With the New Year approaching, people start making all kinds of promises and resolutions to themselves to ensure that the next year is better than the last. I'm all for reflection, progress, and self-improvement, but I feel about New Year's the same way I kind of feel about Christmas - a lot of the purpose, focus, and special-ness gets lost in the hype and this idea that we have to follow/keep up with what other people are doing.
So here's my quick rant on New Year's resolutions.
While waiting for my hair appointment this morning, I read a local Austin women's magazine whose January issue theme was: Fitness and Fresh Starts. Great, just in time for New Year's! I love empowering women's magazines and I love fitness, so it seemed like my cup of tea. Wrong.
The magazine was littered with advertisements for plastic surgeons, cosmetic dentists, and worst of all: fad diets. And on top of that, the magazine's idea of "fitness and fresh starts" was to tout the glory of weight loss as an optimal measure of fitness and health.
I came home to do a quick Google search of the most popular New Year's resolutions. "Lose weight" comes in the top 5 on most survey lists," and every now and then you can find a "Maintain a healthy weight" or a "Get in shape," which are "better" goals in my honest opinion (although still too ambiguous and unmeasurable to constitute good, achievable goals). Losing weight has got to be one of my least favorite goals/resolutions. Maybe because I've never had an issue with weight loss, I don't understand America's fascination and drive to lose weight and I don't really see weight loss as indicative of health and eventual happiness.
My problem with losing weight as a New Year's resolution starts with the fact that people make it their end-all be-all goal: "Well, as soon as I lose 10 pounds, I'll be good." NO! Fitness and health should not stop after you lose 10 pounds. It should be a complete healthy habits lifestyle kind of change. And, just because you're losing weight does not mean you're healthy. People lose weight from all the wrong places and with all kinds of bad diets and nutrition. My "favorite" ad from the magazine was for the hCG "diet" that prescribes homeopathic drops under the tongue as a way to reprogram the hypothalamus and a very low calorie diet: "Exercise is not needed to lose weight" it exclaims! Sickening.
Now, I'm not saying losing weight is not an admirable goal in the short-term towards overall fitness and health. I think it's a great starting point for bigger, better changes in one's life and should be implemented gradually and healthfully in daily practices (and not include homeopathic drops!). In the end, losing weight should just fall under the superordinate goal of having a healthy, functioning body that one can be happy with.
With that said, what's my New Year's resolution? Still working on that kipping pull-up! Oh, and maybe get some quad muscles so killer that a person could break their hand if they punched my leg...
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Great posting. I very much agree with what you say here. This one really hit home with me because, for every year I can remember, I said to myself "this is the year I am going to lose a bunch of weight". In fact, this is the first year, I think, that I am not resolving to "lose weight" rather, I am focusing more on lifestyle changes i.e. dialing in my diet and working on more attainable/measurable goals like "dead lift more than Ryon (tee-hee)" or "on average get to sleep around 10pm".
ReplyDeleteI think that the magazine that you read just emphasizes how dysfunctional we are as a people. There are so many fads, gimmicks, and well, just so MUCH incorrect information out there. When you cross all of that B.S. with people that want fast, easy results without a whole lot of effort, you end up with people that aren't really active participants in their health, rather just a passive passenger on the ride to obesity and type 2 diabetes, etc.
I saw something on the news this morning called "The High School Reunion Diet" which I thought was just ridiculous. The author was on and started out OK demonizing HCFS and saying that sugars and starches are "bad". He then went on to tell people to "eat whole grains, whole wheat pasta, and whole wheat bread"... WRONG. So, if you aren't going to take the time to educate YOURSELF and learn how your body uses/processes food, you aren't really doing yourself any favors by "going on {south beach, Atkins, weight watchers, LA weight-loss, the Sonoma diet, the mediterranean diet, nutrisystem, slim-fast, medi-fast, growth hormones, VLC diet}".
The very best thing anyone can do is to learn how your body works, eat foods that we (humans) are designed to eat (tweaked accordingly to how YOUR SPECIFIC body works), and work out hard. If you put the effort in, you will get the results. No free rides. End of story.
Thanks for your comment Bryan! Glad to see your making strides not just in CF, but also in your goal-setting!
ReplyDeleteI saw your Facebook link for the Reunion Diet. It's sad how people need a motivator like a high school reunion and one-upping the people that teased them in school in order to adopt (albeit short-term) health and fitness behaviors.