ISBN: 9781483502618
Believe it or not, one hour a day can improve your child’s life and your life as well. How you ask? Simple! My book and its details combined with my experiences with health, and being active will explain how an hour a day can benefit you and your kids. My pursuit and desire for a healthier lifestyle for myself, my kids, and the generations after them, stems from a family history of heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and bottles and bottles of medication to combat these illnesses.
I can still remember as a young kid the smell of greasy bacon, sausage and eggs for breakfast and the smell of steak, meatloaf and other beef related meals looming through my household and my relative’s homes. When you’re young, you see your family and friends do certain things, but you don’t worry about the consequences of those things because that’s what you know and what you were raised on. My dad’s mom, my grandmother passed away at the age of 58 from a heart-attack. Of course, me being young I didn’t even know what a heart attack was. This began a pattern on my dad’s side of the family, during my early years of high school. My aunt passed at the age of 58 from a heart-attack as well. I later found out these deaths were a result of unhealthy eating habits and lifestyle.
My Family roots originate from southern Maryland in St. Mary’s county /Charles County. My mom’s side of the family suffered from the same ailments that hit my dad’s side, I call it “southern cooking and southern virtues,” which included the same high blood pressure, high cholesterol, medication for their diseases. The end result would be my family would continue to eat the way they ate with disregard to the possible consequences. My family’s best friend was SALT or MSG (a more concentrated salt to increase flavor). This pattern of unhealthy eating and disregard for early warning signs continued through the younger generation with the increasing fast food era, McDonalds, Burger King, Chinese food or carry outs, sub shops and Baltimore’s infamous chicken boxes. I ate at those different locations because that’s what I knew from childhood and it was the easiest way to eat without worrying about building a shopping list. I didn’t know that I was setting myself up for the family curse if I continued with my eating style which I carried over through high school, college and in the NFL.
As a high school athlete, you feel young vibrant and full of energy, so when my coaches would say don’t eat certain foods or drink certain drinks before games and practice I wouldn’t listen because I knew I could burn it off. Even when I got to college and received a full scholarship to the University of Virginia to play football, I still didn’t take heed to changing my eating habits. Even after my dad’s heartattack during my third year at UVA I still didn’t consider changing any of my lifestyle choices to break the pattern of health issues in my family. I carried on with eating my junk food and candy and every so often drinking sodas and etc. My dad’s heart-attack worried me a lot, not because our family history or eating unhealthy but because he was my dad. I was still blind to our family history of heart disease and high blood pressure and didn’t think his heart attack was the result of unhealthy eating or stress.
I carried my non chalant attitude about combining eating healthy with my already active life to the NFL. I had prominent figures such as Richie Anderson and Curtis Martin on my team (NY Jets) that broke down why we should stop eating pork and most meat and switch to more vegetables and fruits to maximize our abilities while playing football. Even after hearing these great athletes in the game preach to me about eating healthy I just brushed it off and kept doing what I knew best eating how I wanted and telling myself I will burn it off during practices/workouts and that I was an athlete. I continued my way of eating after playing for the jets and after playing arena football for the Baltimore mariners. I continued to train because as athlete you become programmed to do that but along with me training I continued to eat poorly because my mind told me as long as I work out regularly than I will be ok.
January 2, 2011 changed my thought process completely about my health and my family’s health, my dad passed from a massive heart attack. After going through this situation of being at my dad’s side while he was in the hospital and up to his passing I began doing regular physicals with my doctor and blood test checking my cholesterol, blood pressure and my heart rhythms. Even more it marked another beginning of my transformation in which I began a 7 day cleanser that my brother introduced me to where I couldn’t eat red meat or chicken for a week to make sure that the cleanser worked effectively. After the last day of the cleanser I tried red meat because I loved grilled hamburgers and the consequence was my stomach hurting and feeling very weird. I felt weird because I did away with something that I knew for 31 years for a week and it seems as if the red meat was mad because I did such a thing and hit me with a vengeance. This was a good lesson it taught me that just in a week of changing my eating from red meat on a daily basis that I could do without it and feel a lot better.
After years of playing sports from little league up to the pros as well as helping people achieve their goal of a new body through my bootcamps and meal plans, I had never considered my own eating and body outside of training up to this point. I was always an active person from childhood up to now I just needed to improve my eating habits so that it could match my exercise regimen. After beginning to improve my eating to match my training I still wanted to improve and to help others. My mission this time was with helping children. In seeing that my mission was to promote health and activeness for adults I felt that children also needed help with being healthy and being active. I felt this way because I began to notice a high rate of kids close to being obese and overweight. I knew I had to change my eating habits totally to be able to steer children in the right direction.
I began my foundation titled Tavon Mason Loves The Kids Foundation to promote kids being active, eating healthy, education and motivating kids to believe in themselves. My greatest eye opener came in the fall of 2012, after my first annual Tavon Mason Loves the Kids sports fit Health expo. I was introduced to Dr. Kirt Tyson NMD a specialist in diabetes and Onocology talked to me about his raw foods diet. After hearing him speak about how he beat diabetes by simply changing his diet, to eating only raw vegetables and substituting the ingredients in foods that plagues us every day. Dr. Kirt being a full fledge vegan prompted a drastic change in my eating style. I took some of his components of eating and combined them with my active lifestyle and I felt GREAT!!! I began eating more raw vegetables, drinking more water, eliminating the sodas and decreasing my negative eating habits.
This book Tavon Mason will present the 60 min. a day promise: a guide to more healthy family and lifestyle will give you direction in bettering your lifestyle and your kid’s lifestyle on a physical, mental and healthy road.
What is being Healthy?
Healthy- adj: In good health: “feeling fit and healthy”-merriam-webster dictionary
(of part of a body)not diseased; enjoying health and vigor of body, mind or spirit.