Reading Is Making You Fat

How’s that for an eye-catching headline? And I hate to say it, but in some ways, I think it’s true (after all, this is Fun ‘Fact’ Friday). Reading, and writing, is a sedentary activity. People say, “curl up in bed with a good book” not “let’s go on a hike with our new book!”.  And, in the past couple of months, I’ve seen myself gain a tiny bit of weight. This clearly does not have anything to do with my unrelenting sweet tooth.  It has much to do with the fact that I wake up, walk five feet to the subway station, sit on the subway for thirty minutes, walk briskly for ten minutes to the office, sit at a desk for eight hours, walk briskly for ten minutes to the subway station, sit on the subway for thirty minutes, walk five feet to my apartment, cook dinner, and then, more often than not, sit down to read a manuscript or read a book or write a blog post or write my story. Sit sit sit sit sit!

I’ve tried to come up with a solution to this, but it’s hard!  I need to be reading and writing- it’s not (just) that I’m lazy and like lying in bed all afternoon (who doesn’t?). My best solution so far?  Audiobooks.  They can go anywhere with you- on a walk, to the gym, you can even listen while you’re vacuuming.  You can be active AND read!  Lately, I’ve been listening to White Cat by Holly Black on my commute and have surprisingly loved it.

I never thought I’d like audiobooks. I am very much a visual learner and I thought I’d get lost listening to a book rather than reading the text on a page. Not so! If you have hesitations like me I suggest you try one audiobook first before brushing the concept aside.

The one downside is that audiobooks are expensive.  From Amazon, White Cat will cost you around $30 for CDs or $23 for a direct download to your computer. I got mine for free with a 30-day trial to Audible.com. It’s a great way to test whether audiobooks work for you or not! Be forewarned, though, that Audible.com is an Amazon.com company and even if they don’t ask for your credit card information, Amazon.com has it on file to automatically pay for your membership when your free trial is up. (Yep, had to make some angry phone calls about that mishap). But the library always has audiobooks, too!

Oh, and if you still need a solution for the sit sit sit-ing of writers, author Helene Boudreau has come up with a solution (Thanks to upcoming Katherine Tegen author of Incarnate, Jodi Meadows, for tweeting about that ages ago).