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Ashley Cedeño
Young Ashley Cedeño is obese, and if something doesn’t change she could develop several obesity-related diseases. Ashley’s family is undertaking a lifestyle change that they hope will spare the children from a lifetime of health problems.
| Wednesday, Jan 9 2008 2:44 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jan 25 2008 5:41 PM
Ashley Cedeño isn’t sure.
ASHLEY CEDEÑO
Age: 10
Grade: fifth grade at Hort Elementary School
Height: 4 feet 10 inches
Weight: 136 pounds, down from 150 pounds
Healthy weight for her height and age: 68-96 pounds
Body mass index: 28.4
Healthy body mass index for her height and age: 14-20
Percentile based on body mass index: 98th (overweight, heaviest category for children and teens)
Would rice with her beef and broccoli dinner be OK?
The 9-year-old looks at her mother for help.
But Mary Jacinto isn’t sure either. She chews her gum and looks at Ashley encouragingly.
Ashley quietly says “no” to the rice and is rewarded with approval from the Kaiser Permanente dietician, Athena Harmuth.
That was in March.
Mary, 30, and Ashley took the class to learn how to eat healthier.
When she was a child, Mary said, no one thought about what they were eating. One of 11 children, Mary’s parents worked in the fields leaving at 4 a.m. every day and coming back at 3 p.m. to make dinner and go back to work.
No one had time to analyze fat content or worry about carbs.
“When we were growing up, we ate whatever my parents brought home,” said Mary, who now lives comfortably in a three-bedroom house in northeast Bakersfield.
When she had her own family, Mary made what her mother made: rice, beans, fried chicken and tortillas.
Then one day, she saw a billboard about childhood obesity.
She recognized Ashley — 4-foot-10 and 150 pounds — in that billboard.
A girl her height and age should be between 68 and 96 pounds, according to national body mass index standards.
Also playing against Ashley is the fact that she is Hispanic, which puts her at a higher likelihood of being obese and developing several obesity-related diseases.
In Kern County, 64 percent of Hispanic residents are overweight to obese compared to 57 percent of non-Hispanic white residents and 44 percent of blacks, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
And Hispanic adults are nearly twice as likely to have diabetes than non-Hispanic white adults, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
When Mary saw the billboard, she decided to act.
And the Kaiser Permanente class was just the beginning. Ashley did lose weight in that six-week program, going from 149 to 136 pounds.
Taking the Kaiser lessons to heart, Mary insisted on a lifestyle change for the whole family, including Ashley’s four siblings Roman Jacinto, then 9; Moises Cedeño, 8; Jennifer Jacinto, 5, and Brian Jacinto, 3.
It took time for the kids to adjust.
“I would buy all these fruits and they would just rot,” she said.
The family also had to break its Sierra Mist habit.
“I thought because it was white, it had less sugar, but the doctor explained it was the same thing,” Mary said.
Ashley, who would eat four or five slices of pizza at a time — “It got to the point where she would eat her plate and then go to the plate next to her,” Mary said. “And nobody stopped her,” — is also adjusting.
“I like salads and fruits. I like green apples, strawberries, bananas and oranges,” Ashley said.
Regular exercise has become a part of family life as well.
Out of breath but enthusiastic, Ashley runs the bases in the home-made baseball diamond in her backyard on a clear June day.
Roman throws a small basketball at her, hitting her with it.
“Out!” he shouts.
She keeps running, a smile on her face.
Younger brother Brian picks up a kite and runs with it through Ashley and Roman’s game.
Later, the kids come in for a dinner of grilled chicken, rice and broccoli.
“Mommy, this looks like a tree,” Jennifer says of the broccoli.
“Dad, try some broccoli,” Roman says. “It’s good.”
“I’m still getting used to it,” dad J.J. Jacinto says.
Like the rest of the family, he is working toward healthier eating.
“I like to eat, and she stopped me from eating a lot,” says the 31-year-old. “We cut down on tortillas.”
“Big time,” Mary adds.
J.J. picked up bad eating habits when he traveled as a field supervisor with a local construction company, he says, before he was promoted to an operations manager.
“I’d be gone for a week or two weeks at a time,” he says. “I had to eat in restaurants, fast food.”
He used to be 340 pounds. Now, the 6-foot-2 man is 280 pounds, which is still considered obese.
“I’m still growing,” J.J. jokes.
When Mary was a child, fast-food was a luxury.
“We didn’t have easy access to food,” she says. “There were no stores by our houses. Now, they’re everywhere.”
Now it’s closing in on the end of the year, and Mary still has challenges keeping the family on a healthy path.
J.J. has been the hardest to convert.
“He still wanted his tortillas,” she said. But now she’s got him eating wheat bread and flour tortillas.
As she reflects on the past year, Ashley, now 10, changes into a blue tank top and gray shorts and goes to the mini-gym in the garage.
Whether due to a growth spurt or the family’s new way of living, Ashley has lost some more weight, but Mary isn’t sure how much.
All she knows is that Ashley doesn’t have the same pudgy stomach and her face is thinning out. She also has more energy.
Beside an old computer, bird cage and tires sits a treadmill Ashley’s grandmother gave them.
Weights clink as Ashley does 100 leg extensions and 100 arm curls.
While the children play and work out across the house, Mary’s sister Hilda Quintero watches television in the living room.
“Keeping away from all that junk” has been her biggest problem, Hilda says. Dieting has never worked.
At 280 pounds, Hilda is scheduled to undergo gastric bypass surgery.
“When I have it, I’m going to really try” to stop eating unhealthy, the 26-year-old said. “Just work at it. Never give up.”
Staff writer Lisa Schencker contributed to this report.
