LEWISTON – Jeffrey Turcotte relaxed flat on his back on a sweat-stained cushioned mat in the hallway outside the gymnasium. He pulled his knees up and crossed his arms over his chest, breathing deeply as he prepared to do as many ab curls in a minute as he could.

His buddy Eric Michaud grabbed Turcotte’s ankles and got ready to count the curls.

The boys are in the seventh grade at Lewiston Middle School and, as part of the district’s fitness curriculum, are required to participate in the National Physical Fitness Award test.

To be considered in the 50th percentile of fitness for the average male middle-schooler, a boy Turcotte’s age should be able to do 40 ab curls in 60 seconds. The tall, muscular football player did 26.

When it was Michaud’s turn, he slammed out 38 curls in a minute. “At first it was easy,” he said, “and then it got harder.”

Both boys nearly doubled the required number of push-ups they had to do to fall into the 50th percentile for seventh-grade fitness, with Turcotte easily pumping out 32 before gym teacher Coyne Turcotte (not related) stopped the clock. Michaud – a wiry soccer player – bested his friend with 35 push-ups.

Before the boys and their classmates took this test, Coach Turcotte tried to ease their teenage anxiety. “Unless you are engaged in sports or go to the gym, which most of us don’t, you won’t do well,” he warned.

“You’ll be average. That doesn’t mean you’re healthy, but you’re average,” when compared with their peers across the nation.

“Just do your best,” he urged.

Bad habits

Welcome to the obesity battleground.

Maine health officials say it is here – the world of Maine’s early teenagers – that tomorrow’s death statistics will be set. And unless things change, they say a growing lack of good nutrition, exercise and parental guidance for Maine teens could make obesity the state’s No. 1 killer.

Seven years ago, heart disease was the leading cause of death in Maine, responsible for 39 percent of all deaths. Three years later, it had dropped to second place, with cancer taking a greater percent of all Mainers than any other cause of death.

For health advocates fighting to reduce the death rate from heart disease and stroke in Maine, it was a step in the right direction. But one of the many factors that could quickly move cardiovascular disease back into that top spot is a rapidly rising obesity rate among children and adults in Maine.

According to the state’s top health expert, there are too few active teens in Maine like Jeffrey Turcotte and Eric Michaud. And too many teens who are opening the door to early diabetes, heart disease and even infertility with their poor eating habits and sedentary lifestyles.

Dora Anne Mills, director of Maine’s Bureau of Public Health, has been blunt about the public health crisis of obesity in Maine. “If we do not act soon, and systematically, our youth may be the first generation to not live as long as their parents’ generation,” she warned in a recent essay for Maine Policy Review.

Mills estimates that obesity causes about six deaths in Maine every day, the result of diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and other chronic conditions that eventually lead to cardiovascular disease and death.

In 2002, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25.8 percent of Mainers regularly exercised. That number dropped to 22.3 in just three years, a 3.5 percent decrease. Nationwide, the decrease in exercise was .3 percent between 2002 and 2005.

And Maine, which has the highest obesity rate in New England, saw a 2 percent gain in its obesity rate between 2002 and 2005, and a .2 percent increase in the number of people diagnosed with diabetes, which is directly related to the added pounds.

The one positive health trend has been a downward shift in smoking rates, with 2.8 percent fewer Mainers lighting up since 2002, according to the CDC.

Mills’ alarm about obesity in Maine is greatest for teens. The obesity rates for adults and for children have doubled in the past 20 years, “while the rate of overweight teens tripled.”

The largest gain in weight is felt by Mainers with lower incomes. According to Mills, “25 percent of Mainers with annual household incomes under $25,000 are obese, as compared to 15 percent of those with incomes of $50,000 or greater.”

The family that eats together …

While Mills is seeing a looming obesity crisis in the numbers, others are seeing it firsthand.

Registered licensed dietitian/nutritionist Jill Young, who has private practices in Auburn and Augusta, says she is treating more and more teens in her practice who are battling obesity. Five years ago, the more common request for treatment centered on bulimia and anorexia. Today, she’s troubled by the rise in teens referred to her by physicians to treat their obesity.

It’s not just about battling the bulge, Young said, it’s about preventing the onset of Type II diabetes and cardiovascular diseases and preventing polycystic ovarian syndrome in girls (which can lead to infertility), a fight that can be won by establishing good eating and fitness habits within entire families.

“You need to look at the family dynamics and bring the whole family in because you can’t put that child on a diet and the rest of the family eats potato chips,” she said. So she treats obese teens by presenting treatment “as healthy eating for the whole family, as opposed to a diet for the one child.”

Part of that treatment is exceptional care with emotional distress and self-esteem issues that teens encounter through their obesity. “It’s devastating,” Young said, “psychologically and emotionally.”

And, if it’s not done right, Young said that forcing a diet on a teen can backfire, resulting in a lifetime of hoarding and bingeing food.

She believes it’s so important to guard against emotional harm that she often will first schedule appointments for parents and specifically ask them not to bring their teen. That way, she can have a frank discussion with the adults about their responsibility to be role models for their children.

Efforts to fight the rise in obesity among children and teens are being made on a larger scale as well.

The Maine Center for Public Health has recently teamed up with two other groups – the Maine Harvard Prevention Research Center and the Maine Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics – for the cause. They have established the Maine Youth Overweight Collaborative to “improve care and outcomes for youth who are at risk for overweight or already overweight.” Efforts include in-school curricula to encourage good eating habits, regular exercise and limited television viewing (a passive activity).

Maine schools, as part of Learning Results, have so-called assessment development requirements in physical fitness. Schools are given a menu of fitness programs to choose from, but each must assess physical activity as part of the curriculum.

By the time Maine students earn a high school diploma, they are required to understand how to reduce their health risks and understand that “personal behaviors are at the heart of health education.”

Students at Lewiston’s Middle School participate in phys. ed. classes every other day, for 43 minutes each class, for half a year. The other half of the year is spent on health education, which includes nutrition but is more focused on sexual health.

As part of their fitness curriculum, each student is required to keep an exercise log and establish fitness goals for flexibility, cardio, strength and endurance. Educators say these requirements make teens think about what they eat and how much they exercise, and – hopefully – monitor progress.

And communities are getting involved.

As part of the Maine Healthy Coalitions network, Androscoggin County, the River Valley and Oxford Hills all have active coalitions that offer programs to quit smoking, get fit, establish walking/biking trails, promote healthy eating habits and establish drug-free communities. These coalitions are partnered with local social service and youth organizations and rely on grant funding and revenue from the state’s tobacco settlement for their programs and staff.

Two days ago in Portland, the topic of obesity and teens was the subject of a daylong conference, a project of the Greater Portland Healthy Weight Initiative. The initiative was created, according to a release, “in direct response to the startling number of obese, overweight and physically inactive youth in our state.”

Although the goal of this initiative is to focus on healthy weight for teens in the Greater Portland area, the long-term plan is for the project to roll across Maine in coming years.

Three faces of fitness

Central Maine Christian Academy student Drew Letourneau doesn’t need any motivation to eat well and exercise regularly.

Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 film, “Super Size Me,” was all it took for this Lewiston teen to stop eating fast food.

When the then-11-year-old first stopped eating fast food, he thought his experiment would last a year, thinking two years would be too tough to go without a Whopper and fries. But, once the year was up he had no desire to go back to fast food and has since stopped drinking soda.

The result, Letourneau – now 13 – says he feels better, sleeps better and has more energy for soccer, basketball, baseball and football.

His friends occasionally tease him, but he says he doesn’t care. “I’m sticking to it anyway.”

Letourneau does go with friends to fast-food restaurants, but he brings his own food. It’s now a way of life for him, and one that he feels good about.

For teens like Lewiston’s Arika Olsen, a 13-year-old eighth-grader who plays field hockey, exercise is part of her routine. When she participated in the middle school fitness test, Olsen ran an indoor mile in 8:17, more than two minutes faster than what is considered middle school fit.

She shrugs off the accomplishment because she likes to run.

Seventh-grader Tabitha Rogers doesn’t particularly like to run and doesn’t participate in organized sports, but she does do yoga at home, which keeps her fit. In her class, Rogers’ flexibility test was among the best.

Coach Turcotte hopes that, through the middle school curriculum, educators can continue to build these healthy habits in teens and reverse the growing weight on Maine’s future health.

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