The window to my world

Instead of making a resolution to start off the new year, lets do it with a challenge. And what could be a better challenge than the One Hundred Day Burpee Challenge? Right, pretty much anything. Therefore it is the perfect challenge to start the new year off with. So on January 1, 2010, kick off the challenge.

If you don’t what the One Hundred Day Burpee Challenge is exactly, here is a run down. Day on (1/1/10) you do 1 burpee, Day 2 (1/2/10) is 2 burpees, Day 3 (1/3/10) is 3 burpees, and keep going till you get to day 100 (4/10/10) where you are now at 100 burpees. So on 1/1/2010, 3-2-1 Go!

FAQ

Q: What’s a burpee?
A: Wikipedia has a write-up on the burpee. You can also check out this video or this one on YouTube.

Q: I can’t do 100 of those evil things!
A: I’m willing to bet you can do one. Start with one and on day 2 do one, and then one more. Look at it as doing 1 burpee and build upon that. The proper mental approach will help you make it through this.

Q: On a given day, do I have to do all the burpees at once?
A; No, you just have to do that given number for the day. Using day 50 again, if you need to break it down into blocks of 10 with a rest in between, then that is what you do. The goal is getting all the burpees done for that day.

Q: What if I miss a day?
A: You poor fool… You still have to do the burpees. Lets say you missed doing the burpees on day 50, on day 51 you have to do those burpees (51) and the ones you missed (50). That should be a good incentive not to miss a day

Is really addressing the health issue in this country. Want to bring costs down? Address that issue for starters. For example, the leading causes of death in the United States from 2006:

Heart disease: 631,636
Cancer: 559,888
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 137,119
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599
Diabetes: 72,449
lzheimer’s disease: 72,432
Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,326
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,344
Septicemia: 34,234

Start looking at how many of those have a personal factor in them, i.e. how diet and exercise plays a role in preventing these deaths. Then think about the health issues many of these cause and the long term costs of dealing with those. Pretty huge numbers.

The American diet is pathetic. We eat too much sugar, too much processed foods, the wrong types of fat, and overeat. Then look at our exercise level, also really bad. People in general don’t get near enough exercise.

What can we do about this? Very little. One could argue that if we are going to tax tobacco due to its health risks we should do the same for foods that are bad for us. I’m not a fan of taxes myself. I rather see the cost burden shifted back to the individual, with a tax credit for purchasing your own insurance if you want too. Let people start seeing the total cost of health and maybe they might make some changes in their lifestyle. I tend to doubt it but one can hope.