empowering people through fitness and nutrition

SPRING NEWSLETTER | 2018

FAFC has a new home “WHAT’S INSIDE”Fit and Food Happenings......................... 2

Group Fit ................................................ 3

Food Assistance...................................... 4

Organic Food Garden .............................. 4

Group Nutrition Program ......................... 5

One-on-One Fitness and Nutrition ........... 5

Volunteer Spotlight ................................. 6

Client Testimonial ................................... 6

About Us ................................................. 7

The Lite Side ........................................... 8

The Fit and Food Connection is thrilled to announce a partnership with Believers Temple Word Fellowship in northern St. Louis. Believers Temple Word Fellowship is a nondenominational church with a great, beautiful space that FAFC will be honored to operate in. All five FAFC programs will be hosted there. FAFC plans to add many new and exciting fitness and nutrition initiatives to take advantage of the new space.

Some of the benefits of FAFC’s new home being located at Believers Temple include a large kitchen that will allow for more cooking and education sessions, as well as a fitness room for workout programs. The Fit and Food Connection would like to send its deepest gratitude to Bishop Calvin Scott and his team, as well as the parishioners of Believers Temple Word Fellowship for making this exciting new chapter in FAFC’s history possible.

We will be hosting a kick off celebration at Believers Temple on June 10th at 12:30PM. There will be healthy snacks, a stretch, nutrition education, and an introduction to our programs.

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All About Steam event at the Boys and Girls Club

On Saturday March 10th, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater St. Louis-Herbert Hoover on 2901 North Grand Blvd hosted an event, “All About Steam,” aimed at providing educational after school programming for kids in our community. This highly interactive event focused on bringing hands on programing to enrich science, technology, math and the arts education. Fit and Food Connection volunteers brought great yoga and nutrition programming to the table.

Our volunteer, Chef Laura, taught a healthy cooking and nutrition class with two delicious pre-3rd grade geared recipes: a protein-packed, vegetarian layered bean dip and the classic ants on a log, which is a spread on celery with raisins on top. The class focus was to integrate the importance of math and reading skills by reading aloud the recipes and counting or measuring ingredients. After the recipes were discussed, everyone snacked and brainstormed about bringing programs to their various schools.

Our other volunteer, yoga instructor Michael, encouraged participants to get active in three yoga sessions, teaching the educators how to incorporate children’s yoga into their after school sessions. Together they stretched, breathed, and learned basic yoga poses.

Because of Laura and Michael, these educators were able to successfully walk away with cooking education and yoga knowledge to incorporate into their upcoming after school programs.

welcome baby bella!Join us in welcoming beautiful baby Bella to the FAFC Team! Bella is Gabi Cole’s, FAFC co-director, new daughter. Esabella Rae Cole was born February 26, 2018 at 5:23 am to a loving family. She weighed 7.1 pounds and was 20 inches long. Welcome to the family Bella!

Have you heard the news? Fit and Food Connection has been featured on Fox 2 in a piece by Bonita Cornute titled “Spirit of St. Louis – The Fit and Food Connection”. Fox 2 described the FAFC as a “volunteer-based organization that changes lives.” Co-Directors, Gabi and Joy, shared FAFC’s mission and the organization’s programs. Several of our FAFC participants also shared their testimonies on how FAFC has helped improve their health.

The Fit and Food Connection received Town & Style’s Reaching Out Award and was featured in their March publication with an interview of Bud Jones, the FAFC’s Director of Community Development. Bud talks about what drew him to volunteer for FAFC, what he does for the organization, and his goals for the organization

FIT AND FOOD HAPPENINGS

SPRING | 3 Donate | Refer a Family | Volunteer

PROGRAM SPOTLIGHTS

Chair Yoga Series

We had a great turnout for Debby Siegel’s 6-week chair yoga class, with more than 20 people attend-ing each session! The class was held for 6 weeks on Wednesdays at Lincoln Cooperative University Extension in north St. Louis.

Focused on individuals who have difficulties getting up and down from mats, Debby instead used chairs to show participants that they can do yoga any-where, anytime, and still get great benefits in their lives. Everyone learned how to use foam blocks to assist their reach and range of motion.

By the end of the six weeks, all the participants had made great progress, and were far more flexible than when they started. Thanks to Debby and to everyone who came who made a commitment to health and to learning about the basics of yoga in a chair.

GROUP FIToffering a variety of classes for healthy movement

Welcome our new fitness instructor Tzu!

Tzu was born and raised in St. Louis and went to Mizzou for her degree in Nutrition and Exercise Physiology. She has always had a great passion for health and empowering others so she’s excited to have the opportunity to give back to her community.

Tzu will be subbing in as an instructor for Joys mon-day night class, working as a personal trainer in the One on One Program, and teaching new, exciting classes for the FAFC! She’s thankful to have found Fit and Food Connection so she can live out her passion. Look out for updates on new classes lead by Tzu!

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Mizzou Students VolunteerOn March 10th, the Mizzou Alternative Break’s college students came to help us prepare for the garden season. The group cleaned up our plots, made a compost area, and picked up trash. We are so thankful that they spent their spring break helping our organization.

Earth day at project sunflowerThe Fit and Food Connection celebrated Earth day at Project Sunflower of our Organic Garden Program! Project Sunflower is a group project which helps our garden grow and sustain each season. We built, planted, weeded, and cleaned the garden. Light healthy food, drinks, and Earth Day gifts were provid-ed. Local businesses and organizations participated like our partner Marriott at St. Charles, and a local nonprofit known as Core.

On February 5th, Simon, the owner of the outstanding Revel Kitchen in Brentwood, and Gabi, program leader and Co-Director, delivered delicious and healthy food from Simon’s restaurant to a family of eight in North City! Simon donates these meals to the Fit and Food Connection twice a month. Thank you Simon for chang-ing lives with us. These families are so very happy with the food that you provide them. Heather, the mother of the family wrote to us:

“This is Heather, we just tried some juices and the pulled pork with Carolina BBQ sauce- it’s so good...But the food so far is great, thanks again...”

New PArtnership with the St. Louis ARea FoodBank

We are excited to announce that our new partner-ship with the St. Louis Area foodbank is finally official! We had our first order and pick-up on February 23rd, and received over 600 pounds of healthy food for our pantry! As of February 2018, our Food Assistance Pro-gram is providing healthy food for twenty to twenty-two families.

The Food Assistance program offers a monthly meal prep and a cooking demo in addition to regular de-liveries each Sunday. On February 26th, the Food Assistance team made three quick and simple winter

organic gardengrowing fresh produce in the food deserts of Northern St. Louis

FOOD ASSISTANCEdelivering weekly groceries to those in need

meals for families in the program. On March 25th, our volunteers created three healthy dishes to satisfy that sweet fix! All dishes were created with items from our pantry.

To learn more about the Food Assistance Program visit www.fitandfoodconnection.org or contact Gabi Cole at gcole@fitandfoodconnection.org.

SPRING | 5 Donate | Refer a Family | Volunteer

GROUP Nutrition

Beyond the Plate FebruaryJoAnn Rees presented an educational nutrition seminar on Packing Healthy Lunches to an en-gaged audience at Lincoln University Cooperative extension on February 28th. Explaining that going out to lunch can be both expensive and nutrition-ally deficient, JoAnn showed attendees several alternatives, focusing particularly on mason jar salads. By placing salad dressing at the bottom of a jar and then covering it with layers of vegetables and salad, a delicious salad can easily be made

offering seminars on healthy eating strategies

one on one

The Fit and Food Connection offers a One-on-One program with both personalized fitness and nutrition consultations to those in need. Through this program, we offer personal training sessions, individualized nutrition guidance, grocery store education, and food preparation planning to those who cannot afford access to healthy resources on their own. The FAFC is excited to introduce our three new dietitians Erin, Allison, and Alex!

providing individual fitness and nutrition consultations

FAFC Kids Garden ClubThanks to the support from the Whole Kids Founda-tion, five to ten grade school children will have space in our organic garden! There will be nutrition edu-cation led by Laura, as well as gardening and yoga instruction led by Co-Director, Gabi Cole, and yoga instructor, Michael Tzinberg. Sessions will be held once a week for the children in the communities we serve. This season the children will plant strawber-ries, melons, green beans, and flowers. (Pictures will be taken after first session)

For more information on the Organic Garden Pro-gram visit www.fitandfoodconnection.org or contact Gabi Cole at gcole@fitandfoodconnection.org.

when the contents are poured into a bowl. In ad-dition to being healthy, these salads can be easily made then stored, allowing someone to prepare lunch for an entire week in just 45 minutes. All attendees got to make and sample mason jar salads.

Beyond the Plate MarchJoy Millner’s nutrition topic for this Beyond The Plate seminar series was on healthy soups and salads. This event occurred on March 28th at the Lincoln Cooperative University Extension. Joy discussed the nutritional value of each item that goes into a salad, and how this knowledge can help make healthy choices when dining out. For instance, choosing a salad with more vegetables, spinach and kale is healthier than a salad with iceberg lettuce, croutons, and an overload of dressing. It’s perfectly acceptable when eating out to ask for your dressing to be served on the side so that you can control your portions. Attendees were able to make and bring home their own salad at the end of the event. Joy also discussed the healthiest soup options, namely that low-sodium based broths with protein and vegetables are a better choice than cream-based soups with pasta and rice.

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Hannah is currently a Registered Dietitian working for WIC at Affinia Healthcare. Although she was originally from MInnesota, she decided to stay in St. Louis after graduating from Fontbonne Uni-versity in December 2017. She found her calling helping those in need find healthy food options and being a part of the community working to com-bat food insecurity.

The Fit and Food Connection was the perfect fit for Hannah, as their mission of providing healthy resources for those in need, aligns with both her professional goals and personal beliefs. She has been a part of the FAFC team for almost 2 years, just as long as she has lived in St. Louis!

She serves as a board member, loves helping with fundraising events, and steps in where she can. Outside of work and volunteering she loves to cook, explore new restaurants, and go camping.

“My name is Tawanna Gandy and my husband and I have been working out with Joy on Monday evenings at St. Vincent Community Center together since December of last year. However, I have known Joy since 2011 and started working out with her during her class held at the Family Support Center through Beyond Housing.

Joy has been such a great inspiration in me reaching my fitness goals. She has always been available and very accommodating to whatever I need as far as my fitness goals.

My husband and I have reunited since being sepa-rated for almost 2 years and decided to go to Joy’s fitness class through the Fit and Food Connection on Mondays as a way to get healthy. It has been a tre-mendous help for our marriage relationship. We are getting healthy together physically and it is helping us stay connected emotionally and mentally. My hus-band and I both have grown so much in our marriage just through working out and have lost weight in the process.

Joy is a woman to be praised and acknowledged for all the hard work and passion she has for helping in our community. She is wonderful and would recommend anyone to attend her class and get involved in the Fit and Food Connection.”

volunteer spotlight: Hannah Thornbaugh

Client Testimonial: Tawanna Gandy

SPRING | 7 Donate | Refer a Family | Volunteer

about usBack in 2013, two local nutrition-based organizations–The Food Place and Living Joyfully–joined forces to form the Fit and Food Connection. The FAFC makes healthy living resources available to families in need throughout St. Louis City and County. Our programs include free group and individual fitness, nutrition education, food assistance, and community gardening. The combination is our dynamic solution to address generational poverty’s impact on health.

We are passionate about empowering individuals through confidence and smiles. We invite those in our community who feel the same to join us.

OUR MISSION:To provide healthy living resources through Food

Assistance, Physical Fitness, and Nutrition to families in need throughout St. Louis City and County.

follow us on:

For More Information:info@fitandfoodconnection.org | 314.312.2746

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE TO CHANGING THE LIVES OF PEOPLE

CLICK HERE OR GO TO WWW.FITANDFOODCONNECTION.ORG/DONATE

TO HELP US CREATE HEALTHY PEOPLE IN OUR COMMUNITY!

Lexi Harris currently works as a research techni-cian at Washington University in St. Louis, where she has been studying molecular mechanisms of diabetes. Science has always been a love of hers, but she also enjoys the outdoors, fitness, and nutritious cooking and baking. Volunteering with the FAFC has allowed her to combine all of these interests, while getting to know some amazing vol-unteers and clients. Since the spring of 2017, she has been volunteering with the emergency food assistance and community garden programs.

She says, “Seeing how FAFC impacts the lives of so many people everyday is truly inspirational. I’m excited to help this organization continue to grow, allowing us to make an even greater impact on our beautiful community.”

volunteer spotlight: Lexi Harris

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THE LITE SIDE

“Today is a wonderful and amazing day, bursting with opportunity. Such is every day that is blessed by the light of day.

Treat it as such, and you will see that the opportunities are innumerable and

possibilities infinite.”

-Savannah Brodeur

Fitness Goal: Add 4 minutes of intense exercise to your week 3 times per week. 8 rounds; 4 minutes total; 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off. • Jumping rope • Jumping Jacks • Jump Squats • March in Place • Elbow to Knee • Squat Kicks