Don’t worry. You are not a bad person. You are just human. We can all find reasons why we don’t want to go. The most common excuse is lack of time. Another popular one is that you are too out of shape. Really, that’s true. A study by the American Council on Exercise found 19 percent of people said they were too out of shape to work out. But isn’t that precisely why you should go, so you are not out of shape!

Whatever the reason, if you have run out of good excuses, here are some others you can try when people say “I thought you were going to work out today!”.

I don’t work out because all the exercise programs say that when you start you should wear “loose-fitting clothes” and I don’t have any loose-fitting clothes!

I’ve already had a complete workout at the office because I spent the day jumping to conclusions, pulling out all the stops, bending over backwards, passing the buck, pushing my luck, dragging my heels and climbing the walls. That’s enough exercise for one day.

I checked with my doctor and he told me my heart couldn’t stand the shock of seeing how much exercise equipment or gym membership cost.

My allergies are bothering me. I’m allergic to exercise.

I read a study that said we are all born with a pre-determined number of breaths. Once we use those up we die. So I can’t exercise because it will only make me breathe faster and shorten my life.

Or the flipside of that one. It’s a proven scientific fact that for every mile you run you add one minute to your life. This means that if you keep exercising until you are 85 years old you will get to spend an extra 5 months in a nursing home at $4,500 a month. I can’t afford that.

I’m already in shape. I think round is a great shape.

Exercising is dangerous. My grandmother started a new exercise program where she walks five miles a day. That was two weeks ago. Now we have no idea where the heck she is so I have to go look for her.

I prefer to exercise early in the morning before my brain and my body figure out what’s going on.

I think if God meant me to touch my toes he would have put them further up my body.

I started exercising because I wanted to take up cross-country skiing. Then I realize the US is way too big, there’s no way I’ll ever ski across it, so I stopped.

Last time I exercised it made me spill the ice cubes right out of my glass.

So there are plenty of excuses why you can’t or won’t exercise. But there is only one good reason. Because it’s good for you. Ultimately you have to decide which is the most important.

Dave Barry

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was done by researchers at the Western Australia Institute for Medical Research.

The researchers took a group of 170 people aged 50 years and older. Half were put in a group that engaged in 150 minutes of activity every week. That’s just two and a half hours spread out over seven days. The activities could be anything from walking to ballroom dancing or swimming. The other half did nothing.

Both groups were given regular tests of their memory and cognition. Those who were more active consistently outscored those who did nothing. In fact, that latter slacker group saw their cognition scores decline over an 18 month period.

So if you want to stay sharp, stay active

Juices May Limit Drug Absorption
A lot of people like to wash down their medications with a glass of fruit juice. It makes it altogether more pleasant. But a new study says it may also make it less effective.

The study, from the University of Western Ontario in Canada, found that grapefruit, orange and apple juices may limit the body’s ability to absorb certain medications. That means those drugs are less effective and you get less benefit than expected.

For instance, they found that volunteers who took the anti-histamine fexofenadine with fruit juice absorbed only half the drug, compared with those who took the drug with water.

The researchers say they also found evidence that fruit juice limits the effectiveness of drugs to treat high blood pressure, some antibiotics, even some drugs used to treat cancer or prevent transplant patients from rejecting their new organs.

So, if you take medicine every day, take it with a glass of water.

Spice Up That Joint
If you are a fan of spicy foods here’s some news that will whet your appetite. Marinating meat in some spice blends can help reduce the formation of certain anti-cancer compounds in the meat when it’s grilled or cooked.

The study, published in the Journal of Food Sciences, took a bunch of  steaks and marinated half of them for one hour in some commercial spice blends (Caribbean, Southwest and Herb), the other half were not marinated. Then they were all cooked at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for five minutes on each side.

The marinated steaks had much lower levels of a compound called HCA, which is a suspected cancer-causing agent. In some cases the marinated steaks had up to 88 percent lower levels of HCA.

Maybe spicing up your life could help you enjoy it longer.

Dave Barry

But not going to the gym doesn’t mean you can’t still be active. The September issue of Harvard Health has 27 different ideas on how to get in a mini-workout without ever going near the gym.

Now a lot of them are pretty obvious, and they may be things you’ve heard before or read about before. But most of us need to hear an idea a couple of times before it sinks in or before we act on it.

So, here are some of the ideas they are suggesting.

1) Park far away; instead of parking as close as you can to the store or the office, park at the far end of the lot so you have to walk. It may not be far but every little bit counts. And if it’s a parking garage, park on the roof and take the stairs. Now that will burn some serious calories.

2) Let the kid in you get out; too often adults stand around while kids are playing. Don’t. Jump in there with them. If they’re having a game of soccer or basketball join in. Who cares if you are not very good. Just running around will raise your heart rate, and more importantly, will lift your spirits. How can you not enjoy yourself playing with kids!

3) Clean the house. This is something most of us don’t really have any choice in, we can’t afford a housekeeper! But seriously, cleaning the house can burn a lot of calories. All that dusting and polishing and sweeping a vacuuming can get your heart rate up. Best of all you can listen to music while you do it and try out all those cool dance moves you used to do when you were a lot younger. No one’s watching, so you can cut loose. That way you burn up some calories, have fun, and end up with a clean house at the same time.

3) Use the stairs; again it may seem obvious, but every time you use the stairs you give your knees and thighs and core muscles a good workout, you elevate your heart rate, and burn off calories. And it’s all free!

4) Get a walking buddy; having a friend that you exercise with can not only make it more fun, it also makes it more likely you’ll stick with it. The two of you act as a support system, when one is not feeling much like running/walking the other helps get them out there.

There are 23 others in the newsletter, but this gives you a sense of what they’re talking about. You could probably come up with your own list, your own ideas (such as if someone in the office is heading out for a coffee go with them, even if you don’t drink coffee, it’s a chance to stretch your legs and get a little fresh air - and lord knows most of us could do with getting away from the darn computer every once in a while!)

It’s just a matter of changing the way you think about exercise, about always looking for new opportunities, new ways of being active, staying healthy.

After a few seconds, one boy stood. “Do you think you’re stupid?” she asked.

“No, ma’am, but I just didn’t want you to have to stand there all by yourself.”

The form is very important. So how do you get the right form? Stand facing a wall with your toes about two inches from the wall. Now bend at the knees without making contact with the wall! This will insure that you don’t bend forward too much and will also help you squat without having your knees right over your feet.

Don’t go down too far because if you do you will find that your behind will begin to curl under and create a curve. Just squat till your butt is out far away from the wall not low enough to make your behind curve under, stop just before that.

Now you have the form down, move away from the wall and grab that cute little kettle weight and swing it through your legs with the same form and the same squat that you did in front of  the wall.

Swing the kettle under and bring it forward in front of you with the weight on your heels. Make sure you are using your hips! Don’t swing it too high, remember your shoulders are not taking the weight.

If you see the kettle in front of you and it’s droopy not swinging straight out you are not doing it correctly. The only muscles involved here are your core muscles, your hips and your abs!

It’s easy! And it does a lot for your frame, your knees and your midrif! Go for it! You will love it! Besides, the kettles are so cute!

According to family and friends he had only done about half of the things listed in the book before he passed away. At 47 he wasn’t middle aged, he was barely mid life.

It’s a reminder that we can’t take anything for granted. That all we have is now and that we need to appreciate it as much as we can, and share it with those who matter most to us.

I don’t look at a death like Freeman’s and think “oh what a waste” because from what I’ve read he was trying to cram as much into his life as he could. He was truly alive. The waste would have been if he hadn’t done that, if he was thinking about doing it soon, at some point, in the future, when he had the time.

The truth is no one knows if they have the time. Or how much time they have. Some of us may not even have enough time to go out and buy Freeman’s book and read it. Others will have decades stretching out ahead of us. All that matters is how we use them.

I was reminded of that this morning after Shirley and I were playing squash. We have pretty flexible rules, none of that silly get to it on the first bounce stuff; in our game you get to it as quickly as you can; one bounce is great, two is acceptable, three, well if that’s as fast as you can do it then that’s fine too. It’s not pretty but it is a heck of a lot of fun. Lots of sweating, laughing, hurling ourselves around the court.

Then I watched some of the others playing, one man in particular. He carries himself as if the weight of the world were on his back. He walks with shoulders slumped, a flat, plodding gait and a glum expression on his face. There’s no sense of enthusiasm, no sense of fun. I wondered, how on earth does he get out of bed in the morning if that’s how he feels about something as fun as squash. How does he get through the rest of the day?

I suspect he is well off because his locker is in one of the really expensive parts of the gym. But he doesn’t seem to take any pleasure in his money. So that leaves me wondering what he does take pleasure in. If he does.

Obviously, these are all questions I can’t answer. But it does help to remind me that none of the surface trappings in life really amount to much if you are not happy.

I heard an interview with former ABC Nightline anchor Ted Koppell a while back. Koppell was promoting a documentary he did on cancer and was talking about a neighbor of his in a very swanky apartment building in Manhattan. He saw the man in the lobby and asked how he was doing, “oh, circling the drain you know, just circling the drain.”

Can you imagine waking up every day and the only thing you think about is how soon you’ll die. What a waste of life. Which leads me to feel all the more how important it is not to wait, but to live, and to enjoy it, while you can.