Be lazy and live long
By Mary SchneiderTOO much exercise will put you on the fast track to an early death – long live the lazy! Abandon those recently-made resolutions to workout regularly, because scientists are now saying that too much vigorous activity is bad for us.
According to two German doctors, everybody has a limited amount of “life energy”, and high-energy activities will deplete this vital resource, leading to a shortened lifespan. They also claim that laziness is important for a healthy immune system.
Furthermore, it seems that laughter is now healthier than running – two mutually exclusive activities. When was the last time you heard someone laughing while they ran? I watched the Olympic Games last year and the athletes were hard pushed to smile, unless they were receiving a medal, of course.
It seems that a good chuckle results in the production of a hormone that will make you feel happy and relaxed, while exercise and stress can cause your body to produce a hormone that can damage brain cells, leading to memory loss and permanent senility.
Now, if that doesn’t have you heading for the couch and your favourite comedy show, I don’t know what will.
I wish I’d known this two decades ago – I could have saved a gazillion brain cells. During the 80s, when I had an IQ of about 100, I would don a leotard most mornings and workout to an exercise video. I hated the masochistic smile of Jane Fonda as she urged me to “go for the burn”. On some mornings, I would have gladly strangled her with my spandex tights.
But I persevered, because the experts said we needed regular exercise to lead long, healthy lives. We were told to elevate our heart rates for extended periods or we wouldn’t reap the full benefits of the workout. So I would dutifully go for the burn, a vision of sweaty, ignorant unloveliness.
My devotion to the body healthy and beautiful knew no bounds. Had Jane Fonda told me to suspend myself upside down from a spinning ceiling fan with a pencil sticking out of my left nostril, I might have given it a try.
I think that Fonda and her fitness cronies must now have the collective IQ of a baked potato, but it’s possible they had more brain cells than the rest of us to start with.
In the late 90s, long after I had abandoned aerobics in favour of less-mentally-diminishing hikes up and down Penang Hill, my knees began protesting loudly about all the undue stress. Approximate IQ at this time: 87. It was time to look for an alternative fitness routine.
That’s when I was persuaded to join a gym: a be-mirrored palace for the narcissistic that had everything you could possibly need for a total body workout. As an added bonus, qualified instructors were on hand to teach beginners the location of the start/stop button on the various apparatus.
There were, however, a few problems: sometimes I couldn’t be bothered to dress up in the appropriate gear and make the 10-minute drive to the hotel where my fitness haven was located. It often seemed ridiculously insane to have to wash my hair just to make myself presentable for a workout – my unkempt appearance would probably have had the five-star, lycra-clad guests squirming in their neon cross-trainers.
I was obviously in need of an alternative workout regime for those days when I was, paradoxically, too lazy for the rigors of my coiffure routine, yet still in the mood to exercise the old body.
So I bought myself an exercise machine – a contraption that needed some “easy” assembly before I could start toning the major muscle groups.
Let me define “easy”: an instruction booklet written in a script bearing an uncanny resemblance to hieroglyphics, and twenty bolts and only nineteen nuts – you have to be optimistic and hope they chucked in an extra bolt for good measure. On top of that, the machine’s owner was, at that stage, a woman who had major problems trying to figure out the intricacies of Lego for Beginners. IQ at this time: approximately 75.
Four hours after unpacking my machine, my mission was finally accomplished. But after undergoing what can only be described as a crash-course in mechanics, I was too tired to try it out.
A year later, when my IQ must have been in the low 60s, I gave the contraption to a friend, who turned it into an enormous clothes hanger after only a few bronco-like movements on the thing.
Recently, I picked up a membership form for another gym. After touring the facility, I told the manager I would be back in a few days to sign up, but I never made it. All those “Just do it!” advertisements weren’t really doing it for me at all.
Besides, if being lazy is the key to a long life, there’s no reason for me to do too much of anything. In fact, it’s time to burn the spandex, tear up the gym membership, watch a comedy show and catch up on my sleep.
Can you imagine how clever all of that will make me?
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