Tonnage

My wife's health plan includes a provision for an addition to the money she puts into it if we watch health videos that are available on the company's web site. Most of the videos are boring; they occasionally say something interesting, but its interspersed with things that are perfectly obvious. A couple, I'd sooner pass on the money than spend ten minutes watching the video -- their diatribe about cholesterol is one of those, as is their one about men's health. It's ironic, I suppose; that second one actually might contain some useful information, but I dislike being lectured. Which is why I particularly despise the one on exercise.

Like many people, I don't get enough exercise. Well, okay, to be precise, I don't get any. I go for walks on occasion, by which I mean being out for about forty five minutes, walking at a steady pace -- not brisk, not dawdling. And sometimes I ride my bike, which is even more relaxed -- a lot of coasting, a lot of riding in a low gear. So I recognize that I ought to do more, and I get the guilty twinge when I think about it. Lately, I've gotten that twinge a lot, as I have been keeping fairly close track of what I weigh. For some reason, it's been going up.

A side note. The other day, I was transporting my daughter and a friend of hers to color guard practice when the friend mentioned that she'd gotten detention at school. My daughter was amazed. It's the first week of school, and you've already gotten detention? Her friend nodded. My daughter had just mentioned that she didn't like listening to political articles on the car radio -- its all blah blah blah, she observed -- and her friend picked up on it, saying that yeah, that was like class, the teacher was going on and on and I'm like blah blah blah, does she even think I'm listening? And then, the girl observed with a certain amount of astonishment, she got an F for the assignment, and detention. They just don't like me, she said, sinking down into her seat. Yeah, right, I thought. The connection between her attitude and performance and the detention were perfectly obvious to me, as I assume they'd be to any parent. (You'd like to think 'to any kid', too, but I suppose thats asking a bit much.)

The connection to my weight going up and my lifestyle is similarly opaque. I really can't think of why it would, but intellectually, I know that its not because I've been gifted by the vapors of weight gain; something is going on, whether it's eating more, eating different, exercising less, or some combination. Whatever the cause, I was thinking about exercise more than usual -- which is to say, thinking more than not thinking about it at all. When I saw the video, I figured I'd watch it. And I did. You'd like to think you get points in some cosmic ledger for doing things like that, but life doesn't seem to work that way.

The instructor in the video was a chirpy, somewhat intense, quite lean and limber woman who said things like 'you can stay fit by doing as little as forty-five minutes a day, four or five times a week' (which would be, oh, about five or seven times what I normally do) while demonstrating easy to do exercises such as standing with your legs wide-spread and casually reaching down to touch your toes, then walking your hands back to behind your ankles. Easy to do, hmmm? Its like the comment someone made once about the instructions for painting a wall, where they say that the wall should be clean and dry before painting -- if it was clean and dry, do you think I'd be painting it? If that exercise was easy, do you think I'd be watching this video?

Worse, her attitude was clearly one of exasperation. By god, you could see her thinking, if I didn't need the money, I wouldn't be making this video, I'd be out training for a triathlon -- and they should be too, the bunch of sluggards. Which is at least partially true, but that doesn't mean I need to like it. And in the quiet of our home, watching the video, I didn't. But I did watch it.

Do I get points?