It's just your life.

Hello and welcome to your life.  You get to pick your path (within reason) and fly with it.  I was just speaking with someone this morning who has arthritis, and I suggested the unmentionable: that they reduce or eliminate sugar (as well as taking turmeric/curcumin with black pepper and maybe a little tart cherry juice.  Yeah, for real, try it.).  But that’s the thing, if sugar (crack) makes you happy, and you don’t mind that you can’t walk or exercise, then go with that.  I don’t even mean that in a snarky way, I mean it literally.  You’re the only one who is going to pay the price in your own body for your decisions (although your death will affect your family and friends, so go ahead and be a selfish pig if that’s how you roll.).  You get to live with the chronic pain and debilitation, your spouse can’t feel it, your doctor can’t feel it, and your friends will either feel sorry for you (poor baby) or think you are a bozo for wimping out on their antics (hey Nancy!).  

 

HEY! Is this you?

But do pardon me, because I am inclined to convince you otherwise.  Here I go.

I can see how it seems to be the easier way to eat whatever you want, smoke whatever/whenever/how much ever you want, sleep whenever you want, work out only if you feel like it, but, oh, the price of that life!  

 There was a study that wasdone in Potsdam, Germany, on 23,000 adults over the course of several years.  They asked them four (somewhat) simple questions:

       1.  Do you smoke?

2.  Do you eat well (this sounds really nebulous, but there were specific guidelines that included things such as eating a certain amount of fresh fruits and veggies, eating clean meats, not eating processed foods, etc.)? 
3.  Do you maintain a healthy weight? 
4.  Do you exercise regularly?

People who answered with four healthy responses (no smoking, yes, I eat well, yes, I maintain a healthy weight, and yes, I exercise regularly) cut their all-mortality rate (this includes all the biggies - cancer, cardiovascular disease, the whole 9, etc.) by 80% against those who answered with four unhealthy answers.  Okay.  I know you didn’t hear me because you are not freaking out.  Let me repeat myself.  You can cut your risk of death by EIGHTY percent.  I don’t know if you know this, but 80% is some pretty darn good odds.  If you had an 80% chance of winning a kajillion (a jillion jillions) dollars, I’d say you might take it.  If you wouldn’t, well fine, I will. 

Kinda like this, but multiply the intensity by a kajillion.

If you think about those questions for about two and a half seconds, you realize that 3 out of 4 of them are your own choices, and the fourth follows two others (in general).  This makes me want to reach out of your screen right now, grab onto your shoulders, look you deep into your eyeballs, and tell you (probably in a highly spaztastic voice), “You are a main player here!  You can make decisions to elongate your life, enhance your lifestyle, and improve your quality of life!  You can do this!  Why wouldn’t you?”  And then you’d be all, yeah, I know, it’s cool, I should exercise, but that’s just to shut me up and pacify me because I’m jumping up in down in front of you still holding onto your shoulders.  Well, guess what, homie?  I ain’t letting go because you cannot be hearing me if you want to continue to pursue your death.

Excuse me, is this your dinner?

So what’s your excuse?  You like to eat crap?  Crap tastes so dang good that you wanna go with that in your swan dive off of the cliff to your death?  ERMERGERSH, just stop it.  I promise you that if you start eating well, your tastes will change.  You will crave what’s real.  If you can break up with sugar, you can look at a pile of ice cream and think of it as disgusting.  (It takes a while, but it’s f’rizzo.) 

And while I’m on that soapbox, sugar is worse than crack.  Do you want some inflammation?  Do you want to grow cancer?  Do you want to blow up your strep throat?  Do you want to stay sick longer?  Do you want to have horrible cholesterol numbers?  (Hint, big sugar has money and they love it that you think it’s because of fat.  They’re laughing at you right now.)  Do you want to be addicted?  Get your IV sugar on, baby.  Light up your brain like a crack addict.  

In fact, a study was done on rats that caused them to be addicted to IV crack and sugar and let them make their decisions on what they wanted to get high on, and they picked sugar eight times more (read it again, I said IV crack vs. sugar.  IV CRACK!!  Holy crap!  Eight times more!  That is freakin’ nuts!).  They even picked sugar when they were being electrically shocked.  They were receiving physical punishment and they went for it anyway.  Does that sound like you?  Oh.  Sorry.  Don’t mean to step on your inflamed, sick toes.  Wait, yes I do.  I want you to think about it.

Pick better.  

If you need a hit, may I suggest exercise?  It has its own crackalacka ways (well, I suppose minus those bothersome times of spending days and nights strung out under trailers in abandoned garages in the middle of Detroit).  Once you get into a good groove, you can become addicted to the endorphins that are released as you work out.  Instead of all of the negatives that come along with the horrors of sugar, you can trade that in for a healthier heart, a happy body, better sleep at night, an ability to maintain a healthy weight, and an increased libido amongst feeling generally awesome (I haven’t even mentioned how you will actually be awesome, too).  

May I recommend swimming, running, and biking?  Perhaps a little weight lifting?  Perhaps a few (hundred) pushups (doing them on glass shards to increase your toughness is completely optional)?  If you can’t feel the motivation, sign yourself up for a race.  Perhaps the sheer horror you would feel at being last would inspire you to dig deep and get your exercise on.  Please tell me that you have some inkling toward competition.  Please.  If you don’t, well, take your sad sack self and do your pushups anyway.

It is not rocket science.  If I told you I had a magic pill to make you live longer, better, and with a clearer brain and vigor, I guarantee you little druggies would be eating it up like crack candy.  Well hello, it is available to you!  You have to change (shriek!), but it’s really worth it.  Well, if you’re into living longer and better, I guess.  (Maybe that’s not your thing.)

Oh, just do it already!  (I’m still hanging on to your shoulders.  Can you hear me yet?)

Peace, love, and live, dang it, LIIIIVE!
Ms. Daisy