It all counts!

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!

:-)

A movie review from my mother

My mother is not impressed:

Today, Dad and I saw a film called "Sunshine." It's science fiction: the sun is dying, so the earth is doomed, therefore a mission, Icarus 2, is sent to save the sun. There had been an Icarus 1 earlier, but it disappeared without a trace. Well, this movie has impressive photography and lots of overpowering pictures of space and the vehicle itself, but other than that it just doesn't work. Those shots of the vehicle and space are repetitive and eventually boring.The story line is practically non-existent. Just to show you what I mean: I didn't care one whit about what might happen to the human beings on the vehicle, now that's bad, isn't it? And I didn't care whether the mission succeeded, either. I just wanted the whole thing to be finished.

Read and release!

Every spring, I rediscover BookCrossing, only because it once again becomes fun to run about outside, leaving books hither and yon with notes urging people to take them home.

The only thing is, the books disappear all right, but people rarely journal them, and that can be unsatisfying... even though I tell myself that for all I know they're being thoroughly enjoyed. After all, last year I left a copy of Ken Mikolowski's poetry collection Big Enigmas at the now-closed Oslo sushi bar and club in Detroit. I actually watched a group of people discover it, gather around it, and even read aloud from it (Ken's poems are good for that!), and later I saw it in someone's pocket. They never journalled it on BookCrossing.com, but so what? I know it was enjoyed!

Still, when people do journal a book I've released into the wild, it makes my day. In the heady warmth of yesterday's early spring evening, I dropped off four novels around Depot Town, expecting the usual zero response rate, but feeling good about it anyway. This morning, I discovered the following journal entry for one of them:

I have not read it yet, but am planning on reading it. I saw you drop the book as I was eating at Aubrees. It caught my attention and I told my friend who I was eating with that I read on PostSecret last week about how you leave books for others to read. I was like I wonder if they are doing the same thing. The book as still there when we went out. I was like, "oh my gosh it is." This is too weird. I only read about this on Saturday, and I found a book. I am planning on reading it this weekend when I go home (which is in another state). If I finish, I will leave it somewhere there. It looks really good, I am so excited to read it.

Wheee! Someone who knew about BookCrossing already and was genuinely excited to "catch" a book that had been released into the wild!

Oh, hurrah. It's every BookCrosser's dream.

Now I want to release dozens of them!