It's a well established fact that exercise and being more careful about what you eat is critical to good health, especially in our phase of life. We also know that in addition to aerobic exercise strength training is important. Nearly as important as the physical aspects of exercise are the brain calisthenics that help keep you on your toes.
I think I've made a great discovery for anyone that ever does grocery shopping. What a workout. Seriously! Think about it...
Step 1: You make your list. Now this requires quite a bit of concentration trying to remember what it was you ran out of the other day that you made a 'mental note' to get more of. Next, predicting what everyone is going to want during the coming week and how many meals you will actually prepare at home versus getting a pizza because you're just too tired to cook.
Step 2: You arrive at the store with list in hand and get your trusty grocery cart. More often than not it's the one that has a mind of it's own, and you spend the next hour or so fighting with it to keep it from running into innocent shoppers, small children and knocking over huge displays of things you only wish you could eat.
Step 3: You stroll up and down the aisles finding all of the items on your list and picking each of them up and placing them in your cart. This provides much walking and also frequent bending, stretching (especially if you are short like I am) and lifting of products of various sizes and weights. This will earn you bonus points if you are shopping for a large family or like shopping in bulk... everything will be bigger!
Step 4: Once all of the items are in the cart, you roll your way to the front of the store and pace back and forth behind the checkout stands looking for the one with the shortest line, hence, more walking. (Of course this never works because the line you've chosen is the one with one of the following: a coupon clipper gone wild, a new cashier in training, or the guy that picked up everything in the store without a price on it.)
Step 5: Finally, it's your turn... you start removing everything from your cart and placing it on the belt trying to strategically balance it so that nothing falls over the little 'dividers' separating your purchases from the people in front of and behind you. More lifting involved here and sometimes it has to be done with great haste so that you can unload your cart and get to the other end for the next step.
Step 6: As the cashier scans your items and fills the bags on the 'merry-go-round' at the end of the lane, you now have to lift the bags full of groceries back into your cart. At this point we must consider the exercise of then digging through your purse to find your debit card and trying to remember the pin number. (Perhaps this is only considered an exercise for those over the age of 50.)
Step 7: Push the stubborn cart full of your spoils to your car. Here again, an exercise for those over 50... trying to remember exactly WHERE it was that you parked your car. Once found, you get to do more lifting. Unloading the bags into the car and returning the cart to it's 'stall' which will probably be located as far from your car as it possibly could be, requiring more walking.
Step 8: You arrive home, let the exercise resume... Unload all of the purchases from the car and haul them into the house. If, with your arms full of bags, stairs, barking dogs determined to trip you or self closing doors are involved you earn bonus points here, for sure!
Step 9: You did it, it's all in the house, but not so fast... no time for relaxing yet. Now you get to put all of your
commodities away. Once again, if stairs are involved, more bonus points. Finding a home for everything sometimes requires cleaning out the fridge or the pantry and/or hauling things down to the basement where everyone keeps their food storage (don't they?).
If you are doing all of the above and have taken children with you on this adventure, that alone earns you at least double the points! If you've done it and you and your children still like each other when you arrive home, you are my hero!
So, in conclusion I am going to count this as a major contribution to my physical and mental fitness program. I feel better already!
