I Feel Healthier When I'm Away from My Desk

My company is changing health insurance plans. This happens a lot. It's the third or fourth time that, for various reasons, I've had to research and sign up for a plan in the space of about 2 years. While I find this mildly stressful (will I get sick this year? how do I know?), the company did a good job of making things fun by holding a Benefits Fair today. It got me away from my desk, which is as welcome to me now as it was when I was in second grade and we got to go to the gym for an assembly about fire safety. Any change in the routine is happy.

They had nifty goings-on. First, I went to a seminar about how what you eat affects how you feel. A lot of it was obvious: Sugar is bad, unprocessed foods are good. Kinda knew it, but what was helpful was knowing some of the facts behind it. Like, unprocessed (or "whole") foods work better with your body in the breakdown process, whereas processed foods (e.g. refined sugar) actually force your body to hand over the nutrients it got from other foods, like some kind of digestive mugging. I doubt this will stop me from eating chocolate -- OK, who am I kidding? it won't stop me at all -- but depending on my financial situation, I may be willing to spend a few extra bucks here and there for unprocessed items. Any step in the right direction is a little victory, right? I'm all about the positive motivation, having previously driven myself to the unproductive depths that guilt and obligation lead to.

The next thing I went to was a half-hour session on yoga moves you can do at your desk, and even in your chair. Neato! I feel like I'm still way at the beginning of the process of learning to use my body more and my head less (in my journey to become a well-proportioned human being, and not some kind of bobble-head), so even short classes like this feel like a big deal to me.

Then there was the kicker: Chair massages! How can you pass that up? Way to butter up the workforce!

I also stopped by a table set up by one of the local gyms. They were clever, in that they had a device you could hold that would, when given your height and weight, measure your body-fat percentage. Silly, cocky Holly, thinking that being narrow would give her a good number! I should have realized that I'm not necessarily thin because I'm low on fat, but because I'm also low on bone, muscle, and probably the size of my internal organs. So when you go to percentages, my loose clothing the heeled boots don't give me an advantage. The girl at the table, who may have been trying to be nice, said there was an error margin of 5 percentage points in either direction. The device said I was 25.8% body fat, which I thought was good for a woman until I looked at the chart they had. Apparently it's only "fair," which is isn't so great. Less than "good," in fact. Rats. I don't like bad grades, even when they're for fitness. I should probably start drinking raw eggs and pumping lots and lots of iron or something. Except I won't.

But I do like a nice distraction from work. And when you look at the big picture, isn't avoiding work really what it's all about?