Jumblerant: Obesity

Showing posts with label Obesity. Show all posts

Thursday, January 14, 2010

I gone bin and dun it

I made good on my promise yesterday of getting more exercise.

Not only did I get up early - or as we used to say in the military "at the crack of sparrow's fart" - and drove off into the misty valleys that surround our home.

I dropped the car off at the garage after I'd been informed that the 200,000km service it was going in for would cost around $350. I then made myself a steaming cup of Turkish coffee, walked out of the garage, turned right and started my walk to the office.

Then I realized that going left actually made more sense, turned around and started walking that way instead.

On my little walk I listened to a podcast which had me laughing so hard that I had stop walking at some point to catch my breath. Answer Me This is a great weekly show that combines audience participation, standard jokes and general nonsense but be warned, strong language is rife. But it is sooooo funny.

I walked and walked and enjoyed the sun, the diesel fumes and the looks on people's faces as I cracked up laughing. All good fun.

When I got to the office I was hot and sweaty. Lucky for me 'the office' is in fact a volunteer job in a charity's main warehouse so everyone else there was sweaty too. I started heaving boxes and putting orders together and pretty soon I was up to 11,000 paces on my pedometer (it measures paces, not the location of pedophiles).

Another couple of hours passed and I was up to 15,000 paces.

By the end of my work day I was up to 22,000 paces, over twice the daily recommended exercise for an adult.

So I walked back to the garage to pick up the car where I was informed that the service cost twice what they said it would.

I smiled, nodded and looked at my pedometer - 31,000 paces.

Its good to realize what is important these days.

kthanxbai!

Saturday, November 14, 2009

For my (big) sister

As you can imagine from reading my post 'I beat my wife to get healthy', my one and only sister, who happens to be older than me, was not the happiest, fluffiest bunny on the planet. In fact she handed me my ass on a plate.

SORRY FOR CALLING YOU OBESE!!

Image via Wikipedia

Map showing prevalence of obesity in the United States. Rates are according to the CDC.

I would also like to apologize to myself for that posting as I thought I'd be getting more comments with a title that starts 'I beat my wife'.

I recently read a blog posting by The Old Plod of Plympton about religious tolerance. In the posting the blogger had an article by Ben Stein in December 2005 which I found very interesting. In an apology to my delightful, feather-like sister who is a mere wisp of an essence where 'ere she goes... here it is:

Image via Wikipedia

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:

I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

Direct copy and paste from Ben Stein's website, www.benstein.com/121805xmas.html

I'm off to start buying presents for my family for Hanukah - enjoy your shopping too.

kthanxbai!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

I beat my wife to get healthy

My sister and I are fighters.

As kids, whenever someone attacked either of us we would back each other to the hilt. When there was no-one else to battle we fought amongst ourselves, also, in a very energetic way. Its only my sister and I, although we did have a dog for a good many years, we are very close and there are many similarities between us (my sister and I, not the dog and I).

In fact when my sister and I chat to each other, even in front of our parents, we speak so fast and in such an Essex accent that no-one can understand us.

We also have something else in common - obesity. I haven't seen my sister in a few months but I do know that we are both on the heavy side.

She has 7 kids and a husband to clean up after, runs a community center and helps out at a variety of charities as often as she can. This leaves her very little time to look after herself.

Me? I like eating chocolate and have an aversion to sport.

Back in April I started using my trusty pedometer, in fact its the Omron Walking Style II (below) and I recommend it to everyone.

A pedometer measures the amount of steps you take whilst wearing it. Different health organisations agree that taking over 10,000 steps a day is highly beneficial to your health. My sister has yet to purchase a pedometer but hopefully after this little blog she will do so.

Mrs. Jumblerant recently bought a pedometer, exactly the same as mine, and challenged me to an interesting competition. Whoever has the most paces at the end of each day gets to stay in bed in the morning when our 8 month old baby boy wakes up! My kind of challenge.

In the last 3 days I have beaten her 3 times.

To add to the fun I also picked up on a challenge by fellow blogger Treppenwitz to his readers to log their steps, for free, at Walker Tracker. I have a rather green widget near the top of this blog if you want to go there and have a look.

Anyway, its a no frills competition normally. I even started 2 competitions this month in an effort to get back into walking myself thin. The winner gets bragging rights or something of an equal value, but it means that there are people out there helping you to walk more paces, push a bit harder and get a little bit healthier each day.

And that can't be a bad thing.

kthanxbai!