Health Philosophies, Bag Lady Style

The Bag Lady just read an online news article about a poll that reveals Canadians are deluded about how healthy we are. The article itself made the Bag Lady a little sad (she knows full well that she is overweight and not exactly healthy) but the comment section distressed her even more! So many of the commenters were busy making excuses, or comparing us to Europeans or Americans, or were complaining that the article was outdated/incorrect/something else; they seemingly ignored the whole point. We in the Western World (generalizing, of course) are unhealthy, and most of it can be blamed on over-consumption and inactivity.
The Bag Lady, naturally, has her own opinions on the reasons for the obesity epidemic, and has a myriad of solutions. Wanna hear them? Of course you do!

1. Stop making excuses.
2. Get off your ass.
3. Stop eating fast food, or those frozen things from the supermarket that contain not one ounce of real food, but are "only 275 calories!" Stop with the artificial stuff. Soda pop, artificial flavouring, sugar substitutes (reduce your sugar consumption, by all means, but if you have to sweeten something, use real stuff - not chemicals. You get enough of those in the "fresh" produce and other products you buy!) And reduce your sodium intake while you're at it.
4. Get off your ass.
5. Eat simple, nutritious food, prepared with your own loving hands in your own kitchen. (and NO, it's not more expensive than a burger at McD's - and doesn't take any longer than it does sitting in the drive-thru, choking on the exhaust fumes of the 4 gazillion other people who had the same idea at the same time!)
6. Include a variety of things - fresh veggies, lean meat, whole grains. It doesn't have to be fancy to taste good and be nutritious.
7. Get off your ass. And get your children off theirs, too.
8. Try growing a garden. Even if you live in an apartment, you can grow simple veggies in a pot in front of a sunny window, or on your balcony. There are even urban gardens where you can rent a plot. At the very least, check out the farmer's markets.
9. Yeah, the Bag Lady lives in the frozen north, too - that's not an excuse.
10. Get off your ass.

Now, the Bag Lady also feels that people need to slow down a little, get more connected to the earth and take the time to educate themselves on where their food is actually coming from. She feels great pity for people who live in highly congested cities (which are jungles of concrete with no greenery and all traces of nature erased - in her imagination, of course, since she has never actually been in a really, really large city like New York, or Chicago, or any of those huge American cities..... although she has been in London, England, which qualifies as a really, really large city, doesn't it? But there was greenery there, so she is mostly talking typing just to hear see it herself and is probably pissing off a whole bunch of people who live in those big cities....) and don't get to connect with nature. (if you take out all the digressing in the parentheses, that sentence actually does make sense.)

Move more. You don't have to join a gym, or buy fancy equipment. Seriously, get off your ass, climb up on a stool and clean those damned light fixtures (err, yeah, the Bag Lady is talking to herself, what of it?) or on your hands and knees and scrub the floor. Take a walk, jog around the living room, do some stretching. Get moving. The more you move, the more you'll be able to move and the more you will want to move. The first step is often the hardest - after that, it gets easier. Sorta.

(This post has been brought to you by the Bag Lady's conscience and her unverbalized resolution to be healthier this year. Regular irregular posting will resume..... eventually.)