Opinion

Anita Robinson: Staying healthy a challenge when you enjoy chocolate, wine and lying on the sofa...

It’s the ‘in-betweens’ that do the damage
It’s the ‘in-betweens’ that do the damage It’s the ‘in-betweens’ that do the damage

I confess to an unhealthy preoccupation with health matters, fed by an equally unhealthy obsession with reading articles conveying dire warnings about how nearly everything I do and enjoy, or don’t do because I don’t enjoy it, is going to shorten my life.

It’s commonly accepted that a healthy diet, regular exercise and enough sleep are the key to longevity.

Unfortunately, many of us neglect to maintain the optimum balance in one or other – or, in my case, all three.

As far as diet is concerned we’re bedevilled these days by faddism. I’m fond of my grub. I eat healthily – just too much and too often.

While consuming my virtuous lunchtime salad, I’m thinking of what calorie-rich option to have for dinner. It’s the ‘in-betweens’ that do the damage; the four o’clock energy slump when you fancy a cuppa and a little sweet something and the frequent attacks of late-night munchies when I’m scavenging the kitchen cupboards seeking what I might devour.

Cheese on toast at two in the morning does nothing for anybody’s digestion or dimensions, nor the slightly too generous daily portions you force yourself to finish because you were reared on the principle that ‘wilful waste makes woeful want’.

I read an article lately on ‘intermittent fasting’. It recommends cutting out food entirely on alternate days, thus conditioning ourselves to approach food healthily hungry. It’s one method of halving the domestic budget I suppose.

Exercise is anathema to me. I spent 35 years on my feet teaching very small children in very high heels (me, not the children). Now my chief recreational pursuits are sitting down and lying down. We’re recommended to take ten thousand steps a day, which seems to me a trifle ambitious, but put me down in a shopping mall and I’ll double it, no bother.

Meanwhile, my friends in a walking group are battling their way along a wind-whipped riverbank in the rain, their faces blue with cold. I watch them from the coffee-shop window with a cappuccino and a chocolate muffin. Later, some of them will go to yoga to lie on a thin mat on a hard floor staring at someone else’s calloused toes.

They say yoga relieves stress and anxiety. I find that a large glass of red wine imbibed on a comfortable sofa is just as efficacious and am heartened by reports that red wine boosts the immune system and protects against weight gain and high cholesterol. Alas, the postscript states, “one glass every two weeks is sufficient”.

Lately I’ve noticed a change in tone from Nanny State. Instead of scolding us for not achieving unrealistic exercise goals, she’s adopted a more benevolent approach. “Doing light household chores, such as five minutes vacuuming, washing dishes or dusting provide enough exercise to cut the risk of early death.''

Some flaws in this philosophy surely? You wouldn’t cover much ground in five minutes with a Hoover unless you’ve somebody to shift the furniture. Does lifting the ornaments and blowing under them count as dusting? No mention I notice, of the marathon physical feat of wrestling a kingsize duvet into its fresh cover, which is enough to trigger a stroke.

Sleep, we’re told is important to repair bodily tissue. The optimum amount was thought to be eight hours, but has been revised, depending on age and metabolism. Politicians are reputed to get by on little sleep, which accounts for the state of the country. Adolescents veer between being online all night and sleeping all day.

One of the hazards of ageing is falling asleep at inappropriate times. My naps are inadvertent. I settle down to watch a much-anticipated television programme and within minutes I’m out like a light. I haven’t seen the end of anything, however gripping, for years. Can anybody tell me what happened in the last episode of ‘Poldark’?

It’s 2:26am. I can’t think of how to finish this column. Ah! There’s a nubbin of Cheddar in the fridge. Cheese ‘n’ chutney on toast. That should ignite the little grey cells…..