Posts Tagged ‘A-Pod’
Needed: Thousands of Running Wolves!
By Jake (Richard) Jacobi Shortly after Running Wolf Fitness Center opened last fall in the Phillips Community Center, I and my neighbor joined. I”'d never exercised in a gym, and I”'m pushing 70 years. My neighbor”'s about my age. We found Running Wolf through our diabetes support group, A-POD (A Partnership of Diabetics). A-POD moved into rooms in the same newly reopened Phillips Community Center. In my prime, I was a pretty good walker, and I swam in lakes in the summers and irregularly swam laps in a club in the winters. Just the same, I developed longstanding ankle issues and let myself get too big. In 2009, five years into my retirement, I ran into my own personal buzzsaw: a torn hamstring from doing the splits on sidewalk ice, renewed ankle pain on both sides from favoring the hamstring and in August of that year, a diagnosis of Type Two diabetes with peripheral neuropathy of the feet, which makes me slightly balance-impaired. (more…)
Running Wolf Exercise/Excuse alike
By Jeane Moore My name is Jeane and I hate to exercise. I am 71 years old and overweight and diabetic. Being a diabetic, of course, puts me at a higher risk for kidney and cardiovascular problems. My mother and father both died of heart-related disease. So did one of my grandmothers and one of my grandfathers. But I let myself get to the age of being an elder without learning how to take care of myself, even with all those object lessons. Well, I knew how in my head but not my gut. Then a series of good-luck events happened to me. First, I ran into a neighbor, Jake, at a meeting and saw him without a coat on for the first time in months and he”'d shrunk! By half! He had lost 100 pounds. He gave me a ride home and I said what did you do and he explained his diet to me (he eats less”“who knew? But he had some very useful information on how to accomplish that) and mentioned his support group. I asked, very casually, if I might go to his support group. Well, he”'d [...]
A-Pod CHAT: Advancing Opportunities through a Partnership of Diabetics
When A Partnership Of Diabetics (A-POD) was first designed and implemented, our goal was simply to create a community-based program for advancing the skills of persons with diabetes to become better self-managers of their condition. We started with POD-Tensives, a daylong workshop to introduce our strategies to participants and then sponsored weekly Meet-ups where participants could share the “mile-markers” on their journey toward better health and wellness. Meet-ups became and still are the key ingredient in A-POD”'s program because it”'s the time that participants can actually share their progress or problems with others with similar challenges. Meet-ups are more than a “support group” because we also track participant”'s numbers to demonstrate that with the additional focus on diabetes and learning new and better tools to manage our conditions, we improve! In a third party evaluation conducted by a graduate student from the University of [...]
