Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway

With all of the obsession with diet and exercise, I'll probably die from anxiety. It's like a cloud hanging over my head making me wonder about every morsel of food that passes my lips. Everyday it seems there is something new to worry in my food consumption. Now there are trans fats - the new ultimate killer! There used to be just fats and the advice was don't eat too much fat. then you had to worry about satuated fats and now it's trans fats. And of course there is cholesterol. It used to be high or low with low being good. Then there was good cholesterol(hdl) and bad cholesterol(ldl). Good cholesterol needs to be high and bad cholesterol needs to be low. How low? Lower than ever appparently. What was acceptable 2 years ago is too high today. Oh and by the way , bad cholesterol isn't really bad . You still need it, but it has to be in the right proportion to the good cholersterol. Is that all ? NO! How about those carbs? The "scientific community" is just a little bit divided on this subject. One group says "don't eat carbs at all . They make you fat , and lethargic" After all, cave men had little to no carbs and they were very strong. They could kick some modern day man ass any day of the week and they discovered fire. Probably because their brains weren't muddled with too many carbs. The other group says " eat your carbs. at least 40% of your diet should be carbs. Your body needs that quickly accesible energy supply for your brain( in the form of glucose - otherwise known as sugar) and exercise (especially if you are going to run in a marathon). And by the way cave men didn't live very long. Is that all about carbs? NO! Because now there are good and bad carbs. You have to have carbs, but with a low glycemic index, so you don't mess mess up your blood sugar level and become diabetic. Ah, and then there is protein, that builder of muscle. Eat oodles of the stuff. Body builders even consume large amounts of "designer" protein (whatever that is).It is made of amino acids, some of which the body can't produce, so we need to eat the flesh of other animals, many of which taste good. Unless of course you talk to a vegetarian who can tell you how to get your needed proteins without animal meat and thus sparing our adorable animal friends. Like beans, after which I can make the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles seem quiet and dignified. Are we done yet? NO! How about vitamins? Some "experts" say that if you eat a good diet you don't need them. Of course other "experts" say that we never eat a good diet and we need at the very least a multivitamin with 8000% of our our daily minimum requirement. There is much more, but let's talk about the other half of our life enhancing lifestyle - exercise. Should we exercise our bodies? Absolutely! How? How much? I'm glad you asked because we need to get this just right so that in conjunction with our perfect diet we can live healthy acive lives until we check out at the age of 150. Some exercise equipment can of course make you look like hercules in just 20 minutes a day , 3 days a week. Even if you're 97 years old and in bad health. All with only 2386 monthly payments which your estate can pay after you die. Provided of course , you had a lot of life insurance.. Of course "experts" say that 20 minutes a day of raising your heart rate to 80% of maximum is sufficient to be in excellent over all health. I spent 20 minutes opening bills yesterday and raised my heart rate to 800% of maximum , so naturally Iwas able to take the next ten days off. Exercising more is universally said to be more beneficial. So, many people exercise a great deal and in a variety of activities, some of which can be dangerous. And of course the exercise is beneficial to all doctors who perform surgery on various destroyed joints. You know, knee replacements, hip replacements, knee scopes etc. How many couch potatoes do you know that blew out a knee or destroyed some other joint? Seeing these dangers, I decided that to go along with my joint destroying cardio exercise, I would practice yoga rather than use weights or chase younger people up and down a basketball court. When practiced right without attempting to push too hard ( a great weakness of mine) yoga can be refreshing , calming and physically challenging. Sometimes one can get carried away and/or misinterpret a teacher's instructions and get twisted into an unusual position and end up trying to remove one's left testicle from one's right ear without causing too much damage. Or at other times there can be some accidental and loud gas release when in just the right pose. This ,of course, occurs during a pause in the yoga teacher's chosen music when all is deadly quiet and still. When this happens no one laughs, or even looks at you. They are just happy it wasn't them. and hopeful that it won't be odorous. So, you can see that worrying about diet and exercise can make your life a living hell, filled with doubt and confusion as you try to learn and understand the latest and probably innaccurate diet and exercise information. Will all of this help me to live longer? Will it at least help my life be better? Or should I just ignore it all and not worry ? I'm going to think about this over a candy bar. After that I'm going to take a nap.