Caroline's Exercise Rules

Finding good, specific information on the other parts of a healthy lifestyle that are NOT diet can be fairly difficult.  Much to my chagrin, Michael Pollan has no Exercise Rules or Lifestyle Rules, only Food Rules.  Looks like I'm just going to have to create them myself dammit.  There are a few books I'm checking out of the library to help me fill out my Rules with detail, but I'm thinking I will follow the same structure and philosophy as the Food Rules: simple, logical, natural, and as cut-through-the-bullshit as possible.

Here's a review of what Michael Pollan's Food Rules are:

1) Eat Food. (By this he means real food, not the fake processed sugary crap.)

2) Not Too Much.

3) Mostly Plants.

(There are actually more detailed rules under each of these categories, but I don't feel the need to repeat them to myself.  Plus, I don't feel like infringing on anyone's copyright and getting sued.  If someone happens to be reading this and want to know more, look up his books In Defense of Food and Food Rules and check them out of the library.  Or start with Omnivore's Dilemma just because it's that awesome.  Oh...and be sure to one day read Botany of Desire too!  ...I'm a little bit of a fan...)

Caroline's Exercise Rules

So here goes-- my Exercise Rules:

1) Be Active.

2) Not Too Little.

3) As Routinely as Possible.

So, I went with "Be Active" and not "Exercise".  Why?  Because I hate Exercise.  It feels way too contrived and forced, and the only time I Exercise is because I feel like I should--like some outside force is saying, "You know, you really should exercise more," while tapping its foot and looking at its stopwatch....and wearing some ugly track suit...holding a clipboard and a whistle (I have a vivid imagination that likes to personify "outside forces" as power-hungry gym teachers, just go with it).  Exercise, to me, is middle school P.E., it means forcing myself to do something I don't want to do and probably humiliating myself in the meantime.  I hate the gym, I hate getting on a machine that makes me feel like a hamster, I hate exercise for Exercise's sake.  There are plenty of people that this works for and God bless them for it, but it's simply not me and it never will be (another revelation of being 29!--admitting to what I will never be).

On the flip side, I LOVE being active.  I love taking long walks, I love going to the park and throwing a baseball or frisbee around, I love biking to the lake shore, I love sprinting up the stairs to catch the el, I love taking my son to the park, I love "racing" with him and playing with him, I love playing (noncompetitive) sports.  I would SO much rather do these things than Exercise.  So, I've decided that the only way I'm going to get in my obligatory exercise is by not Exercising. 

I'm comparing this in my mind to Michael's Rule #8 (part of Eat Food): "Avoid food products that make health claims."  Only I'm adapting it to be "Avoid exercises that claim to be Exercises"--things I would never do other than for the sake of alleviating my guilt of not Exercising.   Or, even better, Rule #2 "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food" becomes "Don't seek out forms of exercise your great-grandmother would question as being sane" or "Do seek out activities your great-grandmother would recognize as normal and healthy."

"Being active," to me, is doing something I would normally do in real life, but not taking the "easy" way out.  It's biking to work instead of taking the train.  It's taking the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator.  It's getting down and playing actively with my toddler.  It's getting the basket instead of the shopping cart at the grocery store.  It's ramping up every potentially active detail of my everyday life, and not letting myself take the handicap-accessible way out.  It's burning the easy calories, and leaving the access to those who need it more than me.

It reminds me of a story I read somewhere, I can't remember where, maybe Freakonomics?  Or maybe it was Switch?  (Hopefully I can remember all the details correctly...if outside people actually start reading this, I'm going to have to double check my facts. Sorry for you poor first readers.)  Anyway, it was about a study that was done on people's perceptions of exercise.  They took a group of hotel maids and split them into two groups.  They took all the maids' weights and interviewed them about their exercise habits.  Then they took the first group of maids and just showed them a chart that displayed how many calories they burned doing various tasks in their jobs (vacuuming, changing the sheets, etc).  They took the second group and educated them on classic exercises (think "ways to work out"), how many calories they burned, and were given instructions on how to get started and encouraged them to try them out. 

The researchers came back some time later (a couple months maybe), and measured all their weights again.  The maids who were shown how many calories they burned doing normal work stuff lost some crazy amount of weight (like an average of 10 pounds or something insane).  The maids who were educated about "classic" exercises?...yeah, they ended up gaining weight.  Turns out everyone in the first group started working "harder" because they suddenly knew the health benefits in black and white, and, heck, they were doing it anyway, so why not just turn it up a notch.  They vacuumed more, and didn't take the "easy" route with any of their work: they were simply doing what they always did, but cranked up to 11 (and, who knows, maybe this bled into their lives at home too).  I think the maids in the second group just felt bad that they weren't doing what they should be doing to get healthy, so went home and binged on Hostess Cupcakes.  Like most of us.

So THAT is where I'm going with this.  I want to simply stop slacking off with normal life.

More detailed Rules tomorrow!