About

The Epidemic of Childhood Obesity

It’s no secret that childhood obesity in the USA is an epidemic. The Journal of the AMA reported in 2010 that two-thirds of adults and one-third of children in the US are overweight, and about half of overweight Americans are obese. What is more, by the time children reach adolescence, it is often too late: 80% of overweight teenagers become overweight adults. Many experts agree that that early education on good nutrition and developing regular exercise habits are keys to solving this problem. Yet in most school districts across the country, budget cutbacks have reduced or eliminated funding for physical education, and nutrition education is minimal. What is more, many well-intentioned anti-obesity programs have no evidence that they actually improve children’s health and change children’s nutrition and exercise habits. Who is filling the void?

The Operation Tone-Up® Solution

Operation Tone-Up® is a program offered by a national not-for-profit organization, Accept the Challenge, whose mission is to reduce childhood obesity through true knowledge of nutrition and exercise. For over ten years we have provided very low cost, high-impact educational activities and materials to elementary schools, parent organizations, and community groups through Operation Tone-Up®, in order to empower students and teachers with the knowledge needed to develop lifelong healthy habits.

We designed the Operation Tone-Up® program to be fun. It gets results because it is easy to implement, rigorous, and engaging. Students have to exercise hard—26 minutes of continuous aerobic exercise by the end of the program. And rigorous exercise pays off, with blood pressure often dropping by 10 points or more, and resting heart rate declining by 5-10+%. Students also learn and apply to themselves key nutritional knowledge. They change their eating, drinking, and exercise habits, and often their families’ habits as well.

What is more, Operation Tone-Up improves academics and attendance as well as health. More exercise and better nutrition increase brain activity and cognition. Students pay better attention, are more disciplined, and do better on tests. With better health and engagement, attendance also goes up, bringing more state funds to schools; these additional attendance funds can pay back the cost of the program. Since Operation Tone-Up is aligned with national academic standards in reading, writing, math, health, and physical education, the program reinforces the core curriculum, rather than distracting from it.

Finally, Operation Tone-Up follows through on its intensive 10-week program with steps to continue the benefits and reinforce students’ good fitness and nutrition habits, which they have learned in the initial 10-week segment. As a result, students are empowered to make lifelong healthy living choices.

To find out more, click the links in the right column.

Tony Lamka, a.k.a. “Mr. Tone”

Tony Lamka is the creator of Operation Tone-Up, and is the personification of the Operation Tone-Up philosophy. A former USA Boxing Federation coach, he is a dynamic individual who has devoted a major portion of his life to fighting childhood obesity.

In 1995 Tony formed a non-profit corporation, Accept the Challenge, Inc, a (501) (c) (3) entity. Tony has developed a new, innovative way to fight childhood obesity, on a national scale, through an in-school educational program called Operation Tone-Up®. For more than two decades, Tony has built significant expertise in nutrition and exercise. For the last 14 years, Accept the Challenge has developed, field tested, implemented, and continuously improved Operation Tone-Up. This program gives young people a fighting chance to beat the 2 in 3 odds of growing up to be overweight and unhealthy adults, and suffering from a myriad of life-threatening secondary diseases. To-date, more than 1 million students (ages 5-12) and adults have participated in Operation Tone-Up. The OTU program has often been described by others as being infectious, spreading to all who come in contact with it.

Tony’s goal is to make Operation Tone-Up® a national model for knocking out childhood obesity in America.