Eating healthy

Eating healthy, losing weight and getting in shape is always near the top of my New Year’s resolution list. Despite my best efforts, I struggle to stick to my guns and get through the month of February—–but all hope is not lost!

Loving to be outdoors, I’ve found the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Having a deep respect for the landscape and environment, plogging is the perfect way to benefit not only my health but beautify the landscape by picking up unsightly litter along the way.

Here’s a trend that has remained popular worldwide. It began in Sweden and is called plogging, which is a combination of the word, jogging and the Swedish term, plocka upp, which means “pick up.”

Sources credit environmentalist Erik Ahlstrom as organizing the Facebook group, Plogga, which has members worldwide. On Twitter and Instagram, you are seeing more posts including the #plogging hashtag. As for me, I’ll coin the term, plolking, right here and now – for the walking-while-picking-up-litter experience. All you need for plogging is a pair of walking or running shoes and a bag. Then, you can be a trail trash warrior. Your choice of an area to beautify, or plog, is up to you, whether it be your neighborhood, a local park or a larger public space – a state park nature trail. Besides the carrying of a bag, there is special equipment such as a belt which will help tote your bags as you jog or walk.

The winds have helped overturn trash cans and spread the mess. Of course, litterbugs still abound even with the best education efforts.

After reading a menshealth.com article written by Matthew Levine, I am ready to give it a try. “I plogged for about 45 minutes, and my app said I burned 352 calories. Plus, compared to my previous runs, when I focused primarily on leg soreness and shortness of breath, I was in a lot less pain because I was so focused on the trash in front of me. It felt good to sort through the six gallons of garbage that I’d gathered during my run and take it to be recycled,” wrote Levine, who lives in New York City.

There is a Facebook group in the United States, called Plogging America, inspired by a young man named Hamza Atilgan of Boston. Beantown hopes to host a national plogging event soon. Plogging America features Atilgan’s own video clip plus a story about plogging, which aired on Good Morning America a couple of years ago. And yes, there’s even a new Facebook group in our area called Plogging Oklahoma.

Also, there is an app in the prototyping stage called Plogalong. It is available from your App store. The key features of the app will allow you to log your plogs, see who else is plogging, and earn points and badges. For cities, parks and volunteer groups, it will identify areas that need cleanup and track volunteer activities. Businesses will be able to offer specials, promote their business and support nearby ploggers.

The Keep America Beautiful campaign and website is involving ploggers in their effort to clean up our nation. They have partnered with Lifesum, the first health app to allow its 25 million users to log, track and estimate the number of calories burned while plogging, to turn the emerging trend into a habit.

Every municipality should seek to get a chapter established. Springtime festivals usually have a campaign that precedes the event to spiff up before tourists arrive.

What could be better than the good feeling you will get by working out at your own pace and cleaning up the earth at the same time? This is an opportunity to teach our children to care for our planet. In a state that is rich in natural resources, why not enhance Oklahoma’s wellness of its citizens at the same time as preserving the landscape?

Make America clean again. Plog on.

Reach John Kilgore at jkilgoreoutdoors@yahoo.com.