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Diet,
diet, diet! screams from
every possible media outlet. When I walk into a US grocery store, I’m
greeted and
guided through a carbohydrate zoo of temptations: Chocolate this and
chocolate
that, cakes and sweets, cookies and brownies - all
across from the fruits and vegetable
stalls. Hey, I’m educated, I can do it! Forget that it’s taken more
than
100,000 years of the human body needing and craving the rare fats found
while
hunting and gathering. Just tell those 100,000 years of conditioning
that the
past 20 years of education say these delights are unhealthy. Yeah, sure!
By now, nearly
everyone
knows
the
best diet is a balanced meal with plenty of fruits and vegetables. But
even
that isn’t enough to lose weight. It’s
just the harsh beginning.
Diet for me means exercise.
When
I was a kid, I made fun of adults calling running, jumping, climbing
trees and
chasing after other kids a dirty word when I called it play. Now that I
drive a
car, sit at a desk and climb a few stairways at work, with no exercise
gym in
town and no one to chase after….. Diet ads don’t say that, except in
the
teeny-tiny small print ‘along with a physician-approved exercise
program’.
Diet is exercise, what with a
nearly 50-pound weight gain from menopause, it’s the only way to live.
Yeah, I
had heard the weight gain was only about 20 pounds, but no way for some
of us
unfortunates. Those damn 100,000 years of conditioning means I had lots
of fat
to live off of when the food came to the open pit fire, and the best
bits were
given to those younger than me in the clan.<>So live
with
it? Researching how
to age with grace, less pain and a good, healthy death,
the experts’ conclusions are lift weights (to
build muscles) and exercise (to keep blood flowing).
Then, get sick and die fast and
painless. I’d rather do that than go
like my parents did with their excess weight. One took nine months and
the
other five years to die. Both deaths caused a great deal of family
financial
and emotional hell.
Exercise to die well? Hey, if
you’re under 50, it seems like an outrageous proposition. Put it this
way:
dying well – painless and quickly - is
like attaining a Masters degree when you’re young: makes life easier,
opens
many doors, and raise one’s self-esteem. Same for a good death.
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