No time for work or play, only exercise

The time has come to give up your jobs, to give up your hobbies, to give up any thoughts of keeping your house clean. (OK the last one I gave up a long time ago.) Why? Because you're going to be spending more time exercising.

While the government still recommends 30 minutes of exercise each day, a recent study gives as much weight to 60 minutes and 90 minutes of exercise each and every day.

The recommendations are tied to weight. If you just want to ward of some diseases, then stick with that measly half-an-hour. If you are looking to prevent weight gain, you had better up it to 60 minutes of physical activity.

And those who were previously overweight have it the hardest -- as if losing the weight wasn't hard enough in the first place. They may need 60 to 90 minutes of daily exercise to keep the weight off.

I don't know about most people, but I have to take a nap each day to offset getting up early to exercise. I can't get up much earlier without just forgoing going to bed the night before. And, my kids barely let me take one nap currently. I'm not going to be able to persuade them to be quiet for mommy's second and third naps each day.

Of course, we could just build more physical activity into our lives, such as walking the dog, working in the garden, or playing a game of baseball rather than watching a game on TV.

Start adding up those minutes of activity and if they're not reaching 90 minutes, it may be time to start getting up earlier each morning for a few miles on the treadmill -- plus a few extra minutes on the pillow each afternoon.

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Think finding half-an-hour to 90 minutes is tough, you'll need even more time in the gym if you make a trek to Burger King for its new breakfast sandwich. You will have to run approximately seven miles to burn off just one of the new Enormous Omelet Sandwiches being offered at BK. They weigh in with 730 calories and 47 grams of fat. If that's all you're eating for the day, go ahead and dig in.

The fast-food chain said it developed the sandwich for young men with strenuous jobs, for people who would actually burn that many calories during just the morning hours.

The problem is that non-young men with non-strenuous jobs who don't burn 730 calories all day long are going to purchase these sandwiches. Plus the accompanying tator tots. Plus the accompanying whole-fat milk. Eventually turning into a plus-size person.

But Burger King wouldn't be making the sandwich if there wasn't a demand.

Low-fat, low-calorie sandwiches have come and gone, while the waist-expanders remain. Even now, they are putting out a lower-fat breakfast sandwich, which is not getting as much media attention because it has "only" 300-some calories and half the fat grams. Plus, it's only available for a limited time, which means Burger King knows which one is going to be the better seller: The gut-busting sandwiches.

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If 730 calories from a sandwich sounds overwhelming, maybe a 100-calorie snack package would be more acceptable.

Now available are packages with snacks totaling exactly 100 calories so you don't have to think about how much you're eating. The problem is that we've forgotten how much 100 calories looks like so the four crackers that come pouring out makes you have one reaction: Peering back into the bag hoping for more.

And that's the other problem with these packs: They feature crackers or rice cakes or pieces of cardboard, rather than stuff we'd actually want to eat.

Manufacturers could use real cookies, but there would only be three in each packet and each cookie would have a bite taken out of it.

Of course, you could just use the new nutrition labels, which feature both the calories per serving plus the total number of calories in a package.

For example, while most small bags of chips are only 180 calories per serving, most people will finish off the bag -- and its' "approximately three servings" -- in one sitting. The makers now do the math for you so that you know you've just eaten 700 calories. The total is more if you eat all the servings at one time because they know you're going to eke out those last few broken chips at the bottom even if it requires ripping the bag into shreds to get to them.

If all this counting calories and counting servings seems overwhelming, take solace. It could be worse. You could be that person who has to take the bites out of those three cookies in each snack bag -- and still find 90 minutes a day to exercise.

-- Ronda Graff tries to exercise at least 30 minutes each day, but figures she gets in more than the remaining 60 minutes searching for lost shoes, blankets and sippy cups.