 Driving
along a city street, I discovered my turn signal aimlessly clicking.
This is it, I realized, I am going through that change in life … the
one that shifts you from the contemptuous tongue-clucker stuck behind
an absent-minded blinker into that blinkedy driver.
No wonder that I’ve been obsessed with health and weight.
It’s probably why I signed onto the Lutheran Lady Diet. Not a diet of
lutefisk and coffee, as one friend speculated, I named it thusly
because the group (all gals) gathered weekly in a Lutheran church.
I won’t bore you with the details of this diet - my
co-workers already have borne that burden for you - but as I reviewed
the plan’s exercise component, I concluded that living Up North is all
the exercise one needs. No, really, I’ve checked the facts (which burns
55 calories per hour). Now, in this issue we have a whole recreational
guide with some great getting-out-there ideas, but do those for fun,
not for exercise. The true calorie burning comes naturally in each
by-the-lake season.
In winter, we shovel snow (250 to 350 calories per
half-hour). Add the calories - gotta be 100 - expended to pull on
boots, wool socks, pants and tossel cap plus bonus calories for running
around yelling, “Has anyone seen where the dog put my mittens?” Then 50
calories for shucking wet clothes after digging out. Plus 100 for
tugging everything back on when you notice that the snowplow went by.
Finally up to 700 calories per half-hour to re-shovel (calories double
because the snow is packed harder and because you are hot under the
collar). That’s, what, 1,300 calories per snowfall, or about 6,500
calories per winter. Heck, in Michigan’s U.P., with an average of
200-plus inches of snow, folks shed pounds at an incredible rate. Or
they would if not for the miraculous weight-saving power of pasties.
By spring, the big calorie burners come in two forms:
bouncing over roads so full of potholes that Grandma can’t keep her
dentures in (150 calories per hour) and bailing flooded basements with
multiple trips up and down the stairs (500 calories per hour). Even
with only a couple of modest floods, figure about 2,000 calories in
spring.
Summer adds great calorie burners like the Lake Superior
water test: wade in (50 calories), run out (100), convince yourself it
wasn’t that cold (500, self-delusion is a fat burner), run back in (50)
and actually swim (120 calories per half hour). Swatting mosquitoes
burns 55 calories per hour without cussing or 155 with cussing. Running
from black flies, 100 calories, unless they are biting and you are,
therefore, cussing, add 100 calories. All told, I’d guess 10,000
calories per summer.
Fall is too nice to worry about calories, so we Up Northers
do less strenuous things like hiking, biking or maybe chopping wood for
winter. Maybe 1,000 calories for the season, tops.
When you add it up at one pound lost for each 3,500
calories, we’re probably shrinking by five pounds a year. Which means
in 10 years, I’ll be too weak to flip on the turn signal anyway. Ah,
problem solved.
Konnie LeMay
Editor
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