The Wheelchair Diet

     Roll…roll…roll…sweat, heat, drip, breathe. Push, whoosh…push, whoosh. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Strong. Breathe. Lick the sweat from my upper lip. Taste its saltiness. Oval arm motions. Pull back, and throw them forward. Back, and throw’em forward. It’s an oval shape. Walkers wouldn’t know that. But it’s true. 

     Don’t want to stop to rest. That’ll just make me stop completely. Then I’ll cool down. Don’t want the cool down yet. Keep the momentum. Always momentum.

    Legs—knees-to-heels of my Nikes, really—work the best they can. Left, right, left, right. They do the sit-walking to keep moving when I change out my MP3 music for a few seconds. I can only listen to NPR for so long before they repeat their news broadcast. 

  Headphone distraction. Listening. Music or radio, great for distraction. I’d hate my workout, otherwise; wanting to stop, rather than push for five more minutes. O’dark-early workout sets the disciplinary tone for the next twelve hours. 

    Mall workouts really are a thing. It’s the perfect combination of level surface foundation, dimmer-switch lighting, room-temp environment, flatfooted security, and coffee-stop. Sorry. No ellipticals or weightlifting machines available. But it is free.

   
    However, ‘Mall-crawls-are-my-cardio’ is a bullshit expression. Dawdling from Jamba Juice to Aeropostale, from Hot Topic to Panera Bread, from J. Crew to Sephora hardly burns calories when you’re simultaneously replacing them, via that iconic green straw with whipped cream clinging to its shaft.

    I inhale deeply each time I pass the oblong Starbucks kiosk. Walk-up. Whatev. “Good morning,” to the baristas. They smile. “Hey.” Then turn back to finish stocking readily-grabbed-and-purchased inventory. The island’s aroma is better than tropical flowers.

 
   The regulars (actual mall exercisers) wave ‘good morning’. I wave back and offer a wearied smile. We’re all here for the same thing, in our sneakers and yoga pants. Don’t need to repeat my greetings when I pass them again, minutes or moments later. Salutations have already been established.

   
     Keep pushing my transport. 

    The goal is to lose it. It helps, and it hinders. Everyone sees the transport before they see me. When they’ve passed me, and know I don’t see them, they’ll glance back at me. That’s one reason I painted the seatback; it feeds my creativity through cynicism.      

     Fifty-five minutes a day is enough for me. I’m wiped by then, anywoo. My arms don’t kill like they used to years ago. But my wheels feel more sluggish. I’m not as fresh as I was an hour before. Others think wheeling around would be easy. Try being the one wheeling it. Workouts are workouts. Whether you’re a size 20, 10, or 2. You’ll feel wiped when you’re done, no matter how short it was. 

     Yah, you have that adrenaline-aggression for a while after; I use that to fold up and lift my wheels into the car trunk, then zoom over to McD’s for that well-earned Diet Coke. My third a.m. caffeine infusion.

     What? Oh, I can walk? Duh! The DMV recognizes arthritis as a disability. Hence, the government-issued parking placard. Try functioning in a body wracked with pain, every minute of every day, while standing at the Starbucks kiosk for a couple of minutes. (I get a lightning bolt of muscular agony from a sneeze)

     It starts in the lower back, and soon my knees feel my weight. (No matter how much of it I’ve lost) The adrenaline’s coming to its end, and the cool-down follows. The knees wanna lock for support, but I can’t do that to my left knee; displaced meniscus. Which translates into bone-on-bone fun.

      If I stand longer than four minutes, I’ll start sweating the pain to come. If that ass-hat ahead of me fucks up his verbal coffee-order, it takes longer for the cashier to key it in to the barista. And there’s three people behind him—in front of me—waiting, too.

      For all our state-of-the-art tech conveniences, how come ass-hat didn’t use the app on his smartphone to order ahead of time, and have his drink ready-and-paid-for before I got in line?

     Next will come the trembling. If the next three customers ahead of me don’t get their coffees in the next 60 seconds, the trembling can turn into impatient fury. Foul mood, and possibly language, will follow.

        So…no. I think I’ll just stick with my wheels when I’m unmercifully made to wait for others to dilly-dally their time away. But then, I wouldn’t be a Starbucks customer right after a workout. 

     Dude, I just burned 240 calories! (The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, established wheelchair exercise of 30 minutes, at 2 mph, burns 120 calories)

     I love Starbucks, but consuming anything of theirs lays waste to all that recent sweat. And I don’t workout my entire frame, of course. Just arms, and knees-to-Nikes. I took it as a compliment that my former college classmates from several years ago dubbed me ‘Hot Wheels’, due to speed-ability.

      I’ve got the workout down, but caloric intake is the determinate of success. And, surprise. Only one website study admits (barely) that wheelchair-users may need to consume less than the average (physically-abled) person. 2,000-2,500 calories? Nope. That’d be the equivalent of eating cake every day, for me. I.O.W., dietician-recommended numbers are a counterproductive solution to medically-obese society that aren’t able to move their entire body every five minutes.

     Oh, you’re starving yourself, you ask? Not that you’d see. And, by the way, when did you decide that was your business?

    I had two, plastic containers of bakery cookies in a scooter-shopping cart one day at Freddie’s, and a disruptive, invasive shopper—a complete stranger—demanded to know if I was really going to buy them. (Imagine that scenario the next time you’re in the frozen foods aisle, selecting a box of Lean Pockets)

   I was too stunned to acknowledge she was asking me the question, and in a pushy manner. She asked it again. After giving her my automatic Mr. Spock-lifted-eyebrow reaction, I answered.

     Um, yah. Office-parties happen, and store-bought convenience is the usually accepted co-worker expectation. (Please forgive me the multiple compound words this once, grammarians. In this case it’s necessary)

     We really have evolved into a society that believes they have the unassailable right to question another’s personal practices, judge them right or wrong, then execute that judgment.

   This stranger’s hypocrisy also left me dumbfounded; ‘Judgy-Wudgy’ was larger than me. I wouldn’t have been amazed if she pulled out her driver’s license to reveal her name to be ‘Mrs. Dementia Bizarro’.
 
   This is another reason why ‘self-checkout’ has become my favored means of merch-purchase; if boorish strangers presume that I actually eat everything that I buy, what must the cashier be thinking when bagging up my goods.

      This is my world, readers.

     And so, the push-n-whoosh continues. Minus 2,000 goes on. My mall-buddies are the few champions of my efforts that I know.

     Now, it’s time to go make that taco salad. Qué contradicción con la dieta, el cinco de mayo!