I was a fat kid.
Often, I could be found curled up on the couch after school, a bag of potato chips in my lap and The Brady Bunch on TV. The only exercise I got between 3 p.m. and bedtime was the dozen times I walked between the couch and the television set to change the channel.
(Yes, kids, there was a prehistoric era when televisions had dials you actually had to touch and turn.)
Therefore you can imagine my crippling anxiety every spring when teachers administered the grueling Canada Fitness Test. It was the bane of every unfit kid's existence. There was the humiliating flexed arm hang, the agonizing push-ups, the graceless standing long jump and the confidence-crushing endurance run, among other assaults on the tender psyches of pudgy young pupils.
I underwhelmed my teachers on almost every challenge, and was routinely awarded the patronizing plastic ParticipAction pin. Kids who actually passed or excelled at the test won Bronze, Silver, Gold and the highest honour - the coveted Award of Excellence. Oh how I envied the kids who got Gold, Silver and even Bronze.
Despite my generally pathetic performance on the test overall, during the fourth or fifth year of taking this cruel evaluation, I somehow aced the endurance run. It was just a matter of running around a quarter-mile track and for reasons unknown, I could do this easily and with half-decent speed.
Potato chips just may have been the original energy bars.
Years later, I remembered this strange phenomenon and, on a whim, bought some running shoes and just started running. Two years later, I was 30 pounds lighter and ran my first marathon. More marathons and half-marathons followed and the weight stayed off.
Running isn't the kindest sport on the back, knees and joints, so I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to do it well into my 50s and 60s. If there comes a point when my doctor tells me to stop, any doubts I harboured about replacing it with something else were obliterated this month with the release of the Heart and Stroke Foundation's latest report on the health of Canadians.
The foundation warned that if nothing changes, the average Baby Boomer will spend the last 10 years of life in sickness, disability and immobility. This gap between how long we live and how long we live in health is caused largely by poor lifestyle choices, such as not getting enough physical activity, undesirable eating habits, stress, smoking and excessive drinking.
I'm not a Baby Boomer; I'm a lazy Gen-Xer. But the report is still alarming to me, especially when just two weeks before it was released, auditor-general John Doyle stunned British Columbians with the news that the province spends less than five per cent of its annual $15.5 billion health-care budget on population wellness and disease prevention.
That figure is completely incongruent with the B.C. Liberal government's healthy living mantra over the past five years. (You have to love this gutsy AG - if the Liberals were a bunch of fat kids, he'd be their Canada Fitness Test.)
So this means we're on our own. If we don't want to live in pain, as the Heart and Stroke Foundation suggests many will, we have to take the initiative to become educated, aware and active.
We only get one body and one mind, and they don't come with warranties.
Want more of my wisdom? Visit my blog at http: //riverwonders. wordpress.com/.
