stairs

Do you take the stairs? I was thinking about the stairs a few weeks ago, and realized that between my senior year in high school and first year of college I stopped using the stairs. Not only did I stop using the stairs, but I started planning ways to not take the stairs.

One of the books I read this year posits the theory that fat people are not lazy, their bodies are just better at naturally conserving calories. So while skinny people have an urge to exercise and move, fat people don’t. I don’t. If I am not meeting Sam in the gym, I am not going.

But I am trying to change that habit. Hence my thinking about stairs. How is it I cut out stairs? I mean, cut out in the way I cut out lima beans from my diet. I don’t care how you try to get me to eat them, it ain’t happening.

My friend and former boss John, who is of an undetermined age, was told to stop running so much by his physician a few years ago. He has to keep it to 3 miles a day. He emailed me to tell me, randomly, that he has reincorporated stairs into his life. “I'm trying to follow that advice and try to take the stairs exclusively, up and down in the office. After about a month, the 10 flights stairs have gotten easier, and I spend less time reading the floor numbers going up. Hopefully after 8 or 9 months I'll notice a difference.”

What am I doing bitching about a few flights up to our apartment, when he is doing 10 flights a day? Granted, I don’t think he goes out to lunch, but that is a lesson for another posting...but you see my point, I hope.

The article about stairs in the New York Magazine sealed the deal: “Stair-climbing is a more efficient form of exercise than walking: Two additional minutes of stair-climbing per day (approximately three floors) can burn more than enough calories to eliminate the average adult’s annual weight gain.” (You can read more about stairs by clicking this sentence.)

Needless to say I will be taking the stairs. (Be careful if you do the same in an office building, as some floors lock the stairwell doors!)