♪ [ opening music ] ♪ ♪ >>> Hello, I'm Beryl Dakers.

Welcome to Palmetto Scene .

Already, the New Year is fast slipping away.

For many of us, that means it's past time for that new attitude toward our physical well being to be manifest through a new nutrition and fitness regime.

We'll begin this episode by visiting with friends who helped our very own Desiree Cheeks, jumpstart her new year with a few high octane exercises.

♪ Diana Ross's "Muscles" ♪ ♪ ♪ I want muscles ♪ ♪ ♪ I want muscles, muscles, muscles, muscles ♪ <Desiree> We're here at 803 Fitness with Evie and Bernita, and they're going to give us a few tips about how to get started with fitness into the new year.

So, how did you guys get started here at 803 Fitness?

<Evie Belton> Well, we started as training partners in the bodybuilding industry.

And both of us trained other clients as well.

So we just decided one day to go ahead and, you know, open up our own facility so we could train people the way we want to provide the types of services that we wanted to provide for our clients.

<Desiree> With all of the advice in the fitness world, how is someone who is just getting started just out on their journey, or maybe keeps falling off the wagon and wants to stay motivated and stay consistent on their journey?

What kind of advice would you give them to staying motivated in the gym?

<Bernita> I would say it's less about motivation and more about consistency.

So start small, make one change, you know, and when that change becomes a habit, you know, for two or three weeks, then make another change, add another change onto that.

And just keep adding, you know, more and more things that you're doing, whether it's drinking more water or taking more walks during the day, or maybe taking a spin class or a couple of classes at your gym, in the afternoons or in the mornings, just slowly add something in little by little instead of having to try to do it all at one time, because that can be overwhelming.

So just make a small change first.

And then when that's a habit, then add a new healthy habit to that.

<Desiree> Just take the next best step.

<Bernita> Yes.

<Desiree> Well, let's get started with some tips to keep you fit this year.

<Evie> So Desiree is going to demonstrate how to do a squat with a kettlebell swing.

So you're going to pick up the kettlebell and you're going to hold it over handed, and then you're standing in a nice wide stance, so that's good, a little more than shoulder width apart.

So you're going to stand all the way up.

So just stand up first, then you're going to squat down and let the kettlebell go between your legs, and as you're standing, swing it forward.

And we'll just keep that going for a moment.

And with the kettlebell swing, you're working your lower body.

So you can see the squats, you're working your quadriceps, your hamstrings, and your glutes, which a lot of people are really, really interested in working on their glutes nowadays.

And the kettlebell swing itself is actually working the shoulders so you're working the front of the shoulders, and it's also getting your heart rate elevated a little bit.

So how's that feeling?

<Desiree> Great!

<Evie> Good.

<Desiree> "All of that," you said?

<Evie> And a little tip: when you stand all the way up, squeeze all of your muscles: squeeze your quads, squeeze your glutes, squeeze your hamstrings.

>>I can control this a little bit better at the top.

<Evie> So, you get a little isometric work at the end, yes?

<Bernita> Many people ask what they can do to work their waistlines, and today we're going to have Desiree demonstrate woodchops, and we're going to use a piece of equipment that you can find in any gym using cables and the rope handle.

So she's going to grab the handle standing with her feet apart.

What she's gonna do is keep her elbows locked.

She's going to pull the rope down and twist with a twisting motion; pull the rope down by her hip and twist in the midsection.

So this does work a little bit of your upper body, your arms, of course, but the main area you're gonna feel it is right in this area, and these are called woodchops.

Now for the home version of that same exercise, Desiree is going to use a dumbbell.

Can you grab this dumbell here?

And this is a 10 pound dumbbell.

And what she's going to do is she's going to hold it up by her ear, her right ear, and she's going to swing it down toward her hip just as she did the cable rope.

So this is an exercise you can do at home in case you are not at the gym or you don't have access to a gym, but you want to get the same motion, the same exercise working, the same area.

<Desiree> I definitely feel this one.

<Evie> Now Desiree is going to demonstrate for you an upper body exercise.

And actually this is going to be a combination exercise that works not only your biceps, but also your shoulders.

So we're going to start with a bicep curl, and then she's going to do a shoulder press.

So that's a reverse grip press, lower it back down, and then straighten it out.

So you can see right here on the bicep, that's your bicep curl, and when she's pressing up, she's working the front and the top of her shoulders.

So it's a good way to kind of kill two birds with one stone.

And it also kind of helps you keep your heart rate elevated when you're working more than one muscle group at a time.

So it pulls a little more energy from you.

<Bernita> Now Desiree's gonna perform the hip thruster, but this time, she's going to amplify the resistance with the band, which is placed just above her knees, across the thighs.

So what she's gonna do is again, with her shoulder blades on the bench, she's gonna raise her hips, thrusted upward toward the ceiling, squeezing the glutes, and then releasing.

Squeeze and release.

The bands are giving her a little extra resistance, which causes her to burn a little more energy.

<Desiree> I can feel it burning.

<Bernita> This is a way to amplify the burning effect without necessarily using weights.

But you're using bands for extra resistance.

<Desiree> Well, thank you so much for your time today and showing me those tips.

We're here again at 803 Fitness with Bernita and Evie, and I'm feeling ready to get fit in this new year, I hope you are too.

<Beryl> Feeding a need in our community.

That's the mission of FoodShare South Carolina, whose goal is to enhance the quality of life by creating access to fresh, affordable food, to quality cooking, and to skills education.

FoodShare revolves around three tenets: community empowerment and engagement, increased financial opportunity, and physical revitalization.

Through a partnership with USC's Culinary Medicine program, this organization fills a nutrition void prevalent in many underserved communities.

♪ music ♪ >> For years, I ran a bulk-buying produce club in my neighborhood.

And it was just for a small group of people.

And I also worked in a healthcare setting and would hear our physicians talk to their patients about getting their blood pressure down and improving their blood sugars, and it just hit me one day, I was like, "Wouldn't it be great if we could scale the bulk buying produce club that we do in the neighborhood for people who really need the discount?"

So a colleague of mine, Carrie Draper, and I got our heads together and started to start this food share program in the Midlands.

>> At FoodShare South Carolina, I'm one of the community outreach coordinators, and I primarily work with hubs that are outside of Columbia, where we are sort of creating an entire network food access that's both rural and urban, and that's really different.

There's unique issues around food access in urban places and in rural places, and we deal with them all, the relationship to food there varies by community, right?

And we know that anecdotally, but when you go to a place like Hampton County that only has two grocery stores, or Lee County where there's only two grocery stores and it's in downtown Bishopville, FoodShare's making it a lot easier for those families to rely on fresh food and not processed food, to know that they're going to have a quality source of fruits and veg, no matter what's at the grocery store.

And so I think it's changing relationship to fruits and vegetables.

<Beverly> We've had several grocery stores to close in the last several years and a lot of times people say, "Oh, it's...the proximity, you know, to the grocery store."

It's not only proximity to a grocery store, but can that family afford those groceries?

A lot of our more popular grocery stores are not coming into these low income neighborhoods because they say that the neighborhoods can't support a 30,000 square foot grocery store.

So we have families that you know, are really, they're having to drive miles and miles to some of the larger, big box stores, but it's not just about proximity to a grocery store.

<Courtney> We know when people shop on the outside of the grocery store, that's where they're spending the bulk of their dollars: on meats, on cheeses, on dairy, on the produce items, and so the goal is for someone to buy a fresh food box at the lowest price we can possibly make it whether that's on EBT or cash, and then go to the grocery store and fill their cart with the rest of the healthy, nutritious items that they need to feel full and be capable and have the energy that they need to kind of get through.

We're not here to just work with other big operations.

We have a big operation here.

If you go to a different county, you'll see something different, and we really want to uplift the resources that are already in those places, and the people that are already doing fabulous work, and make it easier for them to do that work.

We have a lot of amazing people in South Carolina that want to keep their neighbors taken care of.

They want to see their neighbors doing well and making sure that they have what they need.

And our network really capitalizes on that sort of desire to see people have what they need.

We have a lot of really special folks that are a part of our network.

>> So, my husband and I came out and volunteered, bagged some boxes and bags up for the community.

And then we found out it was really a good thing to do.

And we've been with them about two years, maybe three years now.

It's really not a job, but we volunteer, and we love it.

And we love helping people.

I want people to know that they could learn to eat better that's not expensive as grocery stores.

And you can get it right here.

>> Just by the number of boxes that we pack each - every other week.

Like this past Tuesday, I think we packed over 800 boxes.

The customers come by and pick up on Wednesdays.

They're excited that they're able to pay, get such a product at such a reasonable price.

And I think that alone, that encourages folks to order boxes.

Where else can you go and get all those vegetables at a reasonable price?

<Beverly> Until you work in these communities where you see people who are struggling financially in some way, you don't realize how broad the problem is.

You know, we always talk about, you know, sometimes we'll have some families come through, they're driving really nice cars, and it's hard, you know.

We can't judge them, you know, we're not sure that car could have been a gift to them.

They could be struggling for various reasons financially.

So you can't always recognize hunger.

Something that's really important is that FoodShare is a program under the University of South Carolina School of Medicine.

We're all USC employees, and just to have the university, the credibility of being a university program, and being within the School of Medicine is a lot.

>> The classes were designed to help community learn what to do with the produce they're getting in the box, and at the same time, culinary medicine emerged as an important part of medical students' training.

Medical students typically get about 12 hours of nutrition classes throughout their entire education, and it just really isn't enough for helping people in their offices understand how changes in diet can really help with the chronic diseases that are preventable through diet.

So we start each class with a little bit of a lecture.

They're reading some journal articles to really provide the evidence based background on the things that we're going to be talking about.

So, for example, we have a class in hypertension and sodium management.

So we talk about the studies that have shown how changes in diet can really help someone have a significant change in lowering their blood pressure.

And then we talk a little bit about the recipes and why we chose those recipes that are, you know, always because they're delicious, and then also just because we're helping people take small steps towards changes in their diet that can affect their health for the better.

>> I learned a few different recipes.

One of my passions is definitely cooking, for sure.

So it's definitely really nice to have a repertoire of different recipes to share with patients in the future.

>> Cooking for ourselves, busy residency coming up, but it's a good skill to have.

>> So today we made a banana oat pancake with a like berry compote to go on top.

And then we also did an herb encrusted cod with some grilled veggies to go with that.

And then some cilantro lime rice to kind of tie it all together.

We definitely learned a lot.

It's, it's great because it kind of gives you an opportunity to make some things that you're familiar with, but just like find a new way to do them and kind of be more conscientious about what ingredients you're using while you're cooking them, and kind of how this can relate to helping patients in the future.

>> And this also helps someone like me, who doesn't really cook that often.

So, just to have those skills so whenever I need to cook or want to cook at some point, I can do that in the future.

Creating healthy and nutritious recipes is key to putting us on the right track for the new year.

We all know that eating healthy means incorporating vegetables into our diet, but do you know how these foods help keep your body in check?

Lere Robinson does and she's here to give you the skinny on the nutritional benefits of nature's pantry.

♪ music ♪ ♪ It's the new year.

The holidays are behind us, and I'm going to be showing you how to get back on track so that you can feel vibrant, energetic, and ready to roll in this new year.

My name is Lere Robinson and I'm passionate about real whole foods from nature's pantry.

I have three healthy hacks that can help you get back and stay on track.

The first one is get moving.

Did you know that walking 20 to 30 minutes after a meal can be a game changer.

It can relieve your stress, it can help improve your blood sugar, and that for me is worth it.

And then secondly, I want to encourage you to cook once and eat twice.

We are all busy.

We live busy lifestyles, and so lean into those wonderful cooking aids like electric pressure cookers, slow cookers.

Take time, during a Sunday to prepare.

Maybe oven roast some vegetables, or oven roast some of your favorite protein.

Make a salad dressing that you can put in the fridge, so that's ready to go.

Here in the south, we tend to cook our foods to death.

Right?

.So, one of the things I like to encourage people is to eat more live, raw, living fruits and vegetables from nature's pantry.

Raw foods are filled with enzymes that help keep ourselves healthy, and an easy way to do that is maybe to have a large salad every day, or if you're a snacker, make one of your snacks in between meals, raw.

Here we have a wonderful array of vegetables that we are going to be using to make a colorful, vibrant salad.

I like to use a variety of greens as my base.

We're going to start off with kale.

Now, kale is a very tough leafy green.

It can be used and cooked in a variety of ways and soups and stews.

You can even make chips from it, but to make it more palatable in a salad, you've got to give it a good old little massage.

When massaging kale, you need some salt.

You need an acid like a little bit of vinegar or lemon and a dash of olive oil, but we're going to be using my dressing that I've already made.

So, we're going to pop a little bit of that on there, and you simply just use the tips of your fingers, and you massage it and you won't believe the difference just a two to three minute massage can make.

♪ Did you know kale is very high in fiber, and fiber is something we all need more of, and we simply are not getting enough of.

That's one common denominator that we have with all of these vegetables here.

They're very high in fiber.

So, there you go.

Look at the difference.

Isn't that amazing?

And now it's easier to chew and easier to swallow.

So, we're going to put in the leafy greens, specifically the kale.

I also love to add a tablespoon of nutritional yeast at times and nutritional yeast gives it that rich cheesy flavor if that's what you feel like.

Then, I'm going to be using just spring greens.

It's important to use organic leafy greens because organic is better for us.

Your leafy greens are very, very susceptible to pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides.

So, let's dump that on there, and just look at that color.

Your green foods are so important and it's something we don't eat enough of.

That chlorophyll in that green is nature's house cleaner.

And your green foods are detoxifying and cleansing to the human blood.

So, eat more greens.

From there, we're going to add some tomatoes.

Tomatoes are very high in lycopene, some cucumber.

Cucumber, very high in water.

If you are lacking in hydration, maybe eat some raw veggies, because that'll help to keep you hydrated.

They encourage - This beautiful orange contains vitamin A, which is so good for your eyes and your skin.

Peppers are very high in vitamin C, and vitamin C is an antioxidant that keeps us young and keeps our skins looking good.

So, let's pop some of that on.

Quinoa.

I love adding quinoa as quinoa is a complete protein and it contains a lot of fiber.

So, it's going to give a lot of bulk to the salad.

So, we're going to add some quinoa.

♪ There you go.and then some spring onion.

For me, a salad isn't a salad without onion, a little bit of spring onion or green onion, whatever you'd like to call it, and then the oven roast vegetables that we prepared at the beginning of the week.

In this case, I've got oven roasted butternut squash, and some red onion.

And oh, it's just going to taste so, so good.

Beans and legumes are also a great way of adding fiber and natural protein, healthy protein to our diets.

A little bit of nuts and seeds.

In this case sunflower seeds also, very good essential fatty acids and then your bitter greens, I always encourage you to add a handful of bitter greens, because your bitter greens are very, very cleansing to the liver.

They help to flush out the toxins.

Just a handful of that.

♪ Your good fats, your essential fatty acids reusing avocado today, your good fats are so important to keep your hormones healthy, to keep inflammation levels down, and to keep your brain healthy.

We cannot live without your good fat.

Let's put some of that on, and last, but not least, we're going to add some herbs, and herbs are a great way to incorporate more flavor, especially if you're on a low sodium diet.

...You can use any herbs parsley, basil, cilantro.

The more variety, the more flavor in your salad.

Once it's complete, I like to top it off with my favorite everyday salad dressing.

♪ music ♪ ...There you have a salad fit for a king.

♪ <Beryl> For more stories about our state and more details on these stories, which you've just seen.

Do visit our website at Palmetto scene.org.

And of course, don't forget to follow us on social media, whether Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

It's at (@) SCETV # (hashtag) Palmetto Scene.

For all of us here at ETV and Palmetto Scene.

I'm Beryl Dakers.

Stay well, and thanks for watching.

♪ music ♪ Hey, Scott Biering here at Bee City, Bee City Zoo and honeybee farm.

I want to tell you a little bit about what we do here on how we got started.

Got started when my dad retired from naval shipyard.

His name is Archie Biering and my mother Diane Biering and him started playing around with some beehives, painting them up.

We had some beehives then, but they start painting some of those beehives up like buildings: Big bee wig bees, Glory Bee Baptist Church, AppleBee's, BeeP station.

Yes, and the pun is definitely intended in all of them.

Next door, we have a bird aviary.

That was one of the things I heard all my life My grandfather, my dad's dad, I didn't really get to know him.

He was gone before I came along.

After I bought it, I told him that I was wanting to build a bird aviary.

Out of all the stuff we have, they get to go in there with those parakeets, and.you see smiles on everybody's faces.

Not everybody.

There's one or two that have a fear of birds, but a lot of healing powers these animals do.

People just don't.some people might not get it.

most people do.

You can see things I have stories of people going in there - those birds have brought them out of some serious stuff in their life and just they're animals, in general.

So, it's really cool to be a part of that.

And this is our outback.

Australian themed, obviously, red kangaroos.

You'll see joeys in the pouches if you look close enough.

We've got some albino wallabies.

We have cuckoo birds and cockatoos in here right now.

People actually get to go in and actually hand feed him.

We built the red rock like some of the Australian areas you'll see.

So, we're coming up on that.

You've got to build this yourself.

You get to dream up these crazy things and we actually get to see them through.

It brings people in.

They love to see it.

So, it helps us to accomplish our mission.

♪ closing music ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪