Never the Twain
Oct. 20th, 2004 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqThis is my second attempt to take the following group of incoherent thoughts about fit vs. fat people and put them onto the blog. Yesterday's attempt took over an hour and, while it was large, it was also completely disorganized. Into the bit bucket it went.
There is an attitude I'd encountered a lot when I was growing up. Not so much as an adult, though I'm sure it's there - just better hidden. It's the idea that being overweight is some sort of moral failing. That the fact that I'm fat makes me a bad person. I used to believe it too.
The idea comes (as most human misunderstandings do) from a lack of empathy and a tendency to over simplify things. The empathy thing I'll address in a bit, but first the over simplification.
If you eat less and exercise more you'll lose weight. Well duh. And if teens would just abstain from sex until they're married we'd have less STDs and teen pregnancy. These statements are both superficially true, but they both suffer from oversimplification. So why is it that abstinence-only sex education results in higher rates of STD transmission, higher rates of teen pregnancy and an overall earlier age for sex? Because shit happens. Because you find yourself in unusual situations. Because people have many different motivations and sometimes they work at cross purposes. Because when things are at their darkest you'll seek comfort in something that's not good for you. Because sometimes you don't see alternatives or you just don't know better.
I'm convinced that knowledge is the best weapon against despair. I think that's why comprehensive sex education that includes birth control techniques is more effective than abstinence-only sex education. I also think that the school system's physical education classes should be comprehensive fitness programs, not sports-based classes where the object is to divide the kids into winners and losers (or worse, the dodge ball court, where you divide the kids into bullies and victims. Yeah, I'm still bitter about elementary school, you got a problem with that?). Mostly we need to find out how to motivate people to be more active.
We need to stop treating a complex physical and psychological issue like it's a simplistic moral one.
Empathy is the other issue. Fit people and fat people live in two different worlds, and I think they just flat out don't understand each other. Let me try to describe the experience of both sides.
When you're out of shape, exercise hurts. It goes on hurting for days after. It is stupidly easy to over do it when exercising. Pain is an excellent teacher, but what it teaches most often is avoidance. Fit people don't realize just how hard it is for a fat person to even get started. Try to imagine if someone told you that smashing one of your fingers with a hammer was good for you and that you should do it three times a week. You'd think they were crazy.
On the other side, when you're fit, pushing your body can be like taking a sports car out onto the highway and opening it up. When you've exercised regularly long enough to start seeing the benefits, it feels good - you miss it if you're forced to stop for more than a few days. You may have minor aches and pains but they pale into insignificance compared to the wash of endorphins you're in. I've experienced runners high exactly once. It's like a surge of accomplishment combined with a sort of invincibility - you think you can run forever and like it. To quote Gonzo the Great - I'm going back there someday.
Identical activities, but one person experiences pleasure and the other pain. Is it any wonder that they each think the other is crazy. I could pound the point home with other examples - the experience of participating in sports is positive for fit people and negative for fat ones. hell, being fit just gives you more options that the out-of-shape have never considered.
One of the things I like about living at the dawn of the twenty-first century is the pace of change. Some people hate it and long for the mythical good old days. Not me. We're gaining knowledge at rate that would be unheard of a generation ago. I could go on and on about civil rights, scientific/technological advancements and the westernization of insular communities, but this is an entry about fitness.
What have we discarded - the harmful notion of no pain, no gain. What have we gained - some ideas about how fast we can get people into shape from a dead start. We also know more about the psychology of motivation - for example, that telling them they're bad people for being out of shape is going to push them away from the gym, not towards it. We can find a pace for beginner's exercise that's not going to hurt. We know that there is no single path to fitness and that people are going to like different things. I like running, a lot of people find it boring. Other's like competitive sports, but it just pisses me off. The point is give them options.
Well, I think I've made my point.
There is an attitude I'd encountered a lot when I was growing up. Not so much as an adult, though I'm sure it's there - just better hidden. It's the idea that being overweight is some sort of moral failing. That the fact that I'm fat makes me a bad person. I used to believe it too.
The idea comes (as most human misunderstandings do) from a lack of empathy and a tendency to over simplify things. The empathy thing I'll address in a bit, but first the over simplification.
If you eat less and exercise more you'll lose weight. Well duh. And if teens would just abstain from sex until they're married we'd have less STDs and teen pregnancy. These statements are both superficially true, but they both suffer from oversimplification. So why is it that abstinence-only sex education results in higher rates of STD transmission, higher rates of teen pregnancy and an overall earlier age for sex? Because shit happens. Because you find yourself in unusual situations. Because people have many different motivations and sometimes they work at cross purposes. Because when things are at their darkest you'll seek comfort in something that's not good for you. Because sometimes you don't see alternatives or you just don't know better.
I'm convinced that knowledge is the best weapon against despair. I think that's why comprehensive sex education that includes birth control techniques is more effective than abstinence-only sex education. I also think that the school system's physical education classes should be comprehensive fitness programs, not sports-based classes where the object is to divide the kids into winners and losers (or worse, the dodge ball court, where you divide the kids into bullies and victims. Yeah, I'm still bitter about elementary school, you got a problem with that?). Mostly we need to find out how to motivate people to be more active.
We need to stop treating a complex physical and psychological issue like it's a simplistic moral one.
Empathy is the other issue. Fit people and fat people live in two different worlds, and I think they just flat out don't understand each other. Let me try to describe the experience of both sides.
When you're out of shape, exercise hurts. It goes on hurting for days after. It is stupidly easy to over do it when exercising. Pain is an excellent teacher, but what it teaches most often is avoidance. Fit people don't realize just how hard it is for a fat person to even get started. Try to imagine if someone told you that smashing one of your fingers with a hammer was good for you and that you should do it three times a week. You'd think they were crazy.
On the other side, when you're fit, pushing your body can be like taking a sports car out onto the highway and opening it up. When you've exercised regularly long enough to start seeing the benefits, it feels good - you miss it if you're forced to stop for more than a few days. You may have minor aches and pains but they pale into insignificance compared to the wash of endorphins you're in. I've experienced runners high exactly once. It's like a surge of accomplishment combined with a sort of invincibility - you think you can run forever and like it. To quote Gonzo the Great - I'm going back there someday.
Identical activities, but one person experiences pleasure and the other pain. Is it any wonder that they each think the other is crazy. I could pound the point home with other examples - the experience of participating in sports is positive for fit people and negative for fat ones. hell, being fit just gives you more options that the out-of-shape have never considered.
One of the things I like about living at the dawn of the twenty-first century is the pace of change. Some people hate it and long for the mythical good old days. Not me. We're gaining knowledge at rate that would be unheard of a generation ago. I could go on and on about civil rights, scientific/technological advancements and the westernization of insular communities, but this is an entry about fitness.
What have we discarded - the harmful notion of no pain, no gain. What have we gained - some ideas about how fast we can get people into shape from a dead start. We also know more about the psychology of motivation - for example, that telling them they're bad people for being out of shape is going to push them away from the gym, not towards it. We can find a pace for beginner's exercise that's not going to hurt. We know that there is no single path to fitness and that people are going to like different things. I like running, a lot of people find it boring. Other's like competitive sports, but it just pisses me off. The point is give them options.
Well, I think I've made my point.
