Physical Activity

As readers know, I am decorating. So far, I spent two days cleaning all the gunky stuff (disgusting, filthy, stinking tobacco residue) off the ceiling and walls. Not a difficult task, but wearisome and boring. It did involve quite a lot of physical endeavour – on and off a stool and scrubbing with a squeegee mop. Today, I went and bought the paint, and made a start on the painting. Again, on and off the stool. Needless to say, the ancient legs are aching a bit tonight.

But the circumstances of life ‘chez nous’ demand that I be pretty active physically. Not in a ‘hard labour’ sense, but in a fairly constant ‘needs must’ sense. No need to go into detail.

Anyway, Chris Snowden has been disputing statements from people that exercise is useless for losing weight. Read this:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/spectator-surgery/2015/04/ignore-the-quackery-and-get-active/

Basically, what Chris has been saying is that, over the past decades, fewer and fewer people have had to work physically to earn a living, and that fewer and fewer people, on a population-wide basis, are using physical activities for their entertainment. Therefore, they need less ‘calories’ (aka food). He says that it is stupid to make general statements that exercise is not a factor in the growth of obesity when more and more people need not be physically active in their jobs.

In a way, I can see both points of view. Personally, I have thought for a long time that the value of physical activity lies in ‘toning’ the body. I mean, just busying about, washing up, hoovering, mowing the lawns, digging in the garden, washing the car, walking to the shop and the pub, etc, keep the heart busy and the muscles busy and the general bodily metabolism ticking over nicely.

A long time ago, I took advantage of a special offer from a local gym – three months membership cheap. I only went once. At the time, for some reason or other, I had fallen for the ‘need to be fit’ mantra. I was fit – for heaven’s sake! I was spending four or more hours, at least four times a week, walking around the golf course without sitting down throughout the four hours!

I only went once. I was appalled. There was a guy lifting weights. He was lying on his back on a bench using all his strength to push this bar with weights on the end up and down. His face was red as a beetroot. It was awful to behold. A woman was on a treadmill, running as fast as she could. Bang, bang, bang, went her feet. It was horrible. I can’t really remember what I did – perhaps I sat on a pretend bike and peddled. They had a sauna, so I went in there. That too was utterly boring. Frankly, I was glad to escape. So I peddled back home on my bike, and put the bike away, never to be used again.

So I see a ‘disconnect’ between Chris’s argument and Malhotra’s. It is almost as if they are talking about two different things:

Chris:

50 years ago, many more people had jobs which required hard, physical work. They needed the calories and ate accordingly. Today, fewer people have such jobs, but many of those people still eat as much food, and so those people get fat.

Malhotra:

It isn’t the lack of exercise these days or indeed the amount of food. It is the amount of sugar in the diets. ‘Big Sugar’ is responsible for people getting fat.

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I have in mind a scene which I witnessed some years ago in Mallorca. Magalluf has a sports complex – the ‘polideportivo’ (multi-sports). I was heading there because there was a big chess competition going on there. As I neared the complex, there appeared this enormously fat chap. I mean, HUGE – not tall, but extremely rotund. Had he been to the sports complex to try to lose weight? I do not know. So we ask ourselves – can an obese person tolerate the amount of effort required to use exercise alone to lose weight? Or would such effort put intolerable strain upon their hearts? Would they become exhausted before any effect was observed?

It seems to me that such an obese person has no realistic alternative but to starve himself. I mean, to eat as little as possible while keeping to a balance in the diet, and taking some gentle exercise by keeping busy. Such exercise might the simple expedient of hoovering more often than is strictly necessary, washing the car more often than normal, etc. It is very easy to keep busy if you have a home to look after and it need not cost a penny.

Where Chris and Malhotra diverge significantly is in the remedies. Chris says that individuals must take responsibility for themselves and cut their calorie intake (and, I suppose, that parents must control their children’s calorie intake). Malhotra wants Big Government to bash Big Sugar.

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What is likely to happen? The tobacco template is much in evidence. Expect Big Government to enjoy exercising its power over Big Sugar, since, in the UK, Big Government seems to have little to do other than bash whatever target academics point at.

So we can agree.

Academics have become the REAL government in this country. It does not matter who wins the election. The political party which has the majority, or whatever coalition, is no more than the PROVISIONAL government. That is obvious from the hurried production of the plain packaging regulations. No REAL government, composed of politicians, would have enacted such regulations so close to an election.

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I suppose that we smokers need to be patient. For example, the e-cig situation seems to be causing an implosion within the ranks of the Zealots. No matter how much Frieden and Glantz try to hide it, the fact is that their ‘studies’, in this case, cannot overrule real life experience. The ‘studies’ are theoretical mumbo-jumbo. Certain academics have tried to claim that their studies are ‘the truth’ and real life experiences are just ‘allegories’.  The opposite is true. The studies are the allegories and the real life experiences are the truth. The difference is that it is much easier to ‘count’ events in studies than it is in real life, which is why academics prefer and extol studies.

So vapers should be of good cheer. There is NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER that they hold the high moral ground. Attempts by the Zealots to change the target from smoking to nicotine will not work provided that vapers simple shout and shout and shout,  “I HAVE STOPPED SMOKING TOBACCO”.

Further, there is real justification beyond doubt in defying any edict or law which might deprive vapers of their pleasure. That is important to understand.