11003 geting to know people,weight problems and fitness

One of the problems of living here and not just for us… there is a recognised problem throughout Italy these days that many young people are seriously overweight… causing concern for the health services … at the very least
This is obviously a problem not unique to Italy and the Italian way of life but having discussed recently eating out here and the food one can easily find that if you spend too much time in Italian restaurants or eating out with friends the amount of food consumed will lead to the very real problem of where does it all go and how do you get rid of it … before the next huge meal….
It does seem almost compulsory here that at least three courses are consumed… I used to wonder if Italian families just presented these huge meals to impress the guest… but realise now that they eat like that all the time… fine… but since the advent of mass ownership of the car… and the fact that we all seem to drive everywhere and walk little it can lead to the sort of self questioning about how to get rid of it….
For myself I have quite a lucky metabolism in that sense …. Seeming to be able to burn excess calories reasonably quickly… and as I also enjoy working outside and have enough to do with either our own work or helping out friends here I seem to maintain a reasonable balance… problems do occur when every time you do something for someone you then get fed …excessively amount wise to what I would normally eat at home… or because we have clients that arrive from outside Italy …often at weekends we can find ourselves not eating out just once at the weekend but three times….ok not every weekend but often enough that sometimes you almost grown at the prospect…. Add to that eating out with parents of other children… work colleagues … and neighbours … a sort of normal Italian life style which I enjoy and would not give up for anything it is easy to see why problems do occur here with weightr…..
So I manage with my own sort of manual DIY activity… say in the winter I like cutting wood by hand for the fire …instead of using the chain saw…for a start although it may seem weird its very relaxing where as a chain saw is noisy, smelly and totally un relaxing….
Of course we have dogs… and we are lucky that within a hundred metres of the house we can be on forest footpaths that if we choose to we could basically walk on from Abruzzo to the Marche without touching public highway…….
However this time of year with shorter days its sometimes difficult to manage to get out… which leads to the reason for the post I guess in a roundabout sort of way… my wife decided a while back to start using the gym… its all very serious… you get signed off by the doctor to be allowed to do it…they give you an instructor who starts you off on a routine of exercises and machines… and these are monitored and updated as and when they feel you have achieved a certain level…
Beyond all this and a surprise for my wife is the sort of jovialness of the place… and the wide use made of it by all generations and even as a sort of therapeutic area….
She recounts all to me… as to be honest I have never set foot in the place… special classes where they have a group of blind people come along…. Clubs of senior citizens… that turn up… do their warm up in the machine area and then off to a specific class… groups of children that turn up for swimming pool exercises…. And of course an area set off for those that do serious workouts… the sort of fitness fanatics….
People of all shapes and sizes and it seems here without that sort of fear that I would have associated with a sort of sporty type of venue such as this of not being the perfect shape… she has made friends that include various youngsters that have obvious weight problems …generally caused by over feeding … who seem t be able to happily walk in and get on with things without concern… a hard thing for an adolescent I would say … but the atmosphere seems to be full of encouragement and without obvious critical looks…..
In all it seems to be a very sociable sort of part of life here… well attended by all sorts… the costs here to my mind being relatively low… so apart from the benefits to health these places seem to offer a good way to meet a whole mass of people and if moving to a foreign country with few friends available at the start it seems to me an excellent way to start to integrate… ok many live in rural areas and have neighbours who invite you in all the time…but after a while many of these friends …generally of the older generation because everyone younger is out working provide a somewhat limited experience of life here…. We might tend to be looking for something further and not sure about how to go about it without say the necessary language skills…
To me it seems this is an easy way without even being a fitness fanatic… a thing that I have always associated with these sorts of clubs of doing something that does not require a high level of language skills…a good reason to have a morning away from the house without say visiting a shopping centre… a bit more social than a walk in the country… with the dog and seeing no one….and above all a good excuse for going out at the weekend to eat…because you have worked off the excess from the week before
Must say from what I have heard of the place I am more than impressed not by the exercise regime…and that is taken seriously but the fact that this is such a typical Italian take on things…. It becomes a very social place with most taking the disciplines and classes with a sort of loud neighbourliness which tends to involve all… so if feeling a bit out of things here…or fed up just talking to the other half or the cranky neighbour down the road there is an easy way to my mind of starting to expand your life here very easily…
And most importantly to my mind without that sort of Anglos Saxon attitude of cold shoulders and freezing looks … as they keep the space around them a sort of don’t touch me zone…..