Wednesday, March 02, 2005

I Swear This Will All Relate To My Year Of Weddings Somehow

Why does it cost so much to be healthy in this country?

I didn't put quotation marks around the word healthy either. It's not subjective, your doctor can tell you (I know mine does.) You are either healthy or un. Or on your way to one or the other.

Let us examine, shall we?

Gym memberships. In a country where the obesity rate is so high we are calling it an epidemic why does it cost so much to join a gym? I know it's free to run where you want to. But, outside isn't weather controlled, doesn't have a stairmaster or the nifty little shelf to hold your magazine while you jog. Why doesn't my health insurance cover gym memberships? It covers the doctor visits when my doctor tells me to join a gym. It will pay for the prescriptions he writes on paper...why wont my health insurance help me drop 20 pounds by swimming laps? I don't know. Maybe I should give them a call.

Healthy Eating. Have you ordered a salad recently? And I am not talking about one of those salads that takes all the healthy out of vegatables. I am talking about "yeah, hi I'll just have a salad please." For a bowl of lettuce and some sad looking tomatoes you are paying a lot these days. It's cheaper to eat at McDonalds all week than it is to go to Cosi and just get a damn salad. I have no desire to be fat and full of french fries but I don't have $7 a day to spend on wholesome food. Plus, I live in the midwest, America's "heartland" (see, that goes in quotes.) All this farm land as far as the eye can see between me and New York and I am still paying all this money for rabbit food.
And, it's not really that much cheaper to go to the grocery store and buy bags of lettuce. At least, not if you factor in the time it spends hiding in my "crisper," rotting into a smelly bag of green mush. My bags of carrots go soft, cucumbers are doomed from day two and who eats raw broccoli? Apparently not me, or my boyfriend. Let's not even start in on those "healthy" (ooh look more quotes!) food markets....Whole Foods, Trader Joe's...who the hell is Joe anyway and why can't I trade in my box of Girl Scout Cookies for some flash frozen strawberries. Not much of a trader that Joe.
If you start buying your groceries at these stores where they promote organic foods and things grown without the aid of pesticides, free range chickens raised on whole grains and fairy dust, do you know what you are buying? Food that is going to go bad a lot faster than the crap you buy at Pathmark.

Which, odd note, there are no Pathmarks in Chicago. But there also aren't any Jewel Food Stores in New York.

Anyway, it's all the same. It's all food and it's all too expensive. I can buy frozen meals for a dollar each. They will keep me fed. But, they are also pretty much the equivilant of a salt lick. Ew sodium.

So now you are asking, "Jen how does this relate to weddings? You've gone and run off on a tangent haven't you?"

And the answer is NO, I HAVE NOT! So there.

Since my doctor has been telling me for the past 2 years that I should drop some weight. And since I have, hello 8 weddings to look hot for over the next year, I joined a gym and decided to try and start eating healthier.

Now you ask "Oh, that's great. How is it going?"

And I tell you. It isn't. I am still 23 pounds overweight and now I am broke too.

So tell me, where is the justice in all of this? I pay a buttload of money to a international gym chain, which shall remain nameless (cough cough Ballys). I buy salads, I eat salads... I cut down on my beloved bagels and pizza. I even started thinking skinnier in hopes that some cosmic force might take pity on me while I am sleeping. None of it works. I am about a ramen packet away from being back on the "Starving Artist Diet." Which, while it sounds good on paper, isn't really fun at all and mostly just means you are hungry and eating peanut butter sandwiches all of the time.

It probably doesn't help my plight that my boyfriend seems to have a tape worm. Seriously, I don't know where he puts it all. It's either a tape worm or a hollow leg. But, worse than him eating me out of cupboard and fridge is the fact that all he wants to eat are frozen burritos, potato chips and prepackaged andouille sausage! Of course, all of this is pretty cheap because all it is mostly is salt in one form or another.

So, while my veggies are rotting because I am, I admit, a little lazy about preping and cooking sometimes, this guy is chowing down on garbage and maintaining his boyish figure.

On top of all this, I read an online article today claiming that some wacky German scientists have discovered a gene that causes people to dislike cabbage and spinach. AND...AND this same gene often protects people from obesity.
Where can I get this gene and does it come in a size 12?

Sigh, maybe I should make The Boyfriend wear the hot red dress to the weddings and I can wear a suit to hide the love handles. Screw the gym, Trader Joe and the Germans.

2 comments:

Mego said...

It’s true, the road to weight loss is paved with rotten spinach and boyfriends. I’ve had boyfriends whose diet consisted of, collectively: hot wings, dill pickle-flavored Lays, fried white meat dinner from Golden Chicken in Milwaukee, Tombstone supreme pizza, more hot wings, Hungry Man chicken pot pies, beef nachos, Orville Redenbacher butter popcorn (stovetop cooked, thank you), and more fried chicken, obtained from the Shell gas station on the corner of Grand and Ashland. How can you eat room-temp iceberg lettuce and croutons while they are chowing on stuffed-all-over Pizza Hut? And breadsticks? You either fight ‘em or join ‘em. Oh and be prepared to eat it all between the hours of 10 pm and 4 am.

On the other hand there are those couples that discover the joy of cooking in their cozy coupledom world. They buy pasta makers and George Foremans and the Rick Bayless cookbooks and sequester in the kitchen. Then you run into them six months to a year after their first date and they’ve, collectively, put on about 40 pounds. “Hey, wow, you guys. You all look…happy!” I like to call it neck spread. It’s the first place the couples I have known to gain some weight pack on the pounds. Right under the ears.

See, this does relate to weddings.

[This comment was meant in no way to offend, and names have been omitted to protect the innocent. And guilty.]

Vegas said...

Really it's about chosing your calories. You can either eat food or booze it up...sometimes there really just isn't much of a choice in the matter is there?

-Who needs a lemondrop when I've got a whole bottle infront of me?