Editor’s Note: Improve your health – one gantry at a time
Make e-tolls work for you.
![](https://images.caxton.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2014/02/nickyb1.jpg)
As e-tolls continue to plague motorists on a daily basis I decided it was high time I found something positive to use them for: Enter #ThE-tollsDiet.
Assuming you aren’t going to register for e-tolls, and thus not benefit from any discounts, you can expect to be charged up to R20 for driving under certain gantries. Now, while we need to recognise that at some point we may well have to pay Sanral (otherwise known as South Africa’s National Rip-off Agents League) – and suddenly having to find all that money at once might prove rather catastrophic to our budgets.
This is where #ThE-tollsDiet comes into play.
The next time you feel like a Steers burger, pie, chocolate or Coke, rather take the money you were going to spend and put it into your #ThE-tollsDietJar – preferably in coins not notes. For each deposit made you are now allowed to drive under one gantry.
This way when Sanral’s legal team comes knocking at your door the new slimmer you will be able to hand over a nice heavy piggybank filled with your toll fees for them to carry and count, without it impacting your monthly budget.
Any diet needs an exercise routine too: that’s where the #E-tollsExercisePlan comes in.
Unlike the #ThE-tollsDiet the #E-tollsExercisePlan can be used by both occasional and regular highway users.
Each time you travel under a gantry you will alternate between squeezing and releasing your gluteus maximus muscles (your ‘bottom’ for you confused folk) for 30 seconds until you reach the next gantry at which time you then start squeezing and releasing your abdominal muscles (‘undercover six pack’) for 30 seconds.
When you get home you’re to pick up your #ThE-tollsDietJar (if you’re following the #ThE-tollsDiet) and hold it with both hands, stretched out horizontal to the ground in front of you while doing three reps of 10 lunges. Over the following months, as your fitness level increases, so too will the weight of #ThE-tollsDietJar as you continue to fill it.
The scope of exercises that can be linked into the #E-tollsExercisePlan is limitless and after trademarking both #ThE-tollsDiet and #E-tollsExercisePlan I think I’ll start working on a book, a board game and a reality show. After all, if Hollywood’s anything to go by, this could be a hit.
*Please do take care, this diet is for rebelliously unregistered occasional highway users only not daily e-toll victims.
*Check with your doctor before embarking on #ThE-tollsDiet or the #E-tollsExercisePlan