The lady turned around, glanced at the items I had placed on the conveyor belt late Saturday afternoon at a cash register at the North Main Street Save Mart, and asked “are you a vegetarian?”
What gave me away was the watermelon, eight Fuji apples, eight oranges, eight Ambrosia apples, three broccoli crowns, two bags of mixed salad (OK, I’m lazy), seven bananas, cantaloupe, small sack of potatoes, 20 yogurts, seven containers of low-fat cottage cheese, two bags containing a pound each of natural almonds, a bag of pistachios, four bottles of acai berry V8 Fusion, and four 32-ounce bottles of Gatorade.
I smile and noted that I was actually a lacto-ovo vegetarian. I’m also pretty predictable as some of the checkers at Save Mart have my weekly grocery haul memorized by heart. Toss in a box of 16 Boca Burger patties from Costco, five of so Orange Dream Machines from Jamba Juice plus my junk –three or four packages of lemon crème cookies (they have no nutritional purpose and probably nothing natural in them) and about 10 rolls of Lifesavers five flavors hard candy and you have my basic weekly food consumption.
Her question made me think of what someone had asked me three days earlier before the start of a group exercise class at In Shape. The lady wanted to know whether running kept me lean.
After noting I jog and not run, I said it helped but it really was exercise in conjunction with what I ate.
It’s no state secret that I have a body image problem. It’s not due to a desire to be thin. It’s just that I will always perceive myself as being fat. I tipped the scales at 280 pounds at the end of the seventh grade before I dropped down to 220 at the start of the eighth grade. I piled it back on during college and reached 320 pounds before dropping down to 195 when I turned 30. I eventually got back up to 220 and then about five years ago I dropped down to 195 and stayed there by introducing moderate amounts of raw fruits and vegetables into my diet and constantly worried about gaining weight back
Even though I exercised every day – jogging, group exercise, or cycling -I never had any real muscle tone
That all changed starting about 30 months ago when I decided to get rid of my three big boxes of Chez-Its a week habit, chuck the daily bag of king-sized plain M&Ms, and wean off a number of other items and switch to what I’ve now been eating ever since save an occasional restaurant meal or Blizzard run at Dairy Queen. I also stopped drinking Diet Pepsi when I finally decided caffeine served no useful purpose and paying a buck for a bottle of colored chemicals mixed in water made no sense. Since then I’ve been staying within the 165 to 168 pound range based on my bathroom scale that I step on every day after exercising and faithfully marking the result on a calendar.
What changed the muscle tone at least in the arms, the infamous love handles and – believe it or not – even in my abdomen although I assure you I still have trouble proving I have the makings of a two-pack – was adding more light weights and exercise bars to my routines at In Shape and at home.
The credit goes to the four different 9:30 a.m. group exercise instructors – all women – who each employ a variety of different movements with and without weights.
I actually have gotten to the point where I’m wearing sleeveless shorts (they’re called muscle shirts but I definitely don’t have what the image of such a garment conjures up) and have noticed toning elsewhere including dropping an inch or so off the waist and elsewhere despite not losing any more during the past three years.
If you think I don’t have energy, and then ask someone in the 9:30 a.m. group exercise class. I’m not fast afoot jogging and I couldn’t even begin to hold my own with Lance Armstrong wannabes on a bicycle nor could I impress anyone lifting to build muscles.
I’d venture to say, though, that when it comes to all-around health I’m more than holding my own.
What brought this up is another report out of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta that stresses the importance of eating more fruits and vegetables plus exercising and the impact it has on overall health. It notes you can reverse the damage done after years of treating McDonalds and Taco Bell as two of the basic food groups and thinking there is no harm in just a couple of soft drinks, a bag or two of salty snacks, candy, and relieving stress by watching TV or surfing the net.
They’re right and I’m living proof.
Diet as in eating the food that will do your body the most good in the amounts that it needs to function coupled with staying active is the elusive “magic pill” and not the fat burning pills that effectively burn through money with no lasting natural results or exercise machine gimmicks that people willingly fork over easy installments of $19.99 a month to ultimately use as dust collectors.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, e-mail dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
