Hot on the heels of my last spray about fat comes 12 surprising ways your house is making you fat! I kid you not. Since I’m a sucker for seeing what made my workmate laugh so hard I read through this, and now I will share it with you.
1. Your dining room and kitchen are painted red (see full article for explanation of why this makes you fat). But mine aren’t. The cupboards are a sage green colour, the floor tiles are cream and the walls are a beigey cream colour. In fact by that description you are more likely to be bored to death in my kitchen than hungry.
2. You don’t have a pantry. Yes, I do. I am still fat.
3. Your kitchen is the hub of the home. Wrong again.
4. Too much furniture to sit on. OMG my lounge is making me fat?! Shouldn’t the exercise bike in the loungeroom be overcoming that though? This didn’t work either when it was a treadmill instead of an exercise bike. You would think I would have learnt by now that the mere presence of exercise equipment in my loungeroom doesn’t inspire me to use it. Although it is rather handy having it just near the ironing board for extra hanging space on the handle bars.
5. Create your own veggie patch. You are more likely to want to eat the veggies you grow yourself because you have worked hard to cultivate them. I am living proof that this is not necessarily so. Although the feeling of smug when I do use one of the onions that multiplied freely for three years before I finally pulled them out is tremendous and the people who fed the cats and chooks when we were on holidays said that the spinach we grew was great in a Lamb Saag. The spinach is still growing and we haven’t tried their lamb saag recipe yet.
6. Your plates and dishes are oversized. Yep because a smaller plate magically stops me going back for seconds, or from getting another plate out of the cupboard to put my dessert in or sneaking a handful of chocolate without using a plate at all! Or any of the other varied reasons why I might be fat and plate size completely irrelevant.
For some reason 1/2 way through I get tips on cleaning pots. Not sure why, but if it helps you then good.
7. Your bedroom is not relaxing. Since someone told me, when we were trying to get pregnant, to keep the bedroom for sleeping and sex we haven’t had a TV in there and that was 10 years ago. Occassionally I cheat and sneak in to read in bed, and when I’m sick or just sick of the kids I might go in there and watch DVDs on the laptop. But that is reasonably rare and doesn’t affect my sleep. Lack of sleep is not making me fat (or allowing me to continue being fat).
8. Too much light or not enough. Surprisingly I like to see what I am eating so the lights are at fairly normal light levels in my house. I don’t have brightly lit spaces because they use too much electricity and after a while the glare hurts my eyes.
9. Machines are taking over. Ah ha it is all the dishwasher’s fault! But I do still stand at the sink to wash up the overflow or the stuff that can’t go in the dishwasher. Damn thought I was onto a winner there.
10. Awesome entertainment system. I would like to have an awesome entertainment system, but I do not. We tend to watch the news at dinner time, but I have to say that between the ABC’s efforts on political reporting and the kids’ whinging about changing the channel it is more offputting than appetite raising.
11. Bathrooms on multiple floors. My house doesn’t have multiple floors and the ensuite, which I use most frequently, is at the other end of the house. So lack of exercise walking to the toilet is not making me fat.
12. Your coffee table is covered in food porn. My coffee table is covered in bits of food because my children are messy eaters and I don’t buy many magazines. You join the dots.
So no joy for me there. However, while looking for a good featured image I found this lovely blog post. I hope you enjoy it too.
Ha. Now I have to see how many of these apply to me.
1. Also beige kitchen.
2. Yes, there is a pantry. The only types of food that are readily visible are the fruits and veggies we don’t refrigerate (bananas, apples, etc.).
3. Yeah, no. Our bedroom is the hub of our home. Or maybe my study. (But I’m going to say “bedroom” because it makes me sound more awesome.)
4. Can someone please define “too much” furniture for me? I mean, we have two chairs at the kitchen table, a bed, a slippery loveseat (seriously, staying on that should be considered exercise in itself), and a desk chair for each of us. Except my desk chair is an exercise ball.
5. I’m going to concede the point on this. We purchase a lot of vegetables from our local grocery store, and we have no problem eating them as both snacks and meal staples. But we do not, in fact, have a vegetable garden.
6. Nope.
7. Maybe? I’d like to be getting a bit more sleep than I am, but I’m generally getting 7 hours and only extremely rarely get below 6 in a night. But honestly? While getting fewer than 5 hours of sleep per night sounds hellish to me, it does so for reasons far more significant than my weight. (Like, I do not want to crash into people on my drive to work, that sort of thing.)
8. Again, can we please define this “magic middle”? The way the article has phrased it, almost any room could be considered either “too bright” or “not bright enough.” Generally, all of my rooms are bright enough to allow me to read a book comfortably (gold standard for lighting, as far as I’m concerned) — enough light to see, not so much that it hurts my eyes.
9. No dishwasher. I guess I will have to blame my fat on the washing machine?
10. This laptop? *IS* my awesome entertainment system.
11. Like you, no multiple floors. I suppose I could put a ladder outside so we could go pee on the roof. It would burn more calories, but I suspect it would cause other issues.
12. What is this thing called a “coffee table”?
So. If I can’t really blame my fat on my house, can I at least blame it on the dog? ;) (Or, more accurately, I will refuse to see my fat as anything that requires “blame” at all.)
But my house only has one bathroom and it has stairs! Also, I have a ginormous garden and greenhouse. Our kitchen is a teeny weeny galley kitchen painted white and only fits one person at a time without elbows flying. I have no dining room.
I think the only one I fail on is the lack of a pantry. But I store a lot of stuff in the basement, so that’s like a pantry, right? It involves more stairs!
Too much furniture? Because if you don’t have furniture you do what? Stand around in your house? Wander from room to room aimlessly like a lost baby duck and therefore get in some exercise? That makes less sense than a bag with no opening.
Oh dear gods.
Let’s see.
1. Pale-ish kitchen with crumbling ancient white formica fittings (except that one woodgrain drawer replacing the broken one). Dining room is a sort of pale lemony-beige colour except one terracotta feature wall. Does that count as “red”? I think this one adds up to – THIN.
2. What counts as a “pantry”? We have one tall cupboard for food, and another one, and a couple of shelves. The stuff most visible is the fruit bowl and the bowl with avocadoes and garlic and shallots, followed by the dried fruit and nuts, followed by breakfast cereal and oats, the canned legumes and tomatoes, and the dried lentils/barley. Our “BAD FOOD” (chocolate, I guess?) is in a closed cupboard at the bottom of the pantry. I think this one probably adds up to: THIN.
3. No, the kitchen is off the dining room, and is not central. THIN.
4. Furniture? We have one sofa, and some dining chairs around the table, and a desk chair in the study. Not quite sure how to go about having less than that. THIN?
5. We have a huge veggie patch and a number of fruit trees. THIN THIN THIN.
6. Plates. We have them in three sizes, and fit them to the size/style of meal. Not sure how to score this.
7. Bedroom. I have books, a laptop, and a TV in my bedroom because I’m stuck here most of the time because of my disability. And yet I still sleep 7.5-9 hours per night. FAT? THIN? Who the fuck knows?
8. Smallish windows (old house), two skylights. I think the light’s about right.
9. No dishwasher. Dryer, used only in the dead of winter, because we’re in a dry climate. THIN, unless we’re really supposed to get in trouble for having a washing machine.
10. We have a great TV. No stereo, we use ipods/itunes through tinny speakers. No TV at dinnertime unless Masterchef is on. MEDIUM.
11. What is this “multiple floors” and “multiple bathrooms” of which they speak? If I were to run to the furthest bathroom, I’d be going next door or down the street, and on my scooter at that, which would count as a fail in their eyes. Just how much privilege do these people assume?
12. *checks the coffee table* It’s currently covered in D&D miniatures, dice, a transistor radio, a tape measure, and some odd bits of foam. Score that as you will!
1. I’m in rented accommodation, so have had a cream house (URGH) for the last six months, but before this, a bright yellow kitchen with red units.
2. Never had a pantry, but the only visible food is the fruit bowl.
3. Kitchen in my current and all previous homes has been tiny, so not central, but in this house it’s open plan to my living room.
4. A very large sofa has always been an essential feature of my decor; I hate not having something comfy to sit on!
5. I have had large vegetable patches and in my current house veggies in plant pots, but most of it dies or doesn’t grow, and half the stuff that does I never got round to harvesting. I was a lot more invested in the growing than the eating…
6. Yes, I have large plates.
7. Well, I don’t really do much in the bedroom other than sleep and pile laundry in heaps, but I do get a good 7-8 hours every night.
8. I think my current house is frustratingly dark, but I’ve also lived in frustratingly bright houses, and I have this amazing electric lighting system that helps me to balance these things.
9. My dishwasher doesn’t work, so I hand wash everything. But I really wish it did and I’ve always had one in the past. I don’t use my tumbledryer here in Australia, but that’s because it’s unnecessary.
10. Awesome entertainment system? Well, I have a nice Tv, xbox and have it linked up to my computor so I can watch pretty much anything.
11. My current house has multiple toilets on multiple floors, but I’ve never had a house with more than one bathroom before.
12. I’ve never had a house big enough for a coffeetable (or at least, by the time I’ve fitted in the giant sofa).
So this is fairly mixed, but I have lots of warning signs for fatness, and yet whilst being at the top of my weight for my height (according to bmi), I’m not overweight.