Healthy Living
It’s finally warm outside! People went out to the streets and realized the summer is here. In fact, I’m speaking of myself (I’m 3 months late in realizing I need to prepare my body for a bikini), but I suspect I’m not alone in this. Together with the disappearance of heavy coats and jackets (which we have been wearing for far too long this season), suddenly what I see everywhere are people in sports outfits. In New York and Manhattan especially, the awareness of a healthy lifestyle is huge. It begins with drinking coffee with skim milk, counting calories and buying only “organic” stuff, and finishes with regular exercise.
Basically, you can boil New Yorkers down to two categories – either they are overweight, or they are excessive in their body care. It’s either entire families gorging themselves in fast food chains like Taco Bell, KFC or Nathan’s – or else buying stuff at Whole Foods (a popular chain of organic supermarkets with a stunningly varied choice of products). You can observe it especially well on the weekends when most New Yorkers don’t work. They start their day with jogging, which usually takes them to Whole Foods. They still pant and sweat as they reach for products with lowered calories and grown within “fair trade”. It doesn’t exactly mean they live differently during the week: it’s just that it’s more visible on the weekends since everyone is doing basically the same – trying to spend their weekend as actively as possible.
It’s possible all the more because NY offers an abundance of places that help you reach that goal (parks are plentiful and most of them have playing fields, tracks, and cycling paths). There are no excuses not to work out, which is why you will see joggers everywhere. I think it is really great since it provides the best possible motivation for you to work out. Nothing will make you more motivated to go to the gym or jog for a bit than a half-naked runner, appearing out of nowhere like David Hasselhoff in “Bay Watch”, and overshadowing Manhattan with his perfectly chiseled chest. And if someone’s chest is capable of overshadowing Manhattan – well, that really makes you think.