smacky and bucky

Our office held a health fair in our conference room yesterday, and I had my cholesterol level tested for the first time in my life. I wasn't looking forward to the results, since in the last five or six years I've gone from a very active life to a pretty sedentary life working at a desk all day. I suppose the irony is that the jobs that put you in the best physical shape are also some of the lowest paying and soul sucking.

Anyway, my bad cholesterol was borderline high (by 20 points) and the good cholesterol was borderline low (by 12 points). Not the worst in the world, and based on my diet and level of inactivity the past few years, I had feared it would be a bit worse.

So there are three things one can do: Not smoking (Check. Six months now), healthy diet (Okay, yes, I could certainly do better. More vegetables and less french fries), and exercise (Yuck. I don't mind physical exertion when I'm accomplishing something, like cutting and hauling brush, or splitting firewood, but I hate gyms).

So, in the spirit of getting healthier, I stopped at the Apple store and picked up something I'd been considering getting since they first came out last November: The iPod Shuffle.

Specs: half a cubic inch in volume, weighs just half an ounce and features a minimal aluminum design with a built-in clip.

I figured this would be great to wear while exercising. I love my video iPod, but it isn't really designed to be worn while doing anything more strenuous than strolling. This one clips on the shirt and you're all set. When you plug it into iTunes, you can choose "AutoFill" and it will randomly choose 240 songs. Or you can create a huge playlist and designate that it should grab it, or you can just pile songs into it.

I've been pretty fortunate in my life in regards to health issues. I only really exercised if I was playing sports, or at one of the "eight hours of manual labor" jobs I had in the past. My weight has remained somewhat constant since college, without having to watch what I eat too closely. But it's not going to stay that way forever, so I guess it is about time to start doing something positive, rather than waiting another decade and having a doctor order me off my ass. And it will be easier if I start now and try to slightly improve, instead of letting myself go and having to dig myself out of a poor health hole.

I still think exercising for the sake of exercising sucks, but since we don't live in pioneer times anymore, there's not a lot of opportunity to be active in our society. I have to offset 40 hours a week at a desk somehow.