Documentary focuses on teen-ager as it looks at national childhood obesity crisis

When Ashley Castoreno was a baby, her parents put Big Red soda in her bottle to quiet her. Growing up, she never learned to bike or swim. At school, someone once taped a sign on her back that said, "Don't feed the cow."

By the time she was a senior in high school, Castoreno was more than 100 pounds overweight — and typical of a growing segment of American children.

But in the past year and a half, Castoreno, now 20, has shed weight, gotten hooked on running and traveled to Washington, D.C., to tell legislators what it's like to grow up obese and why it's important to keep physical education in the classroom.

Her story is featured in a new documentary by first-time Austin filmmaker Jen Ohlson, a former Austin sports reporter and author of the coffee-table book "Every Town Needs a Trail."

Ohlson founded the nonprofit PE3: Mind, Body, Spirit in 2009 with the goal of improving physical education in public schools. One way to do that, she decided, was to tell the story of childhood obesity by focusing on one student.

A premiere of "Health Needs a Hero" and a fundraiser for PE3 is scheduled for Sunday at the Long Center for the Performing Arts.

According to the Texas Health Institute, 35 percent of Texas children are overweight or obese, a percentage that's more than double the national average. More than half of Texas adults are overweight or obese. If nothing changes, that number will grow to 75 percent by 2040, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

As obesity numbers have climbed, the amount of time students spend in physical education classes has shrunk. Kids spend an increasing amount of time on the computer or playing video games, and junk food is cheap and plentiful.

In making her film, Ohlson teamed up with Roger Rodriguez, a PE administrator with a San Antonio school district. Sorting through data culled from Fitnessgram, a national physical fitness assessment program, they realized about 600 students in that district had a body mass index (a measure of body fat based on height and weight) of 40 or higher. A measurement of 30 or higher indicates obesity.

To Ohlson, a college athlete with 36 marathons and three Ironman triathlons behind her, the numbers were shocking. "There were sixth-graders who were 389 pounds, sophomores who were 450 pounds," Ohlson says.

They noticed a concentration of obese students at Highlands High School, a school in a middle-income neighborhood in San Antonio. At the superintendent's urging, they created a PE3 fitness class for about 45 students there. Participants would get a mix of exercise, from dancing to running and yoga, plus guest lectures on nutrition and healthy living.

Castoreno was sitting on the front row at a kickoff session before that class began. When Ohlson asked if anyone there wanted to work with her on a documentary about obesity, she volunteered.

It was December 2009. Castoreno was 19 years old, 5 feet tall and weighed 261 pounds.

"I just wanted to change," she says.

Ohlson gathered her film crew, and they started filming Castoreno in the new PE3 class, at the dinner table and picking out a dress for her senior prom.

As the months passed, Ohlson and Castoreno grew close. After the teenager graduated from high school in June 2010, she moved to Austin to live with her new mentor.

"It gave me this magnifying glass," Ohlson says.

The two ate meals together and walked the neighborhood for exercise. Castoreno got a job at the West Austin Youth Association. She learned to bike and started to run.

Ohlson distilled about 80 hours of raw footage into the 90-minute documentary, narrated by Edward James Olmos. It cost $275,000 to make and was funded by grants from H-E-B, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas and others.

It follows Castoreno from thinking of herself as a "disgusting fat girl" to finishing the Austin LiveStrong Marathon. Her story weaves into the bigger issue of childhood obesity, and how it affects so many facets of life in America, from medical costs to the military. The result isn't just about weight loss; it's about healing and inner growth.

"For the first time, I understand what it means to be healthy," Castoreno says near the end of the film.