A Coastie’s take on HPRC’s resources for fitness and performance

By: Tim Merrell, BS*

My active-duty service in the U.S. Coast Guard and work as a civilian employee has been very rewarding. It’s a small service with many important missions. Unfortunately, one negative aspect of being in such a small service is the lack of resources, especially in the areas of nutrition and exercise.

As a former medic, I often got asked about a variety of health-related concerns: “How many calories should I consume? What are the best exercises to shrink my stomach? Can I take diet pills?”

Where Military Service Members get their health information often determines how successful they are in reaching their goals. Where do you get your health information? Does it come from your doctor, spouse, an infomercial on late-night TV, the Internet, or someone at your gym? How do you know the information is correct without spending hours researching the scientific data for validation? Just because it’s on the Internet doesn’t make it true.

As the U.S. Coast Guard Health Promotion Program Manager, I get many questions on health-related subjects such as weight loss, exercise, nutrition, smoking cessation, and stress management. Some answers are easy: “No, the Almond Butter Only (ABO) diet isn’t healthy.” But others are somewhat harder. When I get these tough questions, I mostly turn to the HPRC website. HPRC covers physical fitness, nutrition, dietary supplements, mental fitness, and more. I also feel confident the information posted on HPRC is fully verified.

Another reason why I look to HPRC is that their resources are tailored for the military community. Life in the military is different from working a nine-to-five job. Unless you served or worked closely with the military, it’s also hard to explain. Unlike civilian life, military life has many more restrictions that can complicate a healthy lifestyle such as deployments, lack of resources, unusual hours, and remote locations. HPRC’s subject-matter experts understand, and the articles and other content reflect it. They know their readers rely on the information being correct because maintaining a high state of readiness is paramount to the military mission.

There’s a lot of information on the Internet, and some of it is very good and helpful. However, some information is wrong and can be harmful—even deadly. So, I highly recommend hprc-online.org for any health-related resources that can help you stay mission-ready.

----------About the Author-----------

Tim Merrell is the U.S. Coast Guard’s Health Promotion Program Manager and a certified personal trainer. He previously worked as a health services technician.


* The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences or the United States Department of Defense.