The Imagined Universe

I alternate slothful chained-to-the-laptop days with days of obsessive calorie-counting and guilt-filled exercise. Of course, when I count calories, I have to make sure I don’t miss a single one. After all, I am a recovering bean-counter, sort of. So one day, I strapped a pedometer to count every single step, and was very satisfied to find I had reached 5000 steps by evening, just by walking around the house. I forget how many calories I burned though, but it was a nice round number.

There are other resources on the web too, to count the calories you burn. WebMD has this site which estimates how many calories you burn during each activity. This tells me I burn 220 calories in an hour of cleaning, almost the same as the 227 calories I burn in an hour of bicycling. Hmm… does that mean I should clean up the piles of paper lying around on every surface I can see?

What it all does mean, though, is that I would be an ideal customer for a device like the BodyBugg. I can calculate how many calories I burn in typing up this blog, reaching for that cup of tea and moving the mouse to make way for my plate of pineapple banana cake.

Seriously though, I am shocked that someone would want to spend $480 to buy a BodyBugg. Why turn our days into a set of calories consumed and calories burned? Whatever happened to eating healthy food, enjoying our meals and exercise?

Never mind. Let’s see now, how many calories did I burn by pressing “Publish”?