In
diet news I have now tried my week without exercise. I felt lazy and fat
for not going and didn’t really spend my time much more productively.
Thus I have reasoned the gym and exercise are still
worthwhile as part of my weekly schedule. I snuck in a quick visit on
Sunday playing squash with a friend which was pretty fun, and also
spawned the conversation I’m going to write about today.
We
were basically discussing ‘being thin’ versus ‘being fit’. My objective
for the last year has been the former, but she’s quite far ahead of me
on that and so her objective has been the latter.
Having shunned weights for the majority of my workout practice I was
reticent to agree initially but that was because I was looking at it
from my point of view – I still need to lose weight and building muscle
doesn’t do that for me. From her point of view,
however, cardio is next to useless for building upper body strength and
so is far less important to her as part of a workout. So we kind of
went round and round in our discussion without really getting anywhere.
I
didn’t have the above revelation until yesterday evening, so was at
least half to blame for our conversation becoming a little circular. I
blame the fact that I was tired from the workout and
was recovering from being beaten by a girl at squash, which are
terrible excuses but it’s the best I can manage. I did accept that my
upper body strength was not what I wanted it to be, however, and also
that I would be changing my workout system to build
on this come the turning of my twenty-sixth year. That being in the
very near future, however, I wondered if it was worth waiting.
My
quandary comes from the fact that I originally started my diet, and this
record of it, in the pursuit of becoming thin and set out to achieve
that goal within a year. I am reluctant to start
doing weight work at the gym, most likely only because I haven’t done
any of it before and don’t really know what I would do, because that
year is not quite up yet. However after the above conversation with my
friend I’ve realised my goal was flawed from the
outset – or perhaps ‘restricted’ is a better word. While weight loss
was my primary goal, secondary to that was being in shape. This appears
to have been an unconscious aim, so much so that it took me a year to
realise and/or accept it.
Perhaps
it was also related to what I like to think of realistic achievement
setting; when I started my diet I was 18st and 9lbs – 261lbs – and at
that stage being fit and in shape was an unrealistic
goal in the conceivable future. However, now I’m in a much better place
to achieve that goal so I could – and probably will – change my targets
for my fitness regime to include a little more muscle and weight work.
My arms are looking a bit spindly and I don’t
think that’s just down to a skewed perspective from having been fat.
I’m still pretty terrible at pull ups so that’s something I definitely
want to work on.
What
I am trying to drive at is that each person’s diet and exercise
decisions are their own, and there is only one way a plan is going to
work for that person – if they like it or not. Humans
are incredibly capable when it comes to finding ways not to do things
that they don’t want to – so good in fact that they sometimes find
themselves struggling against their own instinctive need to avoid them –
this is probably a socio-culturally influenced
conclusion so isn’t a hard-and-fast scientific rule, for those of you
about to reject my theory. So if someone tells you
this is what you must do and you disagree then you will find ways
to avoid doing it, or to disprove their statement. If you don’t want to
do something your instinctive response – somewhat obviously – will be
to not do it. It is ingrained at some primal
level. This is why habits are so hard to break, and why we look for
patterns in everything.
The
trick is not to break habits, but change them. Craft your responses and
behaviours like an artisan creates a sculpture; little by little and
adapting older parts as new ideas form. You can
become a work of art, but that does require effort. Make the effort,
make yourself want to make the effort, and you’ll find yourself
achieving a lot more. No, it’s not easy, but do it bit by awkward bit
and you will end up with a whole you have reformed in
an image you wanted. If you change your mind, you can change that form
even as you go.
So,
Katie, I’m sorry I was stuck in my point of view too much we could have
a proper discussion about fitness and working out. I’ll have a more
open mind next time and you can show me around
the weight room more. I will change my goals and my methods so that
they come closer to the design I want to achieve. I will also beat you
at squash, but that’s a goal for the middle future I think – especially
considering how much time I spent running into
walls.
