Good health and fitness are artificial, like everything else.
Have you ever stopped and thought about how incredibly wonderful, beautiful, weird, and simultaneously horrific our world is? We have done some great things, transcending our humble origins as amoeba swimming seas and monkeys climbing trees. We drove a car on the moon and created the large hadron collider. However, before we pat ourselves on the back let's remember we also created reality shows, huge differences in the distribution of wealth, and Angry Birds.
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| Harsh but mostly true. |
As a species, we are nothing if not a paradox, and as far as we know, we are the only one actively creating environments that are detrimental to ourselves. The thing is, we mean well, it just comes out wrong. Eating and working out are areas of life where this discrepancy shines forth all the time.
The Foodgasm: Pleasure vs. Nutrition
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Is this necessary for survival? No. Am I gonna eat it anyway? Hells to the YES!
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Humans use chemical energy derived from consuming and breaking down different substances; Modern humans call this food. We have taste and smell to help us determine what we want. The problem is, what we want is not usually what we need. Through millions of years of mammalian evolution, hard times with long periods of little nourishment, we have evolved the desire for foods with a high energy return; fats and carbohydrates. Also, through the wonderful process of natural selection, guess which ones of our ancestors survived these? Yup, the fat, greedy, violent ones. Those who were strong and vicious enough to secure food survived. The implication is that as a species, we have evolved to want lots of food (especially fats and sugars). This explains why you get those unexpected cravings for junk food, even though you know it's not good for you. It's a conflict between your instinct-driven, lizard brain, and your sense of reason. In pre-historic times, this wasn't an issue. You simply ate whatever you found. Fat storage was considered a good thing, and many ancient cultures viewed excess weight as desireable. Now, however, we technically have unlimited access to whatever foods we want, be they good or bad for you (and lets face it, 90% of the things in mot supermarkets make you fat). Assuming you are an adult responsible for her own decisions, there is no-one there to limit you besides yourself. Honestly, I don't trust myself. I would say that on average, people give in to their instincts more often than reason. This is evidenced by the fact that in the western world (and now, Asia), obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and general poor health is rampant. Even in Oslo, Norway (where I currently live), a country whose inhabitants generally have healthy lifestyles, obesity and poor health is on the rise. Our artificially created environments are winning, and they are claiming our health and good physiques as their trophies. No wonder, its like putting a tired, fat kid in a candy store where everything is free and then telling him to pay for a stalk of celery with 10 pushups. He'd most likely give you the finger and start stuffing his face.
This is our caveman food dilemma. So, how do we combat this trend? Nutritionists, fitness experts, health workers, doctors, and psychologists work tirelessly trying to force people to eat things they hate, and to not eat things they like, so they can live longer and feel healthier. The entire health and fitness field is an artificial method used to restore balance. To help us fight ourselves.
Working Out: Life Support for a Lazy Body
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| Behold, the future. |
Exercise is a perfect example of this. Our bodies evolved over millions of years to run in the forest, hunt, gather, climb - so we could get as much as possible of that fatty, nutrient rich food that was so scare at the time. The time gave credence to the statement "Only the fittest survive". A fit human was a living human. Period. Being unhealthy and out of shape is pathologic. When humans are in good shape, we are essentially "normal", or, as we should be. This is why we feel so much better when we are in shape; We don't get sick as much, we experience less pain, we have more energy, and even perform better sexually. Movement is medicine. Even in fairly recent times, humans regularly performed manual labour, stimulating our bodies physically. Recent developments and the division of labour have led to us spend most of our day either sitting down to work or performing a movement repetitively and monotonously over time; both equally detrimental to us. This is the caveman movement dilemma. We have created an environment that is essentially unsuited to our movement needs. An average day for an office worker looks something like this: Get out of bed, sit in your car to drive to work, sit for eight hours, drive home, sit on your couch because your so "exhausted", and finally lie down in bed. Rinse and repeat. The net result of this for most people is obesity, low energy, depression, and diminished sex drive.
How has it come to this? Again, due to the in-discrepancy between our instincts and environment. Pre-historic man was in good shape because he had to be. As such, his body worked to be as efficient as possible, both with regard to body composition and movement. If you were to lie down and not move at all for several weeks, most of the muscle in your body would atrophy (disappear), and you would be a bag of bones. The body conserves what it does not need, and muscle is expensive. It costs a lot of training and high quality nutrients to maintain. But it is worth the price. Not paying the price results in all of the bad things mentioned above, along with the inevitable future of heart disease, hip/knee replacement surgery, liposuction, and loss of function.
How do we fight this? Well, exercise is our way of artificially restoring humans to a state of normality. It is the prescribed medicine for this illness. Luckily, you don't need much. We are (thankfully) not required to wrestle bears for sustenance any more, and as such our needs have changed. At the "bear" minimum (insert studio laughter here), we need to train enough to not feel pain, prevent muscoskeletal injuries, stay lean, and have good internal organ health. However, if doing the bare minimum where all that was necessary, we would simply strap ourselves to tubes being fed intravenously with a nutrient solution while eletrodes periodically zapped our muscles to keep them alive; our brains hooked up to a supercomputer where the newly digitized mind could roam the interwebz for all eternity.
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| And I'm pretty sure it would look something like this. |
Despite looking cool, it's not a prospect I'm overly exited about. Personally, I want to have more than the bare minimum of physical prowess. I want to be able to lift heavy things, run up a flight of stairs, and move and explore our earth without nearly collapsing from exertion. Most importantly, I want to take care of my body because it carries my brain, and is thus the vessel of my soul. Not taking care of it is disrespecting yourself and the gift of life the universe has given you. Think about that when you are trying to motivate yourself to work out. And remember that when you do treat yourself, it will be that much more satisfying. The battle is on, and its us against ourselves. Good luck all you awesome cavemen (and cavewomen) out there. And as Spock would say:
Live long and prosper.
