NEAT

THAT'S NEAT!

As many of you know, Michelle has recently begun to fully indulge in her love of magazines. She currently has four subscriptions (Cooking Light, Health, Natural Health and Prevention) and we regularly visit the Half-Priced Books in Lexington so that she can buy even more periodicals at fifty cents a pop. Evidence of this new love affair is the ever-growing pile of inserts (magazine guts) under the coffee table in the living room.

Many of you also know that Michelle's new FAVORITE game is called "Hey honey guess what I just read about_____________ (insert topic here: topics range from the importance of fiber to truth about chronic gas)." Example: David! Be sure to dry your hands after washing them in a public restroom. Damp hands spread one thousand times more germs than dry ones and some viruses live for 8 HOURS on doorknobs! Sometimes I wonder how we are able to leave the house at all after learning all that we have from "Family Circle"... While some of the information is reported and then forgotten, some concepts have sorta taken hold of us.

We are certainly trying to eat more fiber and whole grains. We try and drink more tea throughout the day. We've replaced large amounts of crappy ingredients like fat-free Parmesan cheese with smaller amounts of the legit version. We are trying to get 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night as studies strongly support the link between obesity and lack of proper sleep. And we consume ridiculous amounts of cruciferous vegetables. But perhaps the bit of information that we have most adopted in our lives thus far has been our recent obsession with the idea of NEAT: Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.

NEAT activities are basically everything that you do during the day that isn't sitting, eating or exercising. When you wash dishing, go up and down the stairs, or shovel the snow, you are doing NEAT. This has lead to our new love of house chores and our total obsession with parking as far away from our destination as possible.

We will enter a parking lot and begin the horrible ritual of slowly winding through the lanes. But then we will look at each other and exclaim: Let's be NEAT! We then speed away from the competitive search and slide easily into an empty section of the lot. We open our doors full and wide as we exit all alone, breathing traffic-free air.

We have also started bickering over who gets to shovel the snow. That's right...Michelle, the girl with the greatest propensity for being cold, actually fights for the chance to put on her hat and gloves and shovel the drive way!

While I am in no way an authority on healthy living, we think that this new obsession will be very good for us. Studies show (and this totally comes from a magazine btw) that America is not obese because it doesn't exercise but rather because Americans sit on their asses during the other 23 1/2 hours of their day. All I can say is that I have a new love for sweeping and doing the dishes, taking the trash out and standing behind the couch while watching TV.

Michelle and David being very NEAT in the Macy's parking lot on Sunday