"Cheap" Petrol

Haha I can't believe it. I am posting today because I am excited about petrol being under $1.50 per litre. "Cheap" by recent standards. So today if I fill up I spend a whopping $4 less (or thereabouts) than last week.

A Saturday in the life of an Aerobics Instructor

It's Saturday morning. This weekend, a lot of other instructors are at the Mini Master Blaster. In laymen's terms, a conference full of workshops and therefore new ideas for us to subject our participants to. I'm not going this year. Just returned from a holiday in Sydney a couple of weeks ago so could do with the extra cash that I'll get this weekend doing a couple of extra classes by filling in for other instructors at the conference.

What a busy morning.

07:30 - Woke up, got ready for the day. Ate lots of breakfast, will be burning a lot of energy today.
08:20 - Hopped in the car, drove to my first class of the day.
09:00 - 60 minute Step & Body Strength class.
10:10 - Quickly hopped in to car, running a little late, rushing to the next class.
10:40 - Arrived barely in time for second class. 60 minute Hilo class.
11:40 - Chatted to a couple of participants after the class.
11:45 - Hopped into car to rush to next class.
12:00 - 60 minute Beginner Aerobics class. Third and final class of the day. Whew.

Calories burned for the three classes combined: 1600+

Life is not usually as hectic as that for me, but it was fun for today. Don't think I could do it every week though, that would drive me nutty.

New "Mum-Friendly" Checkout Lanes?

I popped in to Coles today to pick up some grocery items and noticed a sign in the checkout lane, announcing two Mum-friendly checkout lanes. The lane I was lining up in happened to be one of them.

What's the difference? The contents of those shelves just above the conveyor belt. Typically stocked up with junk food goodies such as chocolate bars on special, lollipops and Kinder Surprise eggs, the two aisles claiming to be Mum-friendly have "healthier snack options" instead.

I must admit I didn't look at the items on offer any more than beyond a glance, but they seemed to be filled instead with things like granola/muesli bars, etc, with not a chocolate in sight. I'll have to have a proper look the next time I'm there.

What an interesting concept. It will be interesting to see if the alternative options really are healthy or not... my first instinct is to think that they might be healthier than chocolate bars, but not necessarily healthy. Most snack bars of any sort tend to be filled with sugars, possibly preservatives, and, well... maybe they could pop some fresh fruit, nuts and less processed items on those last minute shopping shelves instead of a "lesser of two evils".

Eat to Save Your Life

I don't even have a decent excuse for not blogging for so long. Let's just say, Facebook has heaps of neat little applications and I've been hooked on The Hatchery during my free time.

The night before last, Jamie Oliver's "Eat to Save Your Life" aired on Channel Ten at 9:30pm. What an eye-opening show. For example, we all vaguely know that sausages aren't particularly healthy, but Jamie got a butcher on the show, who made typical sausages from scratch. He started by mincing leftover cuts of meat (they were more like fat and sinew lined with a touch of meat) into a bowl, then adding the preservatives (including copious amounts of salt, sugar and unidentifiable emulsifiers) usually added to give that nasty, cheap, tasteless stuff some flavour. UGH. I am NEVER eating a sausage again. I don't usually eat them anyway, but will at times have a bite of James'. Forget that.

True, I could make them myself or pay premium prices for good quality sausages that actually contain meat and natural flavours, but why bother? There's plenty of other stuff out there I'd rather eat.

Other interesting features in this 90 minute show were an interesting look at the cross-section of two people, one of a healthy weight and size and the other an obese size. Yes, literally a cross-section ~ they were two bodies that had been frozen and preserved and then slice taken from head to toe for our viewing and education. The freaky Dr Gunther also performed a dissection of a 25 stone man (that's over 150kg for the non-British out there). The amount of fat stored in his belly area was typical of males that overweight. What I NEVER knew was that the fat was so excessive, his lungs were tiny, only HALF the size of that of a normal man! Shocking. So a large part of the reason that people who are too overweight can't really do any cardiovascular activity without wheezing and half collapsing to death is because they don't even have the lunge size to take in enough oxygen to fuel their bodies.

If you didn't watch the show, it is certainly worth it. In our modern society many of us are eating ourselves to death, with NO IDEA of what we're doing to our bodies! I hope Jamie releases this show on DVD because I'll be buying myself a copy.

Next week, Wed 9:30pm on Channel Ten is another show by Jamie Oliver - "Jamie's Fowl Dinners", this time about the chicken and egg farming industries. I'm not looking forward to watching that one, but whilst I feel I want to avoid the discomfort of learning the truth, avoiding the truth never actually made the truth less true.