|
One of my goals for 2012 is to become more fit. I have a number of reasons for this, including such lofty reasons as, the better my aerobic conditioning, the less likely I am to suck through my air tanks quickly while scuba diving, and, the better our fitness, the better we're able to resist getting sick. I hate being sick. I hate even more burning up my PTO at work to stay home sick, when I'd rather use my PTO for something fun. Lying in bed, coughing, sneezing, and aching, really isn't my idea of fun. I'm not sure I want to know anyone that would consider that an enjoyable way to spend their time.
For many people, the first thing that comes to mind when they think about improving their physical fitness, is losing weight. It's an easy connection to make, since we are bombarded by advertisements on television, on the radio, and in magazines, convincing us that we'll be fit and healthy if we lose weight. This is reinforced by many in the medical field, whose first advice to any patient even remotely on the high end of their weight range, is "lose weight." If you're overweight, you know. It seems all too often that the default treatment prescribed for any overweight patient, regardless of the symptoms, is "lose weight." You could arrive at the Emergency Room with an arrow protruding from your leg, and you'd get told to lose weight.
The sad thing is, there really is no set correlation between being thin and being fit or even healthy. I can tell you that from experience. When I joined the Air Force at age 17, I was 6'2" tall and weighed 108 pounds soaking wet. I was thin. I was REALLY thin. I was not, however, that physically fit. I could not run a mile and a half when I arrived at Basic Training. Despite not weighing that much, I couldn't do a bunch of pull-ups or push-ups. I was, in all seriousness, the "before" kid in all those old Charles Atlas advertisements. Honestly - and this is no exaggeration - if I sucked in my stomach, I could look like a poster child for "Feed the Children."
At the opposite end of this spectrum is a woman, Ragen Chastain, whose blog I recently started reading. Ragen is fat. She doesn't mince words about it, nor is she ashamed of the fact. She is an outspoken advocate of the concept of "Health At Every Size," and promotes the idea of first, learning to be happy in the body we have, and second, working with our bodies to be healthy, rather than trying to force-fit our bodies into someone else's idea of how we should look. Now, lest you think that Ragen is just some fat woman who is trying to justify being lazy and overeating, she is also a champion dancer. She performs, and places very well, in professional ballroom dance competitions. She is well-educated, a successful businesswoman and Corporate CEO, and published author. She is active, fit, and fat, and constantly challenges the notion of what she is told she cannot do, just because she is fat.
Do I bring her up because either I or she wants to tell you that you should be fat? No. I bring her up because I appreciate her focus on fitness and health, instead of the typical focus so many people have of trying to get back to fitting our "skinny jeans." I bring her up because I appreciate that she is living life to the fullest, regardless of what other people tell her she can or cannot do. People told her she would never be taken seriously in competitive dancing until she lost weight, but that was before they saw her dance. Would she be a better dancer if she did lose weight? I can't say, but what I can relate, is how many people never get started on something they would love to do, because they think that first they have to lose weight, or because they aren't good-looking enough, or whatever.
If we focus on fitness and health, instead of what the scale tells us, we can actually do much more for ourselves. Weight loss often accompanies getting into better physical condition, though the scale may for a while at least, lead us to believe otherwise. Muscle is denser than fat, so if we're both building muscles and burning fat, we may see a while where the muscle weight increase is greater than the fat loss increase. What we'll also see, though, if we're not just using the scale to track our progress, is that we are stronger, that our endurance is better, and that we feel better at the activity we're enjoying.
The focus on weight as the primary goal, however, has led to many problems for people. Karen Carpenter's death brought the problem of eating disorders out into the open, and even though she was well into recovery from the mental obsession to lose more weight, she had already caused dangerous damage to her heart. Despite what the bumper stickers tell us, you CAN be "too thin."
Crash diets and our cultural fascination with "quick fixes" only exacerbates the problem. Our bodies have fat for a reason, and that is to store fuel for times when food is scarce. Without suggesting any kind of sexist tripe, it was historically more important for women. A woman's body not only has to be able to provide for her own survival, but during pregnancy and nursing, for the survival of the child. Through most of human history, the luxuries of refrigeration and rapid transportation were unavailable. Without our stores of fat, built up during the seasons when food was plentiful, we wouldn't have survived.
Rapid-loss diets trigger our bodies back into that historical mode. While our brains understand the concept of dieting, our bodies work strictly on the genetic programming built into our physiology. As far as our bodies are concerned, the diet is just another lean season, during which the shortfall of caloric intake is made up for by drawing from the fat reserves. We lose weight. The trouble is, once we've hit that target weight and feel we can start eating more normally again, our genetic programming sees it as the plentiful season. Those stores of fat that we depleted while dieting, start to get refilled against the next lean season. Remember - through much of history, this cycle of lean and plenty was an annual event for our bodies, and untold millennia of human survival has favored those that put on weight.
With a properly balanced fitness program, what we do, instead of dieting, is eat more sensibly while becoming more active. Our caloric intake may decrease some, but our caloric burn increases. We're building muscles, which requires resources. We start drawing from the fat reserves to accommodate the demand, but we're not taking in so little that we trigger the "lean season" response in our metabolisms.
This is easier if we become more active in something we enjoy. I like to ride my bicycle, but I wouldn't recommend that to someone who hates riding bikes. If they don't enjoy it, they aren't likely to stick with it. Ragen enjoys ballroom dancing, but I don't really feel much draw towards that myself. My wife and daughter both enjoy belly dancing, while I'd rather go climb the walls at our local climbing gym, Rocks and Ropes. I'm not waiting to ride my bike, or to climb the walls, until I've lost the extra pounds I've put on in middle age, or until I'm more fit. I'm going to enjoy the activities I like, and let the fitness come about as a result of those. If I drop a few pounds as well, that's fine. My wife isn't waiting to dance or to ride her recumbent trike, either. Nancy has said more than a few times that she isn't going to let being "a fat old lady" (in her words) stop her from enjoying the things she wants to do.
My wife has even started toying with the idea of signing up for this year's El Tour de Tucson, and I'm going to help and encourage her all I can. Having a tangible, realistic goal is great for keeping us motivated.
I know. I've already signed up for the 111 mile route of El Tour, and I have until November to get ready. My longest ride so far this year has been 14.25 miles. I've done it before, so I know I can do it again.
What would you really like to do? More importantly, what are you waiting for?
Ragen Chastain's blog, "Dances with Fat," can be found at http://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/
|