We started our walking program at work today, and I somehow skimmed right past the part on the e-mail where it said there'd be a lecture. I wouldn't have gone if I'd read it.
For people like me, people who are significantly overweight and who have had unhealthy habits for years, it's really not all that helpful to tell us to exercise an hour every day, avoid all bad things on this earth, and eat bucketloads of dark, leafy greens. We know that healthy, slender people do that, and bully for them. We don't. We need to start slow, we need to start small, and we need to feel okay about that.
I've been thinking about this for a while, actually. I saw Dr. Nancy Snyderman on "Good Morning America" recently, whose advice always irritates me: if I lived the way she recommends I live, I'd spend every living moment buying, preparing, and eating healthful vegetables, and every other living moment exercising. In any case, she was saying that she went for a heart test recently and it wasn't perfect, "most likely due to those cheeseburgers I ate as a teen," she said, with perfect seriousness. I mean...! Here's this spectacularly healthy woman who's made a career of eating dark, leafy greens, for decades, and she thinks choices she made as a teen might have damaged her health?! What does that say to people like me? I'll tell you what it says: Don't bother. It's too late. The changes would have to be drastic, and even then, at this point you've probably done too much damage already. How demoralizing! Makes me want to order pizza. Large. Deep-dish.
I'll participate in the walking program, because I believe that any change is good change. 15 minutes walking during the work day is 15 minutes not spent sitting. It all counts.
But I think I may need to develop my own program, and hey, maybe I'll call it "It All Counts." Something actually encouraging.
Maybe I'll end up on GMA talking with Dr. Snyderman about it.
That could get ugly!
:-)
