s/Fat/Fit/g

When you're a kid, fitness, for the most part, is a no-brainer.  As long as your parents didn't feed you butter for dinner, staying fit was easy.  They say kids these days are fatter than ever and I'd probably go along with the theory that it's because they don't play like my generation did.  They play, but with Nintendos and cell phones instead of footballs and hide-and-seek.  I'm conscious of that now that I have a 5-year-old.  I try to make sure he doesn't sit around all day even though I shun the sunlight as if I had pointy teeth.  He likes to run around about as much as he likes to play video games so I don't think I really have to worry about him right now.  Unfortunately, I haven't worried about myself all that much. 

When I was young, hide-and-seek was a daily activity.  I was thin as a rail and could play kickball, four-square and any other old-timey activity without falling over out of breath.  Now, if you've read my About page, you'd know I've been working/playing with computers since a very early age.  Video games were also a part of my life since the first pong game landed on our TV.  Sometime around my middle school years, probably when we moved to rural Iowa, the balance tipped towards the PC and the NES.  This continued really until college when I was required to walk several miles a day to go to classes.  I was not running marathons but not 100% sedentary. 

Fast forward to the age of 29.8.  The most exercise I get is walking towards or away from my car a couple times a day.  In between my "hikes", I sit in a cubicle and face a monitor for 8+ hours a day.  Combine that with bad eating habits (out to eat and on the go) and I'm the poster child for out of shape.  The truly sad part of it is that I've known this for quite a while now.  Changing my lifestyle for the better, however, has been too hard to actually do.  There's a history in heart attack two generations above me which should be enough motivation besides just plain feeling better...but isn't.