K and I decided to give up television a couple of months back and now our household is television free.Yay!. Basically, we concluded that television was very bad for us. Here are a couple of reasons why.

1.Crazy cable fees
Doing away with cable television saves us $80 a month. Imagine what you could do with an extra $960 or so a year? Perhaps vacation, savings for a rainy day, credit card bill etc.

2.Recking havoc on our health
Having a love affair with your television means leading a very sedentary life, plopped on that evil couch, eyes and mind glued to the tube. So not only is the mind being filled with junk but because it is pre-occupied with the junk, we end up not paying attention to what we are putting in our mouths. Essentially, not only are we getting obese from no exercise but a poor diet resulting from not paying attention to what we are eating. This not only accentuates our waist size but our health care costs as well and I can attest to this!

3.Unneccessary spending
Since I ended my television addiction, I have noticed a substantial decline in my need to buy stuff. I can attribute my need to buy things that I don’t really need to all those commercials constantly flowing out of the tube in search of victims like “little ol’ addicted moi”. Commercials are there to sell you stuff and trust me, I don’t really know how they do it – psychologically perhaps – but it works!

4.No time for anything else
Having the tube on all the time means no time for other more important things that you could better spend your time doing. E.g household chores, preparing a healthy meal, reading etc

5.No quality time for loved ones
It is impossible to have any meaningful interaction between loved ones when the television is running. Quality time is essential to good relationships. So turn off the tube, play a game of cards or talk with your loved ones.

I am pretty sure there is more but these were enough for us to call it quits!

The tube first made its debut in my household at my tender age of nine, and I have been hooked ever since. Well up until 4 months ago when I declared a need for my time to be spend more wisely. It hit me one fall day, like a brick falling from the sky that I spend an average of 5 hours daily glued to the television. On the weekends I would spend anywhere from 6 to 8 hours on each of the weekend days. If I choose to be conservative about my calculation that is approximately 40 hours a week.
Yikes that is an incredible amount of time to spend on something that is bad for you! So…the tube had to go!

My initial strategy was that I would continue to get cable but only watch a few shows as opposed to all the mindless surfing and watching whatever was on. So with my cable still available to me when I needed, I would get home from work and not watch television but instead do household chores, play tennis, read etc.

This lasted all of one week! By the following weekend, I was craving my much needed daily dose of mindless television. Since my cable was still hooked up, there was nothing in my way I went ahead and fed my starving addiction.

Two days later with my gluttonous addiction well fed, the thought of using my time wisely popped into my head once again. With the first strategy tested and failed, I had to come up with something that had a better potential for success. Hence the idea to have my cable disconnected. With no cable, even if I wanted to watch television so bad, I had no way of doing it. There was only one hurdle with this strategy, get my hubby (K) on board. Fortunately convincing K did not require too much effort as he is not much of a tube fan. Yeah! So in a couple of weeks the cable was disconnected and that brought an end, cold turkey, to television watching.
So what to do with all the extra time?

1. Reading - I have always enjoyed reading and now I have all the time I need to read to enhance my vocabulary as well as my imagination.
2. Knitting – this is an art that my mother and I used to enjoy together, now I do it to remember the good old days, my mother and knit gifts for friends and family (very personal, cheap and the receiver will think you are so thoughful)
3. Radio – when am knitting I like to listen to the radio. My favorite radio station is National Public Radio (NPR) .
4. Games – occasionally I will spend quality time with K playing board games and one of the favorites is Carcassonne
5. Eating Right – With the television on, I ate a lot of crap! I attribute this to the fact that I was mindlessly eating because I was so engrossed in television I was not aware of what I was putting in my mouth. Now, K and I sit at the dinning room table, talk about how our day was as we savor a healthy dish together.
6. Exercise – I have embarked on a running program, Couch-to-5k not only to lose some weight but to maintain a healthy state of mind. I always found an excuse not to exercise and that excuse revolved around watching television. Not any more.
7. Writing – writing, just like running, is my way of channeling built up tension from my days allowing me to relax.

Every person is different, so what has worked for me might not necessarily work for you BUT if you limit how much television you watch and use that time to work on things that improve your life you will surely not go wrong. Give it a try!

Five and half years later, thanks to marital bliss, too much eating out and a gradual omission of exercise, I am a whopping 60lbs heavier! Over the last year or so I have been dreaming of getting back into my original size. Well maybe not quite that but close to it since I am now smack in the middle of those dreaded down the hill years. Nevertheless this means a need to re-acquaint myself with not only good-for-me foods but exercise. I don’t even need to say it but anyone who knows me knows that like most I hate exercise! Unfortunately to get results I want I have to undertake a combination of exercise and healthy eating. So what exercise program to undertake?
I want one that does not require me to perform on a daily basis, one that requires only the minimum of gadgetry and one that will not take hours to perform. This led me to the couch-to-5k running program. Notice that the program is called a ‘running’ program. Here is the thing – I do not run, have never run and Yes I come from a country of runners that do not include yours truly. Just ask my PE teacher in primary school – he would chase after my walking self on the running field with a whipping stick and even after a couple of lashes I would continue with my leisurely stroll like nothing was amiss! Needless to say, he inevitably gave up!
So after a lot of pondering, it came down to what is considered as ‘running’?

run•ning, noun, adjective
–verb (used without object)
1. to go quickly by moving the legs more rapidly than at a walk and in such a manner that for an instant in each step all or both feet are off the ground.
2. to move with haste; act quickly: Run upstairs and get the iodine.

Therefore, based on the definition, I only need to move ‘more rapidly than at a walk’. Yay! Alas, it is do-able. As long as I do not need to break into a 100 meter sprint then I can do this. You hear – I can bloody well do this!
I already have a pair of Nike running shoes that I bought a while back but the sensor in them is long dead so will need to replace that in the next couple of weeks so that I can log my progress on Nike.
I also have a very dusty treadmill to use now that good ol’ winter is upon us and for a newbie runner, running out in the cold, sometimes slippery, sometimes wet outside is a sure way to put the brakes on this new found program.
So for the last 2 weeks I have embarked on my 3 times a week couch-to-5k running program. The first week was very easy. It required a walking warm up of 5 minutes followed by eight intervals of 60 seconds run and 90 seconds walk, finished with a 5 minute cool down. It was a breeze and a huge boost to this non-runners ego. Week Two, started off very hard mostly because the first day of the week I did eight sets instead of the suggested six sets – too enthusiastic! The last two days of the week proved much easier to handle. The week called for 5 minutes warm up, six intervals of 90 seconds run and 2 minutes walk, finished with a 5 minutes cool down.
Looking forward to week three - bring it on!