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This week: The Viral Workout Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
-Henry David Thoreau
Health is not valued till sickness comes.
-Thomas Fuller
Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.
-Felix Frankfurter |
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A couple of weeks ago, I caught a cold. I wasn't chasing it or anything, so I suppose it's more accurate to say that it caught me.
Now, as we all know, there's not much more miserable than a summer cold. I can't even say why; it's just one of those things that is true.
I've written at length here about the miseries of being sick. It's definitely not as much fun as being well, or going to the DMV. And I'm usually the kind of person for whom every silver lining has a cloud, but today I'm going to talk about how the cloud of sickness may have a silver lining of health.
See, one of the problems with aging is you tend to get out of shape, and then you have to work harder to get back into shape. But I've found that having a cold actually helps with this sort of thing, and I'm here to share my fitness tips with my loyal readers.
Getting back into shape requires a twofold self-discipline: Eating less (and better) food, and exercising. Having a cold can help with both.
The first step is to get a cold. This is not difficult to do. All you have to do is be in the same room as a child. Children are germ factories, and you're pretty much guaranteed to catch whatever virus the little plague monster is currently harboring. Hopefully, its parents aren't anti-vaxxers (if they are, shun them). If they aren't anti-vaxxers, nine times out of ten the wee bug-carrier will transmit a rhinovirus - the cause of the common cold.
Now that you have a cold, how will this help you get back into shape? Well, again, it's a two-pronged effort: diet and exercise. One of the first symptoms of a cold is a sore throat. With a sore throat, it's hard to swallow. Ergo, the perfect opportunity to start consuming fewer calories. The temptation is there to continue eating as you have been on the theory that your body needs the nutrients to fight the cold. But you don't want to fight the cold; you want it to drag on as long as possible.
As the sore throat subsides, different symptoms kick in: headache, runny nose. These are going to help you, too. Don't take pain relievers for the headache; instead, indulge your body's desire to sleep more. When you're sleeping, you're not eating. Thus, once again, fewer calories.
The runny nose helps, too. With your olfactory receptors deadened, your sense of taste becomes dulled. Eating all that delicious food that's bad for you doesn't do you any good; you can't taste pizza or burgers the way you can when your sinuses aren't all gooped up. So you might as well eat kale and pretend it's pizza.
You'll find yourself sneezing a lot, too. This is good for the other prong of the plan, exercise. Don't try to hold back the sneezes. Let them rip. Get your whole body into it, and work all your muscle groups.
Blowing your nose is direct weight loss. Every ounce of snot that leaves your body is an ounce less that you weigh. This is simple, basic math. Be sure to use the heaviest tissues possible to get a good workout for your shoulders, biceps, and other arm muscles. Also, don't put a trash can next to your bed or your comfy chair; instead, drop the used tissues on the floor. That way, when you go to pick them up, you're working different muscle groups.
Also the truth is that when you have a cold, no matter how much you blow your nose, you're going to swallow a lot of the goo. (Aw. Did I just make you lose your appetite? Good - the plan is already working, and you're not even sick yet.) This is going to take up room in your digestive tract, room that would normally be claimed by high-calorie brownies or pie.
If the cold proceeds as per normal, the next step is coughing. Lots and lots of coughing. Again, any phlegm that leaves your body is direct weight loss; but also, as with sneezing, coughing is a great opportunity to work different muscle groups. Don't use cough suppressants - you really want to work those back, abs and pectoral muscles. If you have a particularly bad cough, you might even find your glutes and quads get a good workout, too.
Now, health professionals generally tell you to drink lots of fluids during a cold. While beer, wine, tequila and vodka are all fluids, they also have calories. Far be it from me to ever advocate drinking less alcohol, but you're in training, here, so I'll make an exception. Also, your sinuses are still clogged, so they won't taste right, anyway, and alcohol tends to make coughing easier, which again, you don't want in order to get maximum workout benefit.
But drinking other fluids, like water: fine, go for it! It means you'll have to get up in the middle of the night a lot to go pee. Which is exercise.
Now, the downside here is that once you have a cold, your body's got an immunity to that particular strain of rhinovirus, so being exposed to the same cold again will do nothing. But you want to keep up your workout plan, so go find a different child and start the process all over again. |
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Last time, in "Signs" , I talked about signs (duh).
A*Monaing*Faith  : I like that cheese one! One of my favorite signs is "Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again." Kinda dark, but I like black comedy. Trader's World in Lebanon, Ohio has signs hanging all over the complex's ceilings, wish I could remember some, they're doozies.
Hey, they put cameras on phones for a reason.
That's it for me for July! See you next month. Until then,
LAUGH ON!!! |
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Comedy: July 27, 2016 Issue [#7768]
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