What is 58 minutes?
Obviously I can calculate it’s 3480 seconds and according to Google is it also 1358 in Military time (don’t ask me to explain, I still don’t full understand what Military time is!) a book, a song, co-ordinates and for some reason if you type in 58 minutes it also shows up 58 minutes pour vivre which if you follow the links takes you to information about Die Hard 2?! (You can have that useless bit of knowledge for free!)
However more worryingly 28 minutes is also the amount of time I spent walking yesterday. Not on one walk……. in total. I didn’t even spend 1 hour walking around in the entire 15(ish) hours I was awake.
Is it just me that finds this horrifying?
The worse part is it isn’t fully my fault. My job ties me to a desk, the only chance I get away from it is when I walk to the loo or make a round of coffees for the office. Yesterday, I came in and didn’t just sit down and slob. The evening involved a little DIY, I watered my garden (using a watering can, so multiple trips) and I took Mity for a half hour walk.
I know I don’t get up every morning and go for a run, I know I need to get back on my bike and stop using my car, but having a house to DIY is such a good, get out of excercise excuse! However forgetting the ‘intentional excercise’ of running or cycling. I didn’t think my normal day to day life was quite so lazy.
I like to think I am healthy. I enjoy being outside. I love swimming, cycling, walking the dogs. I eat well; salad for lunch most days, significantly smaller portions since I started living alone and I am even upping my fruit intake. I don’t have sugar in tea. I only occasionally eat chocolate, in fact I discovered that if I have a sweet something, usually a ‘gooey’ biscuit, after my tea that does my craving for the evening. I don’t particularly like crisps…….don’t have sweets in the house…..hardly snack between meals and if I do it is nuts or fruit. Ok, I do drink now and then, but hey no one’s perfect right?! I do have bad days but on the whole I think I am doing ok.
I have always struggled with my weight. I only need to look at a chocolate bar and I seem to gain the extra calories but I have always wondered why. In fact I had a very honest conversation with the ex where he admitted he doesn’t know why I am the weight I am. We lived together so he knew what I ate, how much I exercised. It was reassuring to hear someone else confirm what I was thinking.
I always put it down to faulty genes, assumed I was just unlucky, but now I can’t help but wonder if it is tied to something else.
We (and yes I am aware I am vastly stereo-typing the entire human race) spend an awful lot of our time sat on our asses. As we work longer hours, eat lunch at our desks, drive everywhere is it any surprise that we are heavier than we have ever been? Add into that a generation of people who don’t know how to cook (I know of one girl that didn’t know she had to peel an onion before chopping it!) so turn to fast food, take outs, frozen tv dinners. All high calorie,all low nutritional values (assumption again!).
I think there has always been an assumption, you see a fat person and assume they spend their days sitting glugging coke and eating nothing but chocolate, crips and goose fat. Yet it could be that they are just living a normal, hectic life, ferrying kids to different classes, racing to the shops in the car to pick up a missing ingredient before they cook tea.
The world is facing an obesity epidemic. People are getting fatter and fast food doesn’t help. But I am starting to think that just our every day life style is also playing a major role and that’s possibly even more scary.
25castleson25clouds.wordpress.com 
The world is getting fatter and we blame it on convenience foods mostly. We cook everything from scratch and dog walking everyday is our exercise. Keeps us fit. Have a super Saturday.
Best wishes Molly
I can’t help but feel convenience foods are the easy blame. I am not saying they are not at fault, but I don’t think it’s as easy as blaming one thing!
I agree it is not just the food, but our lifestyle. In our grandparent’s day, they probably did a lot more walking and moving while we do a lot of sitting. We sit in front of the TV, we sit at work, we sit at the computer.
For me, I started having a difficult time keeping weight off when I hit 30. Our metabolism slows down as we get older and eating bad food doesn’t help.
I think it’s our ‘convinient’ life style – it’s not good for us at all!
I also think as we cure one problem we also create others. I never had a weight issue until I started taking medications. Then I had not only weight issues, but other health related issues. So, yes, I controlled one issue that I couldn’t afford not to control by avoiding meds, but I now have many more to manage than I started with including a constant battle with weight.
As morbid as it sounds every generation deals with the consequences of trying to prevent death. Having a harder life that leads people to naturally being more fit and less likely to be obsese has other health risks. People might not have been overweight, but they had plenty of other health related issues that caused earlier deaths. We often forget those now that the dangers have been replaced by technology providing less of a need for that kind of physical labor.
I’ve moved to getting more exercise and eating a healthier diet and it has helped, but I still battle the side effects of changing my life style. For every change you make there are consequences and not all are positive. I like the improvements, but I do regret the additional challenges/problems I’ve created in my quest to be healthier. There are always going to be trade offs no matter how much I think I should just feel better for doing the right thing. My body is telling me otherwise.
I think that’s very true and I agree ‘medically treating everything’ is not always the best answer. (Although i do not know your experience so can’t comment on your situation) I know in my life turning to homeopathy to manage some health issues did more good than the doctors and hospitals were ever willing to!