always loved to read, and I read a lot already, but I just started to read even more. If you like to read too, make a goal for yourself, try to read as many books as you can in a month, and soon you'll forget about all the time you spent on electronics. If you don't like to read, call a friend, hang out, I know I don't spend as much time with my friends as I could. I also don't spend enough time on my homework, I usually rush to get it done and sometimes even do it the class before it's due. But last night I made myself sit on my bed and do my Spanish and Algebra completely, and do it right, not just rushing. It took an hour, but I realized it got me off the computer, and if you do this, your grades are bound to go up. Whatever it may be, there are tons of other things to do than spend your time sitting on your butt all day, so get up, get out, and try something new.
Not spending a lot of time with my family is one of my biggest problems. My whole family usually spends time together, but I don't always join them. They all watch "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" together, but I always watch "Zoey 101" by myself. I realized I could watch "Extreme Makeover" with them, and record "Zoey 101" to watch later. They also watch "American Idol" together, this is a show a lot of families watch, but I haven't really been watching this year. So, next Tuesday when it comes on, I'm going to get off the computer, and watch it with them. Instead of sitting in my room blasting music, I can listen to music with my siblings, they're usually listening to music anyways. Ask your parents if you can all do something together, even eating dinner together, all at the same table, having a conversation, can make a world of difference.
Now that I think about it, there are so many more things I could do than just this, to improve my lifestyle, and I should. Kick One Pick One may sound stupid to you, but give it a try.
This is Morgan612, saying eat healthy, exercise, and spend time with your family.
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