One of my goals in completing this challenge is to create a new healthy lifestyle for myself, fiancé Chris, and the girls. Making exercise a priority is only half of the equation.

The other half is food.

How does this high school teacher/busy mom of busy twins/aspiring triathlete lose weight, resist temptation, and provide healthy meals for the family?

I'll start by taking some advice from CNN Fit Nation Triathlete alum Nina Lovel.

While being treated like rock stars in the Hawks suite, I had a chance to chat with Nina about food. She had brought me a bunch of her workout clothes from last year that no longer fit (thank you Nina!), and walked me through her weight loss journey. She lost 5 pounds right away (and so have I!), but then didn't lose any for awhile, even with long constant workouts. Her coach suggested she write down everything she ate, and once they analyzed the results, Nina got shocking news: She wasn't eating enough! Her coach told her if she wanted to lose weight, she was going to have to eat! Her body was in shut-down mode. She started purposefully eating and started dropping the pounds.

Nina Lesson #1 ? Don't be afraid of food – eat intentionally.

Ilana Katz, a nutritionist we met with during kickoff weekend, helped me realize that the carbs I've told myself for years are off limits (bagels, baked potatoes) can actually be my friend as I begin harder workouts. I need to consciously eat to fuel my workouts. Pick solids over liquids, replenish my salt supply, hydrate.

Ilana and Nina Lesson #2 : Eat every 3 hours

This will help stabilize my blood sugar and not make me want to stop at McDonald's on the way home from school. Or to make a plate of nachos before the girls get off the bus. So far, I've tried Ezekiel English Muffins with chocolate almond butter, apple slices with peanut butter, Greek yogurt, and the ultimate snack: a banana. These all seem to help curb my hunger and help me feel healthy and satisfied (and ready to work out!).

Lesson #3: The workout is the reward, not the food.

Friday night of Kick Off Weekend we went to Flip Burger for dinner. I obsessed over the menu in the week prior to the trip and rationalized that I "deserved" to drink the liquid nitrogen Nutella and burnt marshmallow shake as an appetizer with no guilt. I got to the hotel that night and regretted that shake a lot more than I thought I would. My body just didn't feel right. Saturday night, as we walked into the Hawks arena, all I could smell was wings, roasted peanuts, and nachos. I thought for sure that's what we'd be having in our private suite. When I opened the door and saw a fruit platter, salad, and grilled chicken instead, I had the physical reaction that I can only imagine an addict goes through. All I could think about was chicken wings. Where were they and how could I get them? Thank heavens for Nina. She doesn't know it, but she talked me down off the ledge. Clearly, I still need to work on this. I need to remember how I felt Friday after that shake and remind myself – it's not worth it.

Lesson #4: My students won't hate me if I start bringing in healthy food to deadline nights

The words "Deadline Night" in my journalism room brings about visions of Chinese feasts, McDonalds' Happy Meals, chips galore, and tons of chocolate. In other words, comfort food. It's the extra motivation teenagers need to stick around through the long haul; their "reward" for spending over 13 hours at school. Or so I've thought. But after reading CNN producer Matt Sloane's comments about why I was chosen, I realize I need to make better choices on the behalf of my students and think twice before I buy a ton of junk food as a "reward" for hard work. So, on February 23rd, we are having a healthy-food-centered deadline night, with everyone bringing in their favorite health-conscious food. I'm going to make Kale potato chips and we have big plans for spinach smoothies. Stay tuned.

Lessons Still Need to be Learned...

How to get my girls eating foods other than chicken nuggets, pizza, and cereal while not fighting me on every new food I try to introduce to them. While walking down Stone Mountain, Dr. Gupta told me his girls eat chicken nuggets too (man did that make me feel better). I love them for their ease - if we are trying to get out the door to piano lessons and we have 15 minutes to eat, 2 minutes in the microwave and we're done.

Do you have any suggestions on healthier, yet just as fast, alternatives to chicken nuggets?

What clicked? That’s the question I have had to ask myself. What clicked to cause me to realize the importance of my personal health? What clicked to make me stop ignoring my most prized possession: me!

Every 3,000 miles, cars have to get an oil change and service. Every 15,000 miles, the same for my truck. When either starts to make a noise or runs funny, off to the shop they go. Every two weeks I have to make sure the lawn gets mowed. It’s hard to believe everything gets maintained except for me.

It’s not like 300 pounds snuck up on me. I saw it coming every time I stood in the mirror to brush my teeth and to shave. I saw it when clothes that once fit nicely begin to get to tight. I saw it when my waist went from a 32 to a 54. I saw it when climbing stairs became increasingly difficult and when I would be out of breath even on short walks from the parking lot to the front door of a store. But it never clicked. It didn’t seem to matter what I was doing to my health.

But then, something clicked. I know now that I can't continue down the path of unhealthy living and eating. I mean it!

I knew I meant it when we hiked Stone Mountain last Friday. During the ride to Stone Mountain, my leg was hurting so badly I could have cried. However, I was determined to make it to the top despite the pain. I fell behind the group, but April, one of the coaches, stayed with me every step of the way.

There were several times I could have turned around, but that was not part of the plan. I was maybe 100 feet from the top and hurting like you can’t even imagine. At that moment an elderly lady came up from behind me out of nowhere and said, “We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.” In that moment, something clicked, and I yelled "Philippians 4:13," that I was the head and not the tail, and that I was more than I conquer through Him that loves us.

I knew then that my victory was on the other side of my pain, but only if I didn’t let the pain stop me. It was moments later when I reached the top to the cheers of my teammates.

That day has made me think about the pains of life. Divorce, loss of a loved one, loss of a job, foreclosure or eviction can all be painful, but if we don’t let the pain stop us, we can find victory, peace, love and joy on the other side.

Thank God, it finally clicked!

Between kids banging their heads in sports and soldiers banging their heads in battle, traumatic brain injury (TBI) gets a lot of press these days.

Sadly, TBI is very common, occurring in 1.7 million people annually in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The condition ranges in severity from mild concussions with no long-term consequences to severe brain damage leading to coma and/or death.

Now Hollywood is entering the national discussion about TBI with “The Vow," a movie inspired by real events that tells how a tragic case of TBI nearly destroyed the love between a married couple.

In the film, a recently married young couple is in a catastrophic car accident that leaves the wife with serious brain damage. She has completely forgotten the past five years of her life.

Because she met her husband more recently than that, he is now a complete stranger to her. He remains devoted, but she is confused: How could she have agreed to share her life, and her bed, with someone she has no memory of ever meeting? Still, the husband is determined to get his wife back, and they try to date again in hopes of reigniting the fire of love.

Classic example of Hollywood’s preposterous take on life, right? Never could have happened... except that it sort of did. In fact, many basic facts of the movie are based on the true story of Kim and Krickitt Carpenter. And this highlights a key point about medicine.

If I’ve learned anything in my several decades as a doctor it is that the human brain and body are stranger than fiction. If you can imagine it, it’s probably happened, and a lot of things you’d never imagine have happened, too.

In fact, memory loss is quite common following a traumatic brain injury. It typically takes one of two forms.

Anterograde memory loss is the more common of the two. This type of memory loss is characterized by an inability to form new memories for a period of time after the injury.

Retrograde memory loss is less common. When this occurs, a patient becomes unable to access memories for things that have occurred prior to the head trauma. Usually this period of “lost time” is brief. But in unusual cases people can lose a year or more of memories, which accounts for the Carpenters' story.

Where "The Vow" wanders from reality is in downplaying the fact that any episode of TBI bad enough to cause severe amnesia is likely to do a lot of other bad things to a person, too. As a People.com article from 15 years ago makes clear, re-stoking the Carpenters' lost romance had at least as much to do with coping with changes in Krickett's personality as it did with her lost memories.

Like most people with significant brain trauma, she wasn’t the same person after the accident that she was before, and the changes weren’t all for the good.

The most famous case in history of TBI changing a person’s character occurred in 1848 when an extremely organized, loyal, perfectionist and hard working railroad crew foreman named Phinneas Gage had much of the front part of his brain blown off by an iron tamping bar that shot straight through his head in an unfortunate accident. Remarkably Gage never lost consciousness despite people being able to see daylight through his head as they carried him to a nearby hotel.

Gage made a remarkable recovery, but over time his acquaintances begin to notice strange things. Gage became lazy, slothful, irritable, impulsive and sloppy. He drank and spent his money on prostitutes. He lost his job and wandered down into the lower reaches of society, surviving on the good will of those who knew his plight.

So in this regard, "The Vow" doesn't do justice to the terrible truth of TBI - that it frequently robs people of who they were, not just in memories, but in thoughts, feelings and behavior.

And yet, sometimes memory loss itself can raise issues of profound philosophical importance. Years ago I had a patient with a most remarkable story, full of theological implications. Let’s call him Carlos.

He came from a small town in Arizona in the years when gangs were first making their entry onto the American scene. As a teen he fell in with one of these early gangs, became violent and engaged in petty crimes. Then, at age 18, he had a powerful religious conversion and became a born-again Christian. He replaced his switch-blade with a Bible and his life of crime with enrollment in the local junior college.

One hot summer’s day, while at a picnic with his church group, he dove off a bridge into shallow water and crashed his head into the mud at the bottom of the river. Friends fished him out and rushed him to the nearest hospital where he remained unconscious for the better part of a day.

When he came around he appeared remarkably normal, except for one striking fact. Like the heroine in "The Vow," or Krickitt Carpenter in real life, he had a powerful case of retrograde amnesia stretching back over a year and a half that left him with a very patchy sense of what had happened to him during this period.

What he especially couldn’t remember was his powerful conversion experience. He was confused by how he knew so much about the Bible, and despite persistent efforts by his former parishioners, he never again “caught fire for the Lord”, as he put it. But neither did he return to his life of crime. He continued in junior college and grew up to be an electrician, a married man and eventually a city council member in his small community. Yet his wife never had any luck getting him to go back to church, other than Christmas and Easter.

What this story highlights is that more than any other injuries, those to the brain raise questions most of us would rather ignore. Did my patient lose his salvation? Did the accident change his soul? How can there be a soul if it can be so radically changed by a bump on the head?

No one has answers to these questions. But if there is any slight recompense to the frequently catastrophic consequences of a TBI, it is that the condition reminds us how precious our properly functioning brains really are.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new water quality standards that would allow just such a beach to remain open, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“EPA has a duty to protect the public from all of these illnesses, but EPA seems to refuse to acknowledge this duty,” says Steve Fleischli, a senior attorney in the water program at NRDC who has written about the proposed criteria.
The proposed EPA criteria for coastal and Great Lakes beaches aren’t more lax than the current ones. They’re the same standards EPA first established back in 1986. What’s changed is the definition of illnesses from contaminated water. As evidence, NRDC points to the EPA’s own draft for Recreational Water Quality Criteria.

The original standards measured symptoms including vomiting, diarrhea with fever or stomachache with fever in 8 to 10 days after a trip to the beach. But the latest understanding of waterborne illness doesn't require fever and includes gastrointestinal illnesses in the 10 to 12 days after a trip to the beach.

Based on EPA's research, the same contaminated water once thought to sicken 8 out of 1,000 swimmers is now seen as sickening 36 out of 1,000 swimmers.

“Therefore, at the same level of water quality, more … illnesses will be observed,” EPA says in the draft.

Asked about this, EPA gave CNN a statement saying, “It is a useful, but uncertain estimation.”

Exceeding the EPA threshold prompts state or local governments to issue a beach advisory warning the public of unsafe water conditions.

EPA defended the proposed standards:

“EPA’s draft national Recreational Water Quality Criteria would protect more than 99 percent of swimmers from gastrointestinal illnesses with fever due to exposure to pathogens in the water over a swimming season [and] has largely prevented disease outbreaks related to water recreation activities in lakes, rivers, streams and at beaches since the mid-1980s.”

The statement added: “EPA considered the latest science and the best available scientific methods when developing the draft criteria recommendations.”

Fleischli disagrees.

“It’s more disappointing than discouraging,” Fleischli says. “We have time, hopefully, to educate EPA on the flaws in their approach.”

The Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health Act of 2000 gave EPA five years to issue recreational beach criteria to protect swimmers’ health at coastal and Great Lakes beaches. When the agency missed its deadline, the NRDC sued. A court ordered the EPA to finalize the criteria by October 15.

Researchers at the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health think tank, say the pregnancy rate among teens is down 42%, from 116.9 pregnancies per 1,000 women in 1990, to 67.8 pregnancies per 1,000 women in 2008. This means about 7% of young women between the ages of 15 to 19 became pregnant in the United States in 2008.

"The 30-plus years of rates that we have, have been showing a very steady decline," said Kathryn Kost, a senior research associate at Guttmacher, and the lead author on the paper. "Rates now, from 2008 are at the lowest levels we ever seen since we started reporting them."

Kost also says the teen birth rate – the number of actual babies born to teenage moms - was down 35% as well; and the abortion rate among teens dropped almost 60% from its peak in 1988.

"What seems pretty clear is that increasing use of contraception is preventing these kids from getting pregnant in the first place," said Kost.

The report did show that racial and ethnic disparities still exist among teenagers.  Pregnancy rates among African-American and Hispanic teens were two to three times higher compared to white teens. Abortion rates among Hispanic teens were also twice the rate of abortions in whites, and  abortion rates among black teens were four times higher compared to white teens.

"Providing contraception or at least being able to ensure that everybody has access to it may help to reduce these disparities," Kost says.

The researchers believe that although the number of teens having sex is not declining significantly, awareness about contraceptives has turned the tide in the teen pregnancy numbers.

"It's clear that the largest share of the decline was due contraceptive use," she said, "both an increase in use, and increase in use of the most effective methods."

Researchers conducted a systematic review of nine studies on the subject of marijuana and driving accidents, which incorporated almost 50,000 participants.

Alcohol impairs drivers' speed and reaction time, while cannabis affects spatial location, said Mark Asbridge, associate professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Among impaired drivers, fatally injured drivers, and motor vehicle crash victims, marijuana is the most prevalent illegal drug that has been detected, according to the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Drivers who have recently smoked marijuana may follow cars too closely, and swerve in and out of lanes, Asbridge said.

People who are impaired by alcohol often recognize that they're impaired by alcohol, but "people under the influence of cannabis often deny feeling impaired in any way," Asbridge noted.

It's not unusual for young people to go to a party and give the "designated driver" responsibility to the person who uses marijuana, Asbridge said.

"There clearly is a lot of misconception about the extent to which cannabis impairs performance," he said. "People just don't believe it."

As with alcohol, cannabis has different effects on different people. People metabolize cannabis in different ways.  Some inhale more than others.

The effects of cannabis tend to wear off within three to four hours, whereas alcohol can mess your thinking up longer. Depending on how much you drank, you may not be able to drive for up to 12 hours after you finish drinking.

If the driver is 35 or younger, there's a higher likelihood of marijuana consumption leading to collisions, previous research has found.

There's not enough information known about the effects of marijuana doses on collisions - in other words, what level of cannabis in a person's system correlates most with crashes.

And Asbridge's conclusions are based on observational studies, meaning there were no controlled conditions imposed to look at the effects of marijuana.

One problem in some of the existing research is that there was no measurement of cannabis within two to three hours of driving. Inactive metabolites of THC, a chemical found in marijuana,  can be present in urine for weeks or even a month after usage; marijuana usage so long ago would not affect driving performance or collisions. So Asbridge's group looked only at studies where there was a recent measurement. They also looked at studies that looked at both drivers who used marijuana and those who did not to compare the collision rate.

To deter marijuana usage just before driving, there is roadside testing for cannabis in Australia, western Europe and the United States, Wayne Hall of the University of Queensland in Australia said in an accompanying editorial.

Hall called for further research to evaluating the impact of roadside drug testing on preventing driver deaths connected to vehicle accidents and cannabis use.

Last Friday, one of the confirmed patients from Hamilton County, Indiana, visited a free outdoor festival called the Super Bowl Village, a three-block area of downtown Indianapolis which was turned into an open area for games, concerts and activities.

The patient did not go inside the Indiana Convention Center where there were more NFL-related activities taking place.

Measles is a respiratory disease which is very contagious.  It spreads through sneezes, coughs and droplets in the air.  Symptoms of measles include fever, cough, runny nose and a rash all over the body. Infection can be prevented if you are vaccinated. 

About 200,000 people visited the Super Bowl Village on Friday, according to CNN affiliate WISH-TV.  The patient felt sick after leaving the Superbowl Village and went to see a doctor, the state’s health commissioner Dr. Gregory Larkin told the station.  

Larkin said that the doctor was suspicious of the symptoms and took a blood test, which confirmed the measles diagnosis. Larkin also said the fact that the patient never went to the indoor Superbowl activities is a good thing: "When you're outdoors with the wind blowing and so forth, it's a less contagious atmosphere."

The health departments in New York and Massachusetts have also been notified to make fans who traveled to the game to be aware of possible risks.

The use of the measles vaccine had nearly eliminated the disease in the United States. However, there has been a resurgence of measles recently as some parents have decided not to vaccinate their children.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one or two out of  1,000 children with measles will die, and worldwide 200,000 people die each year from the disease. 

Measles hit a 15-year high in 2011 in the United States, according to the to the CDC. There were 220 cases last year, compared with the average 60 to 70 cases per year. The CDC found that 87% of the people infected didn't get the vaccine, while the other 13% were too young to get it.

For more information about measles, please visit CDC Measles.

The impact of the CNN Fit Nation Triathlon Team kick-off weekend in Atlanta did not hit me until Monday morning.

It started out as a normal work day, up at 5:15 a.m. to take the dogs for a walk, ate breakfast, and grabbed a quick shower before heading off to work. I wrapped the towel around myself and looked in the mirror to dry my hair. And then it happened. The impact.

The tears started to flow and they kept flowing. The tears were constant and heavy, like a faucet fully opened.

Although I was looking in the mirror, I did not see myself but small video clips of this incredible weekend with the most wonderful people that one can imagine. The clips were not in any particular order but were random. Each clip sparked a different emotion; emotions that I have not felt, or allowed myself to feel, in a very long time.

I felt as though I was part of something special, something real - something that was about to change how I feel about myself.

There was the clip of everyone meeting at the airport, meeting face-to-face for the first time, but feeling like you were getting back together with old friends. There were clips of each first hug; the first of many hugs that weekend. Of course there was the now infamous clip of Glenn coming out of the dressing room with his tri suit on.When I think of Glenn, I think of everything good that this world has to offer.

There were clips of the talks, the workouts and the meals. Clips of hiking with Sanjay Gupta. Did that really happen?

There was a clip of our Atlanta Hawks workout and Tebowing in the park. Those could make the ESPN top 10. There was the clip of Rick when he announced to the world that he had smoked his last cigarette. What an impact Rick made. My jaw just drops thinking of that moment.

There were all sorts of clips about the amazing Denise. How someone so young can go through so much, yet comment that where she is, is where she is meant to be. Her courage is amazing. To be honest, the clip of Denise’s initial video submission continues to play over and over in my mind.

The clip that I saw of Carlos was of him listening intently to Jerry Stackouse of the Hawks talk about his family members with diabetes. You could tell that Carlos was full of emotion but was working hard to hold it in. He held it in, but I couldn’t. My tears that afternoon were for Carlos, one of the most sincere and kindest people I have ever met. They were tears of hope.

Although Jeff was not able to join the group until the second day, I saw several clips of him. My clips of Jeff were of him watching and listening intently to his new teammates. I sense that Jeff was sharing in the feelings of his teammates; he was experiencing empathy.

The clips that I saw of Adrienne were different. They were not from the weekend but were from the future. I saw a clip of a newly confident Adrienne walking down the aisle for her wedding. The clip was beautiful, as beautiful as Adrienne.

The dogs barked and awakened me from this wonderful trance. The tears of joy were still flowing and my hair had dried.

What I experienced on this Fit Nation Triathlon kick-off weekend was special, real and spiritual.

What I realized was that although this group of people all want to make positive changes in their lives such as losing some weight, stopping smoking, getting healthy physically or emotionally, or gaining more confidence, I hope they all know that there is one thing that does not need to change. That is who they are; they are all unbelievable, one-of-a-kind individuals who are embarking on the experience of a lifetime.

I love all of you. Darn, the faucet just opened up again.

We’re trained early on, oftentimes by our parents, to clean our plates or no dessert. Frequently, regardless of how hungry we are, that’s exactly what we’ll do. 

Sure, the medium-sized popcorn would’ve been entirely satisfying, but if offered the larger portion, we’re going to take it and eat it – all of it.

This phenomenon, in part, is was what sparked a series of studies conducted at a fast-food Chinese restaurant on Tulane’s New Orleans campus.

The researchers conclude, in a study published in this month’s Health Affairs,  that up to one-third of customers accepted a verbal offer to downsize their lunch, regardless of whether they were offered a minor monetary incentive to do so. Customers who accepted the downsized meals ate, on average, 200 fewer calories than did those who ordered the full-sized meals.

The truth of the matter is this: most Americans overeat, particularly the bad stuff. Recent attempts to list calories at chain and fast-food restaurants hasn’t seemed to make much of a difference as to what consumers actually order once they reach the register.

Furthermore, research by Brian Wansink, the author of “Mindless Eating,” suggests that people tend to feel satiated only when their plates are empty, regardless of how much food is actually served. Additional evidence from other studies confirms the notion that much of our overeating is due to mindless consumption. 

This is all to say that ordering food in any type of restaurant has become an automatic behavior. It’s something we do so often, in fact, that we follow what behavioral scientists call a script.

“Stopping people while they order can disrupt the expected flow and activate self-control in an environment where it may otherwise be unlikely to be activated or is absent from consumers’ minds,” write the studies’ authors.

This awareness can mean a major difference in the amount of calories consumed. Take a McDonald’s Big Mac “value meal” for example. A Big Mac, small fries and small Coke adds up to 920 calories (according to McDonald's website). A Big Mac, large fries and large Coke, on the other hand, adds up to 1,350 calories, nearly 1.5 times the amount of the smaller, more sensible option.

"People want to feel like they're getting their money's worth," says CNN Eatocracy's Managing Editor Kat Kinsman. "If you get more food, you'll feel obligated to eat it, even if you don't want it."

The studies' authors hope that, in the future, consumers will consider "downsizing" just as often as "supersizing,"  though they suggest referring to the practice as "rightsizing."

"Such a term could suggest and reinforce the more appropriate norm. For example, while the term ‘downsize’ is somewhat negative and emphasizes reduced amounts, the term ‘rightsize’ is more positive and emphasizes the optimal quality,” according to the Health Affairs report. 

Still, in the end, "a smaller portion of not-great-for-you food is still you eating not-great-for-you food," says Kinsman. "I would gladly take a massive portion of something that's good for me. I would super-size those Brussels sprouts every single time."