Confession of A Slacker

 

Confession : I have not been hitting the gym for more than 2 months !! Gosh !!

When you’re past your 30s, you will feel that all the parts in your body are slowing down. The engine especially. Going up a few floors by staircase used to be just a snap of the fingers. Nowadays, you just can’t lie to yourself anymore. The deep breathing and panting after climbing 2 floors of staircase tells it all. I used to go for games of badminton with friends and colleagues until less and less people can make it for the badminton session. We stopped booking the badminton court after a couple of months.

Almost everyday I am giving myself excuse not to go to the gym :-

1. My gym buddy is always away on outstation assignment

2. By the time my wife reaches home, it’s usually passed 6.30pm and it’s too late to go to the gym.

3. I’m too exhausted from office work

and the list goes on and on…

But, if you think of it, who in his/her right mind would prefer exercise to longer hour of sleep ? This is very true especially for urbanites like us who stays in the Klang Valley. Some of us drive almost more than 1 hour to get to office and back. The endless traffic jams are giving everyone on the road nightmares. So, in the end of the day, do you still have mood for gym? Who doesn’t want a hot bod like this ? Oh, by the way, this is not my physique (definitely not, LOL !!) 

In the time of our forefathers, lifestyle diseases cholesterol, high blood pressure, cancer – are seldom heard of. People are up in the field all days toiling over the paddy fields, growing fruits/vege to sell and struggling to put food on the table for the family. Who would have so much money to live luxury lifestyle eating high cholesterol food ? Even when lard is part of their daily lives, these fats are usually burnt off while doing hard labour. Hence, you can see leaner adults in earlier days.

Even in China, going back 20 years you will hardly see fat people. Nowadays, single child policy and better live have lead to parents having the opportunity to pamper their child more. You can only have 1 child to shower all your love to. Bring him/her to the fast food joints which are growing by 1 outlet per day in this eastern part of the world. Introduce the kids to more fried food and fast food. Those yummy golden french fries never fail to attract attention of the adults or children.

Back home and nearer to us, many applaud our Goverment’s decision to stop subsidizing sugar. It’s really a shocker that we Malaysian consume about 21 teaspoons of sugar daily. We’re talking about the sugar that is found in our daily beverages and food that we take in. Diabetic is one of the top killer in Malaysia now.

Hence, no matter how busy we are, if we don’t really have time to exercise, at least take some leisure walk daily or take the opportunity to exercise over the weekends. A 45 minutes leisure walk is said to be equivalent to 15 minutes of jogging. You burn the same amount of calories by taking 45 minutes of brisk walk. Even doing chores like washing your car can help burn some excess calories in your body.

Realising my increasingly wider spare tire, I really need to exercise more and get into better shape. Maybe, chasing after my daughter and baby-sitting her is not such a bad idea after all. There’s an opportunity to burn calories there :-)