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Getting healthy: Ties in with Lil's weight loss thread.
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<blockquote data-quote="SuZir" data-source="post: 648614" data-attributes="member: 14557"><p>Lil: That also depends where you are in Europe. Many parts are tight and things are close, some not so much. I live in the part where things are not so far generally (though we ourselves happen to live near most of the things we need.) But in more secluded areas it is common that nearest hospital is few hours away and if you need a police the nearest patrol may be 200 miles from you. Of course not so many people live on those areas, but they are populated. And of course, when distances start to get bigger, people use cars. However the big difference is, that our cities are built pedestrians in mind, yours are built for cars. Part of that of course is, that most of our cities were already quite laid out before cars were invented and many of your cities have gotten from somewhat small to huge after it. Our tight cities can simply not function, if everyone would drive a car to work or shopping and because of that lots of choices are made, that favour other option.</p><p></p><p>I live in area, that used to be rural and is now quickly going suburban with pockets of rural (our own 'rural pocket' is getting very small, when I look around in my garden, I see rural landscape, but less than half mile from us to any direction is tight upper middle class suburb and new houses being built all the time.) If I want to go shopping on the down town of nearby big city (over million habitants, metropolitan area (in which we are included) bigger), while distance to the most central point of it is only 20 miles from my house, it would easily take an hour to drive and parking would be close to 10 bucks an hour. Or I could walk half an mile to the nearest bus stop, take a bus (about 20 minutes) to nearest subway station and subway to downtown (10 minutes) (cost would be about 7 bucks) or I could drive to nearest train station (about 10 minutes), have free parking and take a local train (10 minutes, 3 bucks) to downtown. You see how easy it is to impact people's choices by subsiding and favouring some transport methods over others? <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> </p><p></p><p>In smaller cities driving is of course quicker and cheaper, but even in small cities taking a bike is often quicker in less than 3 mile distances. And even in small towns parking usually costs quite a lot in downtown area. It is usually the biggest aim of city councils to keep their downtowns lively, keep people walking around and visiting all the small businesses and shopping centres. Bigger international chains are not always too happy with city planning, because they would often want to build big stores outside of the cities (usually next to high ways) and city councils tend to make that difficult (either demanding them to stay in down towns or at least lotting all the big chains to same area outside the downtown so that people can walk from store to store and public transport to that area can be arranged. But because the small businesses in the downtown tend to be big employers and actually pay their taxes to that area, keeping market favourable to those tends to be priority to city councils. </p><p></p><p>Favouring pedestrians/cars in city planning is the constant debating topic in city politics, but in our bigger cities it is usually so that there is no other choice than to favour public transition and pedestrians. Simply not enough room to make roads wider nor room for parking and also environmental and air quality concerns play a part. </p><p></p><p>And MWM is right, I'm not comfortable right down naming the country I live in. While some have guessed and for some I have mentioned it in private conversations, and it is not a big secret per se, these are very popular forums and spelling it right here in the open would make my son rather easily identifiable for someone from my country and having some information of our sport scene. And some of the things I have written are very private to him. And maybe even worse, someone could make a wrong guess and identify someone not my son to be the person I have written here (it happened that some time ago an athlete came out with somewhat similar issues than my son has in the press, age is also about right etc. so someone could easily assume, that that guy is my son and assume that issues I talk here are his, which would of course harm that guy's reputation.) Let's just say that general vicinity of Scandinavia is about right and let that be it. </p><p></p><p>And the topic of smoking: I had to do some googling on that, but seems like we smoke about as much than people in USA. Figures are getting lower, especially among the young, but still about every sixth person is a smoker. If there is any difference to the USA, I would guess that passive smoking is less common here. I have noticed that some of you have house rules about not smoking in the house and so on, and that feels rather old fashioned to me. Somke thirty years ago it could had been something worth mentioning that you are not allowing smoking in your house also around here, but nowadays no one assumes it would be okay to smoke in someone's home or car. People who do smoke do not smoke on their houses or cars either. Basically the stereotype is that only old drunks or druggies etc. smoke inside, not your average working, tax paying citizens. I again have to say I don't know anyone who would smoke in their house or car and I know many smokers. Even my husband is unfortunately picked the habit again due the stress Ache's crash and staying at home last fall caused. He tried to quit again in January but made it only three days, but he is scheduling an appointment with his doctor now to ask the rx for Chantix. For him the issue is not so much the physical withdrawal symptoms but the mental relief/calming down effect he is used to receive from smoking. </p><p></p><p>I absolutely hate to say that, but Ache is the biggest reason husband didn't kick the smoking habit long time ago already. He taught himself to go out and have a cig, when Ache was too much for him. When he got too angry or too frustrated to be constructive with him or when Ache was other ways stressing him out too much. He quit after Ache moved out and it was in fact quite easy for him at the time. He picked up smoking again after Ache's crash this fall to deal with stress and frustration it caused to us. But whole he is out of the house again, it is not easy for husband to quit this time. He has taught himself to calm down and cut the worrying with cigs and gas difficult time dealing with that without. And because it is not Ache's daily drama, about which we are mostly blissfully unaware anyway, that is eating us alive but the end game, detaching, 'not my monkey, not my circus'-type of thinking is not helping. Just last night I woked up around 3 a.m. to husband sneaking out from the bed to balcony to have a cig and followed him to ask what is wrong and we had one of the more frank discussions about the situation. We can try to calm ourselves up with mental tricks all we want, but the end game is clear. If Ache will kill himself, it is the end of our world as we know it and there is no going around that. We can't prevent it, our ability to help him is limited, but not being in control of any of it doesn't cut down the devastation of that possibility a bit. Of course husband ruining his health by smoking doesn't make the situation any better so we decided he should try the medications that can cut the mental relief he gets from cigs down so he is forced to find some other way to deal with the stress that is not going to go away any time soon. (While Ache seems to be doing relatively fine just now, we will never again rely on that, it would feel foolish to even hope, that where wouldn't be that next call from someone starting with 'Sorry to tell you, but we have some bad news...')</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="SuZir, post: 648614, member: 14557"] Lil: That also depends where you are in Europe. Many parts are tight and things are close, some not so much. I live in the part where things are not so far generally (though we ourselves happen to live near most of the things we need.) But in more secluded areas it is common that nearest hospital is few hours away and if you need a police the nearest patrol may be 200 miles from you. Of course not so many people live on those areas, but they are populated. And of course, when distances start to get bigger, people use cars. However the big difference is, that our cities are built pedestrians in mind, yours are built for cars. Part of that of course is, that most of our cities were already quite laid out before cars were invented and many of your cities have gotten from somewhat small to huge after it. Our tight cities can simply not function, if everyone would drive a car to work or shopping and because of that lots of choices are made, that favour other option. I live in area, that used to be rural and is now quickly going suburban with pockets of rural (our own 'rural pocket' is getting very small, when I look around in my garden, I see rural landscape, but less than half mile from us to any direction is tight upper middle class suburb and new houses being built all the time.) If I want to go shopping on the down town of nearby big city (over million habitants, metropolitan area (in which we are included) bigger), while distance to the most central point of it is only 20 miles from my house, it would easily take an hour to drive and parking would be close to 10 bucks an hour. Or I could walk half an mile to the nearest bus stop, take a bus (about 20 minutes) to nearest subway station and subway to downtown (10 minutes) (cost would be about 7 bucks) or I could drive to nearest train station (about 10 minutes), have free parking and take a local train (10 minutes, 3 bucks) to downtown. You see how easy it is to impact people's choices by subsiding and favouring some transport methods over others? ;) In smaller cities driving is of course quicker and cheaper, but even in small cities taking a bike is often quicker in less than 3 mile distances. And even in small towns parking usually costs quite a lot in downtown area. It is usually the biggest aim of city councils to keep their downtowns lively, keep people walking around and visiting all the small businesses and shopping centres. Bigger international chains are not always too happy with city planning, because they would often want to build big stores outside of the cities (usually next to high ways) and city councils tend to make that difficult (either demanding them to stay in down towns or at least lotting all the big chains to same area outside the downtown so that people can walk from store to store and public transport to that area can be arranged. But because the small businesses in the downtown tend to be big employers and actually pay their taxes to that area, keeping market favourable to those tends to be priority to city councils. Favouring pedestrians/cars in city planning is the constant debating topic in city politics, but in our bigger cities it is usually so that there is no other choice than to favour public transition and pedestrians. Simply not enough room to make roads wider nor room for parking and also environmental and air quality concerns play a part. And MWM is right, I'm not comfortable right down naming the country I live in. While some have guessed and for some I have mentioned it in private conversations, and it is not a big secret per se, these are very popular forums and spelling it right here in the open would make my son rather easily identifiable for someone from my country and having some information of our sport scene. And some of the things I have written are very private to him. And maybe even worse, someone could make a wrong guess and identify someone not my son to be the person I have written here (it happened that some time ago an athlete came out with somewhat similar issues than my son has in the press, age is also about right etc. so someone could easily assume, that that guy is my son and assume that issues I talk here are his, which would of course harm that guy's reputation.) Let's just say that general vicinity of Scandinavia is about right and let that be it. And the topic of smoking: I had to do some googling on that, but seems like we smoke about as much than people in USA. Figures are getting lower, especially among the young, but still about every sixth person is a smoker. If there is any difference to the USA, I would guess that passive smoking is less common here. I have noticed that some of you have house rules about not smoking in the house and so on, and that feels rather old fashioned to me. Somke thirty years ago it could had been something worth mentioning that you are not allowing smoking in your house also around here, but nowadays no one assumes it would be okay to smoke in someone's home or car. People who do smoke do not smoke on their houses or cars either. Basically the stereotype is that only old drunks or druggies etc. smoke inside, not your average working, tax paying citizens. I again have to say I don't know anyone who would smoke in their house or car and I know many smokers. Even my husband is unfortunately picked the habit again due the stress Ache's crash and staying at home last fall caused. He tried to quit again in January but made it only three days, but he is scheduling an appointment with his doctor now to ask the rx for Chantix. For him the issue is not so much the physical withdrawal symptoms but the mental relief/calming down effect he is used to receive from smoking. I absolutely hate to say that, but Ache is the biggest reason husband didn't kick the smoking habit long time ago already. He taught himself to go out and have a cig, when Ache was too much for him. When he got too angry or too frustrated to be constructive with him or when Ache was other ways stressing him out too much. He quit after Ache moved out and it was in fact quite easy for him at the time. He picked up smoking again after Ache's crash this fall to deal with stress and frustration it caused to us. But whole he is out of the house again, it is not easy for husband to quit this time. He has taught himself to calm down and cut the worrying with cigs and gas difficult time dealing with that without. And because it is not Ache's daily drama, about which we are mostly blissfully unaware anyway, that is eating us alive but the end game, detaching, 'not my monkey, not my circus'-type of thinking is not helping. Just last night I woked up around 3 a.m. to husband sneaking out from the bed to balcony to have a cig and followed him to ask what is wrong and we had one of the more frank discussions about the situation. We can try to calm ourselves up with mental tricks all we want, but the end game is clear. If Ache will kill himself, it is the end of our world as we know it and there is no going around that. We can't prevent it, our ability to help him is limited, but not being in control of any of it doesn't cut down the devastation of that possibility a bit. Of course husband ruining his health by smoking doesn't make the situation any better so we decided he should try the medications that can cut the mental relief he gets from cigs down so he is forced to find some other way to deal with the stress that is not going to go away any time soon. (While Ache seems to be doing relatively fine just now, we will never again rely on that, it would feel foolish to even hope, that where wouldn't be that next call from someone starting with 'Sorry to tell you, but we have some bad news...') [/QUOTE]
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