Let's start with full disclosure. I am not the poster boy for a healthy New Hampshire lifestyle. However, reading recently that more than one-third of school-age children in New Hampshire are obese started me worrying.

Getting dressed one morning shortly after my 40th birthday, I caught sight of someone's naked body in the mirror--a beige, bloated dumpling.

Mine!

Then from nowhere, some long-forgotten words from Ralph Waldo Emerson popped into my mind: "First, be a good animal."

"The best diet is the one you don't know you're on."

Words to live by? According to Dr. Brain Wansink, author of Mindless Eating and director of Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab, this is indeed a healthy motto.

Attitude is more important than age or athleticism when it comes to bicycle commuting.

My job involves enabling and encouraging elementary school children to safely walk and ride bicycles to school. When I was hired in November 2006 to coordinate the Safe Routes to School program for the N.H. Department of Transportation, I decided I should set a good example and gain the health benefits by cycling to work.