Tell Me To Do What???

Ok, I have had it with gurus. Up to here. Both the spiritual kind and the health and physical fitness kind. Watching GMA this morning, the ever-present Dr. Oz was on (and he's a good guy, you can tell--anyone who does a whole show on what you can tell from human feces has got to be good, right?) telling us about our circadian rhythm and the optimum times for eating meals, snacking, and going to bed. Huh? Did I miss something? Isn't this what PARENTS used to do for us, and now that we are grown, do we really, really need this intense and scratchy oversight of our personal lives?

So, here's what we're meant to do: Get up at 6:30 a.m. each day (Oh, please, I stopped doing that when my kids graduated from High School; I am not a pretty sight at that hour of the day, and have been known to heave things off of the deck in disgust...); before you go out to exercise, he tells us (because this exercise burns fat and not the calories from just-eaten breakfast), do #1 and # 2. Really? Do I need to have you in my bathroom? I thought that ended when I was four years old. Then we eat breakfast at 7:30, after heaving our bodies around in some form of pre-dawn torture; make it 'til 11:45, have a high fiber snack (I assume he does not mean twinkies which have sat on my shelf for twenty years and look just as fresh as the day they were baked...), then lunch. Thankfully, he did not tell me what to eat. I probably would have thrown a stoneware plate through the plate glass window (something I have been known to do in the past...). Manage to contain yourself without adult oversight until supper at 6:30 p.m. Really? What about the folks who don't get home until 7:00? Leaving that question dangling, he then advises us to go to bed promptly at 10:00 p.m. Ok, I can see how in an alternate universe this would be a good idea, but not in this universe!

There's something so annoying in all of this--the idea that we cannot manage our adult bodies and lives on our own, thank you very much. And whatever the hell happened to common sense? Ok, ok, I know that many of us binge out on huge hamburgers and think flipping the remote control qualifies as exercise. But I don't. I push my body up the road when I walk our Jack Russell; I've been known to do the Wuss's Yoga Routine; I cook delicious things for all of the people I love who live in my house; I try to be in bed pretty early and not read a delicious novel until 12:00; but gimme a break--I am not going to follow this guy's pattern for a healthy life. I'm using my common sense, the smattering of rules my parents laid down in the pleistocene, and respond to the needs of my family, including the pyschotic cat who throws up almost daily on my bedspread. What would Dr. Oz have to say about THAT? Maybe she needs more fibre....I'll get back to you on this. Damn. Whatever happened to just having fun in our lives, without hurting too many people, including ourselves? Thomas Merton once spoke of throwing our "awful solemnity" to the winds, and that's what I'd like to do here. Just-throw-it-away. Have fun instead. You'll live longer, I know it