No Airline Exercise

Posted: March 7, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: , | 1 Comment

 

 

I wonder if it is too late for me to get a job as a flight attendant on a long haul flight?  Not that I am at all the right temperament to serve, cajole and make nice with the general flying public, in fact I surely would get into some kind of fight with some paying passenger.  No, I am not looking for a job, or even a free flight, but the right to get up and walking around while flying.

 

I am a good sitter.  Always have been.  That is probably one of the reasons I put on many extra pounds over the years.  So sitting on a plane for eight hours is not usually a problem for me.  Most of the things I love to do are done sitting – needlepointing, watching movies, playing games.

 

The issue now is that I have learned that I need to walk at least nine miles a day so I can eat something.  That much walking takes a lot of time.  Time I don’t seem to have on a day that I spend the majority of it on a plane.  FAA regulations now frown upon anyone being out of their seat, almost to the point that they are going to be issuing Depends for all passengers.

 

I certainly don’t want to draw negative attention to myself by flaunting the rules and walking up and down the aisles of the plane as a passenger, but if only I were a flight attendant I would have full reign of the empty aisles.  I could start by checking seatbelts, cruising up and down making sure that every granny and small child were belted in tightly in case of turbulence.  I see flight attendants get lots of extra steps by walking by and then backing up as a loose metal tab catches their eye.

 

After the security briefing I would be happy to roll the newspaper cart down the aisle offering the very old fashioned magazine and papers to those few people who still read that way.  I would follow it up with the headphone passing out and then the dinner menus.  After all the passengers have had a chance to rule out the worst meal choices I would be happy to walk back and forth taking orders.  Special requests?  No problem just let me run up to the front and consult the purser.  Time for drinks, I’ve got that under control.  Ring the call button.  I’ll be right there.  Just give me an excuse to walk back and forth on the Boeing 767.  With 44 rows I bet I can get 100 steps in for each round trip of the plane.

 

Since I don’t have time to interview, or get seniority enough to do the long haul flight I guess I am going to be stuck strapped in trying to get sitting exercises.  I wonder if my fitbit would register steps made with my legs hovering in the air?  I can tell I am going to be annoying my child to no end.

The Sad Life of the Airport Salad

Posted: October 27, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: , | Leave a comment

You know the drill. Running through your connecting flight airport, having spent three hours on one plane without real food, having forgone the available peanuts and pretzels because they are just too fattening. That is of course because we all know that four peanuts leads to four hundred.

So there you are, the mere minutes you have to run from gate B 22 to E 49 and the time to slip on the the jetway before that door is closed to you forever is fast approaching. As you run the idea that you can take the time to grab something to eat is lingering in the back of your head. No, it’s not lingering it is screaming at you, “get some food! You have another two hours on the next flight and maybe they won’t even have peanuts!”. Or worse, “Maybe the turbulence will prohibit the happy flight attendants on the fifth leg of their flying day to get out of their seats and give you a drink.”

So between moving walkways you turn your head sideways looking at the various national food vendor chains to see if by chance there is something healthy and QUICK you can grab to eat on the plane.

The first problem is nothing healthy is ever hot at the airport. Yes, every once in a while you see a boxed salad sitting lonely in it’s clear plastic coffin in the refrigerator case. The one lone box of white iceberg lettuce with a couple of strips of overly processed American cheese and nitrate injected thin cuts of ham that is posing as a chef’s salad. It’s an insult to any culinary professional who wears the white jacket. How dare this pitiful salad dare to call itself chef.

Then there are the trio of fruits, apple, orange and banana, sitting in a basket looking like they are tokens to some healthy options commitment the airport authority asked all food vendors to adhere to. Yes, fresh fruit is available, how long have those particular fruits been sitting in that basket without and expiration date on them, who knows? Too long for me to chance buying one as my meal equivalent when I am already calorie, sleep and oxygen deprived.

Now back to the hot issue. The hot food emits smells, like French fries, pizza or general tso’s chicken. Why can’t the airport have skinny foods that make an odor that entices you to eat it? The meanest smell of all is Popeye’s Louisiana Fried Chicken, red beans and rice and fluffy buttermilk biscuits. Normally that spicy and greasy smell would make me feel a little queasy, but in the terminal, between gates seven and nine it calls to me.

I think the problem of airport food is not going to change. We are never going to be allowed to bring food from home and get it through the TSA checkpoint. Somehow an agent will pick up my homemade salad with some balsamic vinegar lightly dressing it and declare I am trying to smuggle some threatening item on to my flight. Even if I try to prove to them it is safe by taking a bite right there at the body scanners, I know they will take it from me and throw my fresh arugula, roasted pears and blue cheese salad in the bin, say so long good and good for me food.

And since the time between flights is never going to get longer, nor do I want my trips to get longer, and airlines are never bringing back food service on flights and nor do I want that back, I am going to have to eat one of those good smelling, fast purchasing, bad for you meals. Now here is the innovation– airplanes need to put treadmill sections in the passenger compartment. It could serve two purposes, be a calorie burning section for those of us who have eaten an airport meal and those passengers on the treadmills could generate some power to run the plane on. I’d gladly pay a little extra not to have to sit cramped between the grandmother who rarely flies and talks to me the whole trip and the mother who thinks it is OK not to buy a seat for her almost two year old freakishly large child who wants to kick me.

Sleeping Versus Eating – No Choice When It Comes to Flying

Posted: March 8, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

If you had to choose between sleeping and eating which one could you give up?  Now I’m not suggesting that you should go without rest or food often, but there is one situation where you should make a choice.  When in the world is that you ask?  It is when you are making an overnight flight.  And the girl who never misses a meal is here to tell you that you should pick sleep over food.  No, you are screaming, but yes.

 

For five years before Carter was born I flew back and forth across the Atlantic every month and around the world a couple of times.  Living on airplanes is no life at all so in order to have enough actual life I would fly at the last possible moment.  That usually meant leaving home on Sunday night to fly to London and arriving at 7:00 in the morning and going right to the office to work the whole day.

 

There was only one way that my then younger self was able to do that.  Sleep every possible moment on the plane.  The flight from RDU to the UK is only about seven hours long which sounds like it would a good enough’s night sleep.  It would if you could get on the plane, pass out immediately and stay asleep until the vessel pulled up to the jet-way.  But that is almost impossible.

 

First you have to be able to fall asleep at 6:00 at night.  Having only been awake for twelve hours you usually aren’t tired enough to pass out.  Also, sometimes there is the I-really-need-to-sleep anxiety that keeps you awake.  Then there are the other passengers who don’t know they should be sleeping so they talk or kick your seat or any other number of annoying things that make it impossible for you to sleep.  The third problem is the flight attendants whose job it is to make sure you are offered everything you are entitled to.

 

I try and be as nice as possible to them when I first get on and then tell them that I am going to try and sleep and PLEASE don’t wake me and ask me if I want a pillow.  I promise them I won’t ask for food long after they are finished serving it if they won’t wake me until the last possible moment and then maybe I would drink a cup of coffee.

 

Since you are fighting nature to sleep early the best way to get your body to adjust is to eat something small and not fatty before you board the plane.  Even if you are flying first class no airplane meal is worth losing a day at your location because you did not sleep on the plane.  Take a sleeping pill once you get on.  Change your watch to the new time zone now so that you start to adjust mentally. Wrap yourself in a blanket and buckle your seatbelt on the outside of the blanket so the flight attendant won’t wake you to make sure you are buckled in.  Put an eye mask on and some headphones with soothing music, or earplugs, anything to help dull the sound around you.

 

Whatever you do, do not eat on the plane until right before you have to land.  Food is the worst stimulant and you certainly don’t want to have to use the bathroom in the middle of the flight.  You will never go back to sleep then.

 

At some point the flight attendants will wake you up when you are close to landing.  Open the window shade right away so that your body can see the sunlight and begin to make the adjustment to your new time zone. Hopefully you will have had at least five hours sleep.  That is enough to make it through a day.  Now do everything possible to stay awake all day until at least nine at night.  Don’t take a nap.  If you follow these precise instructions you can minimize your jet lag and actually be productive or enjoy the place you are going.