Raye Ann Greenbaum and Jackie Tepper
Why go to the gym when you can invite a few friends over for Mah Jongg? Why lift weights when you can lift a grandchild? This tongue-in-cheek guide to exercise may not raise your target heart rate, but it might lower your blood pressure and strengthen your smile muscles.
Raye Ann Greenbaum, an art broker, wife, mother and grandmother, and Jackie Tepper, a wedding consultant, wife, mother and grandmother, became yentas without even knowing it. Midlife came with no crisis for either but with the realization that the college diplomas they had once carried under their arms had been replaced with sagging skin. Tired of the daily barrage of 'how to,' 'why to,' and 'when to' exercise programs and diet books, they decided to take a comical approach to achieving fitness by creating imaginative routines that could be integrated into a busy social schedule without compromising the lifestyle women of a certain age enjoy.
Illustrator Betsy Hoffman is a professional artist, wife, mother, and yenta-in-training.
This book is for anyone fifty or older who wants to be on an exercise program, who needs to be on an exercise program, or who has tried exercise programs only to find them boring, strenuous, time consuming, and slow to show results.
You have a closet full of walking shoes, running shoes, step shoes, and cross trainers; more pairs of tights than Baryshnikov; and your treadmill is gathering dust in the spare bedroom.
Your gym memberships are in the multiples, and after an hour of huffing and puffing with perfectly-chiseled aerobics instructors, you find yourself easing your sorrows (or congratulating yourself on your efforts) by scarfing a pint of Ben and Jerry's most chocolate, crunchiest fudgiest ice cream.
You're tired of wondering if calories do or don't count, if you should eat more or less protein, and if your daily food groups should include red wine, white wine, or no wine. And you've vowed that if Pritikin, Ornish, Atkins, and Jenny Craig don't work this time, maybe next time you should call Kevorkian.
You're looking for exercise you're not even aware is exercise. Well, here's our solution. First, forget the weights and isometrics, forget the '10 weeks to thin thighs and flat tummies,' and please, forget trying to figure out what body type you are. Throw away the charts that show how many calories you burn by vacuuming and mopping (hopefully you hire someone who burns calories that way).
We are not doctors, exercise physiologists, nurses, or nutritionists. We're yentas. A yenta is a gabber, a know-it-all, one possessing a busy mind.
And to us, a busy mind makes a 'busybody'; hence this guide was created. Yentas can always make 'something out of nothing,' and if this book makes you smile, well, you've successfully endured your first no-sweat exercise.
This book is for you. We hope you'll like it. If not, there's always a new class starting next Tuesday....
