America the Underactive and Dehydrated

There is too much clutter in my home. It is making me feel ill every day. Well, that and the fact that I am consistently drinking too little water, eating too much sugar, and generally getting no exercise. I need a fairy godmother to wave her wand over my clutter-ridden apartment and a timer watch to beep every thirty minutes to remind me to drink my water, for starters. As for the sweets, I think I wouldn't be craving so much if I would get rid of the clutter and drink my water. And I know it's time to pull out the Walk Away the Pounds videos now that I'm a year post partum and can no longer rely on the research that suggests women should take it easy on their bodies for a year beyond giving birth. It's time to get rid of the blubber, even if I am thin and certainly not overweight. I'm told the stretch marks and linea negra down my belly are here to stay, but I don't have to live with the blubber. But I'm sort of lazy about exercising, so this is a real challenge. Maybe I should suggest to ABC that they create some sort of reality show for new moms working off their baby weight. Why not? Everything else seems to be reality show material. Have you seen the flab on these guys on The Biggest Loser? Why must they remove their shirts for weigh-in anyway? WHY!? The women weigh in with a shirt on, so I think they guys should too, to make it equal. That shirt only makes a few ounces of difference anyway, and they could spare American the show of disgusting excess fat. We all know they are overweight. We get it. We don't need to see it. If we want to be grossed out, we will watch Fear Factor. You know it's even in syndication now!? What does that say about our culture? The reason we are all overweight is we are too busy sitting on our duffs (probably with a nice serving of Ben & Jerry's) watching people eat bugs on Fear Factor (or avoiding it like crazy with our remote controls from our cushy La-Z-boys) or having their teeth whitened and hair colored on some makeover show or letting some guy demolish and recreate their home in a unbelievably short period of time to actually have time to take care of ourselves. Who has time when there's reality television to watch, right? And besides, we've all worked hard all day...we're tired. We've earned an evening on the couch to continue the process of body deterioration, right? It's not our fault our society is generally overweight, battling heart disease, stroke, and cancer more than ever, is it? This is just happening to us! "They" aren't supplying enough drugs to make our bodies tolerant of inactivity and overeating! It's "their" fault! Right? Wrong. We need to take responsibility as a collective society, and that starts with individuals like me. It is MY fault that I am allowing the baby fat to hang on. I could be doing something about it, but I'm not. It is MY fault that I have a half-gallon of Edy's ice cream in my freezer now that there was a great sale at the store. It is MY fault that I couldn't stop at six chocolate chip cookies this weekend and proceeded to cook the rest of the cookie dough squares last night. It is time to get off my duff and walk away the pounds while my one-year-old watches and learns a good habit. I hope she never has to teach herself to take care of her body like I am having to do. I hope it comes naturally for her. Something she never even thinks about because it is so automatic. I hope she doesn't find a Happy Meal to be all that interesting (despite everyone's assessment that that makes me un-American). I hope I can replace my bad habits with healthy ones before she is old enough to remember. And I hope that means she will know a healthy Mama even when she is old and gray...and healthy.