lose it

My metabolism is starting a slow, inexorable slide towards laziness. I have been pretty lucky, it has always worked fairly well, but lately it's getting tired. I haven't really been helping matters by not exercising like I should be. Always an excuse.

But now I have this new smartphone! And smartphones have all sorts of apps, and surely one of them could help me out with my problem or at least motivate me a bit, because of course impossible for me to do on my own. After a bit of research, I downloaded the "Lose It" app. It appeared to do what I needed (count calories and exercise) and it was free.

For example, trekking to see the herons? Hiking, for 20 minutes! 107 calories burned! Almost enough for a guilt-free glass of white wine that night!

After perusing the list of exercises, however, I saw a problem.

Entries for billiards and sports coaching and curling and music playing and juggling and luge, for crying out loud. Also one for lawn mowing! But it is missing shopping and ironing and doing laundry, all of which, I would argue, burn more calories than billiards. There is one for vacuuming, and I guess house cleaning could be used as a catch all for many of those activities, but I can hazard a guess as to the gender of the programmer.

Knitting? Definitely not knitting, or anything like it.

A little research revealed that knitting burns about 110 calories an hour. I'll take it! The program allows you to add your own activity, but not any more icons, so I chose the icon for fencing as being the closest thing to two needles.

That's right, fencing is on there. Because tons of people do that. I am allowed to be sarcastic about fencing because I earned my varsity letter in high school by being on the fencing team. The laziness thing didn't start yesterday.

Oh, the wrestling? That was my best guess for catching, vaccinating and hoof-trimming 14 uncooperative lambs. Yet another unlisted activity. Just who came up with this list, anyway?