Gardening and Health

I am an obsessed vegetable gardener.  It's a good hobby for me because a lot of my other hobbies don't involve much movement.  Playing video games, crocheting, knitting, scrapbooking are all very sedentary hobbies.  At least reading and learning Spanish can be done at the same time as exercise.  I can read while I ride my stationary bike, and I can listen to Spanish podcasts or music or read audio books while walking. 

Gardening, however, is a pretty good physical activity on its own.  There is a lot of walking around the yard and carrying things.  I frequently have to lift compost.  And then there is a lot of bending and squatting.  It's not the most intense activity I can think of to do, but it sure burns a lot more calories than sitting on my butt and blogging. 

It also makes me eat a lot more vegetables because the vegetables from my garden taste fresh and alive.  I'm making an effort to buy more local produce for things I don't grow or don't have at the moment, but it just doesn't compare to a vegetable that is fresh picked and carried by hand into the kitchen, as opposed to picked a few days ago and sent on a truck a few miles.  Or a few hundred miles.  Or a few thousand miles. 

My favorite things to grow in the garden are tomatoes.  Homegrown tomatoes are to die for.  And peppers.  And cucumbers.  And lettuce, spinach, and arugula.  After growing my own salad greens, I can hardly stand the stuff in the grocery store or in restaurants.  And the radishes--oh, the radishes.   And then there are green beans, eggplants, and garlic.  And peas.  And tomatillos for making my own salsa!  And herbs--parsely, basil, sage, rosemary, thyme, cilantro. 

I'm not a gardening evangelist.  I don't think gardening is for everyone.  Not everyone likes it, and that's perfectly okay.  But I think delicious, fresh vegetables are something that can really help a person to lose weight, whether they are from the backyard or from the farmer's market.