I think the biggest issue isn't that he might actually be in better shape than the average person who is 60 lbs overweight, but just that he likes exercising. It probably takes will power to let himself go like that.
Come to think of it, this may be closely related to "being in better shape"
If it were six weeks I would agree with you, but six months actually seems pretty reasonable to me. IME, the urge to exercise that fit people feel will have worn off by that point, and will have been replaced by a visceral aversion to strenuous physical activity. I.e., he'll have to climb over the beginner's hump at first, which is by far the worst part.
Is there any longer length of inactivity after which you'd consider this an experiment with useful lessons? One year? Five years? Or in your view is the concept just fundamentally flawed?
Without any real knowledge, like I say most things, I'm pretty sure that anyone who's ever been in really good physical shape has a serious advantage in terms of getting back into shape over someone who hasn't, and that counts with a really long level of inactivity -- years and years. (Not speaking to weight loss, just to fitness level.) But there's nothing he can do about that.
But six months seems way too short. From personal experience, bike commuting has left me way fitter, and after taking off October through March, restarting in the spring doesn't feel like I've lost much -- a couple of weeks getting back into it, and then it's the same as ever. That's not quite six months, but this guy started out fitter than I've ever been.
Another way to say my first paragraph is that I was a completely inactive child and teenager, and exercised for the first time in my life when I joined crew in college, so the first-time beginners hump is an adult memory for me. And nothing has ever been as hard as getting in shape for the first time; twenty years older, starting to run after I've taken a couple of years off doesn't suck anything like it did when I was nineteen and hadn't ever broken a sweat.
4: Huh. My experience is different--I've been in shape and out of shape a few times (with much more time spent out of shape than in; currently as out of shape as I've ever been), and it doesn't take long at all (six months sounds about right) for the getting back in shape part to become every bit as unpleasant and difficult as it is when I'm years out of shape.
Off topic, any of the NYC chapter going to this?
Right but the guy likes exercise. A lot. The proper analogy (I swear, just this one, then I'll stop wasting time on the internet) is more like: I like eating ice cream, take six months off, and then start eating ice cream again. Yum!
Without reading the link, I'm sure the guy has a fine plan, technically: if you do it, you'll lose weight and get in shape. There are a million fine plans. The question is never whether a plan is going to work. It's always whether you're actually going to execute the plan. And that is completely a mental game.
Is he going to have the mental ability to exercise the plan? Yes: he likes it.
It's not the amount of time that makes this annoying. It's the pretending to be a sincere slacker, when actually he's a gym rat counting the days until he can get back to his hobby.
1 seems quite correct to me. The mindset of the kind of person who becomes a personal trainer is sufficiently unlike mine that I don't think there's anything to be learned from this experiment that applies to me. I just have to suffer through.
Another people is that many people have a weight that their body wants to be at and will naturally return to. So he might lose the added pounds anyway without any particular effort once he stops force feeding himself.
On the other hand some professional athletes (like football players) are notorious for gaining weight when they retire and stop training.
I guess it depends on what his natural weight really is.
the guy likes exercise
Well, but this isn't necessarily some fixed characteristic of his personality. Fit people like exercise, and unfit people don't. Or, at least that's how it works for me. I hate exercise when I'm out of shape. Hate. Going to the gym seems like about the most unpleasant thing imaginable. But I've been on the other side of that line in the past, when I really enjoyed exercise. I looked forward to working out--it was often the best part of my day.
I assume the point of his being inactive for six months is at least in part to try and put himself on the other side of that line, so he can approach it more like a beginner. So that he better understands what his out of shape clients are really going through. That might allow him to help them in ways that the empty slogans and cheap pep talks ("just get out there and do it! you'll feel great!") of the perpetually fit just don't.
Intentionally becoming obese just to prove that it is possible for obese people to get fit? Just obnoxious. Definitely.
What's next years project? Get hooked on crack just to prove that rehab works?
Or intentionally omitting apostrophes just to prove . . . something.
Yeah, I haven't read the blog and don't know the guy's motivations. If it's really just to prove that his "plan" works, then yes, that's obnoxious and doesn't prove anything. I've been assuming it's more aimed at giving himself better insight into the hurdles that people who are overweight and out of shape face when they're first starting to exercise. Obvoiusly, he's a personal trainer, so that will ultimately be geared towards "I did it and so can you!", but surely he's hoping to learn something along the way.
I can't be the only person to be reminded of "Dodgeball" here, can I?
I am with Urple (though my life's story is more like LB's). That there are tons of excellent high school athletes out there who are massively out of shape, and long time losers like ms who are in OK shape later in life demonstrates that there's something going on other than some inherent or even once-learned tendency towards fitness. I don't know if thing will be as hard for this guy as for some dude in his 50s who has literally never exercised ever (probably not) but it will be pretty hard. More generally, I think it's both more accurate and better for the world to think of fitness as a series of constant, almost daily, choices that can be made rather than dividing the world into folks wjude natural state just "is" being fit and the rest of us.
It's not just important that he likes to exercise, it's also part of his job. Take another full-time job and then do your weight loss program.
Another people is that many people have a weight that their body wants to be at and will naturally return to. So he might lose the added pounds anyway without any particular effort once he stops force feeding himself.
This is exactly right. They've done forced-weight studies before, and people can keep it on for a short while, but it naturally melts off afterwards.
You have a set point, and wiggle room of about 15% on either side, and that's that. I think it's pretty well-established.
This guy is a jackass for conflating fat and health. And for being a jackass.
Goddamn iPhone. Anyhow, I didn't click through to the guy's blog, maybe he's a dick. But I do think we're all better off not viewing being fit as something that's just for inherently differently-constituted weirdos for whom it's not hard or for whom it doesn't involve a lot of time and choice. That's just not true, and it's somewhat harmful to think so.
Anyone remember The Fat Project from years and years ago, where that guy hosted a Fat-Off between two young twenty-somethings? That was done well.
Here it is! At the time I thought it was really funny. Who knows how well it has held up.
It's a stunt. Not the worst of stunts, but not much to be learned.
I semi-intentionally did something like this during college at the end of swim seasons. I'd try to gain ~20 pounds to get to 200 (developed mad weight-gaining skillz in the process) as I detoxed and vegged out over the next few weeks. I had absolute confidence that my overall lifestyle even independent of starting up training again would get me back to 180 no problem. And it did. Then. Just a completely different experience from anything in my last 30 years of life. Perhaps the dude's age makes it slightly more valid, but it is still a stunt.
Conflating weight or body shape and health is pretty much stupid. Connecting being "fat" (that is, visibly overweight) and fitness is not at all stupid; even naturally very large people can be non "fat" and will look fit.
16: Blume is right. It's his job! All he does!
I read somewhere that many (most?) of the "before and after" people pictured in ads are fitness professionals of one sort or another who stop training due to an injury or whatnot. They happily put on weight knowing it's easily falling away once they resume riding a zillion miles per week or whatever.
Connecting being "fat" (that is, visibly overweight) and fitness is not at all stupid; even naturally very large people can be non "fat" and will look fit.
Sure, there's toned and there's jiggly. But the converse also makes this stupid: there are tons of skinny people who are not in shape at all.
DeNiro proved that at least one other person in history could do this successfully, for Raging Bull.
My main problem is that the meals he was eating before he "let himself go" (spinach shakes et al) were not normal healthy person meals.
If he tried to use more normal-person parameters, it might have been interesting (e.g., like, as others have noted, also limiting the number of hours of exercise he can do a week to something someone with a normal work schedule could do).
Also, he comes across as relatively aware of the limits of the instructional value of what he's doing in the video.
Sure, conflating being thin and being fit is also dumb.
I've been assuming it's more aimed at giving himself better insight into the hurdles that people who are overweight and out of shape face when they're first starting to exercise.
Yes, he explicitly says this.
Take another full-time job and then do your weight loss program.
and kids. Cant forget the kids. Try spending three nights a week at the ball field with nothing to eat but burgers, hot dogs, and fries. Plus, the obligatory weekend kid's soccer/baseball/football game. Or, even worse, kid's swim meet that lasts all freaking weekend.
If he tried to use more normal-person parameters, it might have been interesting (e.g., like, as others have noted, also limiting the number of hours of exercise he can do a week to something someone with a normal work schedule could do).
Yeah, I would enjoy reading something like this. A more mainstream diet, with reasonable tweaks, etc.
Because I'm having a hell of a time finding time to exercise.
27: Okay. As I said, that doesn't seem obnoxious.
I mean, geez, I do a couple sets of situps and pushups while my kid is playing his sport, and everyone freaks out. So what if I was shirtless.
16, 22: Oud is right that Blume is right. For me the biggest barrier to exercise is time.
I'm more interested in De Niro's experience with Raging Bull.
When the work in L.A. was completed, the actor embarked on an eating binge in Europe, during which hiatus the production moved back to New York, awaiting his return. It took him four months of grand European dining to gain the 60 pounds required to play Jake in his decline.60 pounds appears to be the standard gain a lot of weight amount.
And did I inadvertently answer 32? Blogs are confusing.
30, 34, et al.: I feel like sitcom character me, but you have to do high intensity, short workouts, preferably with weights or kettlebells. An hour of cardio bullshit is not only not effective, but is really hard to schedule.
I agree with urple. He sounded like a jerk in the OP and the first look at the link, but then I got down to the "GOALS" section:
My goal is to inspire people to get fit, teach them how to do it and give them hope that it IS possible to get fit and stay fit. I want to share my comprehensive fitness knowledge with my followers so that they can know how to lose weight successfully, even though for many it's going to be a struggle. People that are overweight have to overcome both physical and emotional barriers when it comes to losing weight. I hope to have a better understanding of this through my experience over the next year.
Also, I hope to better gain an understanding of how hard it really is to be overweight. I know it's only going to be for 6 months, but at least it'll give me a small window of the physical and emotional issues that come with being overweight.
Maybe a seven months from now he'll say "that wasn't hard at all, suck it up you whiners", and if so then yeah, he's an asshole, but at the moment it looks about as responsible as you can do the basic idea. (Although six months does seem a bit brief to me. I'd say a year just to account for seasonal exercise habits, like how jogging is more fun in May than in January and stuff.)
Time is a big problem. Some friends and I were running and training for a race at the end of the month, and I was up to doing 5K every day, but in the process I fell so behind on work that now I work basically from the time I get up until the time I go to sleep to catch up. (We quit training when my friend needed emergency oral surgery and was out of it for a few days.) I want to be running again; I like it and it makes me feel good. But my job, and applying for jobs, and preparing for conferences is eating my life away.
I want him to be a fit athlete when young, gain a lot of weight (> 60) despite being relatively active over the next 30+ years and then lose a shitload all of a sudden and win the lottery. Then report back on how to do that.
The dude who plays Mac on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia gained 50 pounds for the role because he thought it would be funny. Some muscle magazine wanted to do a thing where he would lose it all and chronicle his experience, but he said no, because that would be unrealistic. At least he has the courage of his admittedly confusing convictions.
it looks about as responsible as you can do the basic idea
Part of the reason it still seems obnoxious to me is I question the validity of the basic idea. The fact that this is something he is intentionally choosing to do makes his experience of being overweight fundamentally different from that of the people who are overweight due to genetic factors, lifestyle factors, poor diet, etc. It just seems of questionable value.
My wife played a ton of sport until well into her twenties, hasn't done much since our daughter was born, and still kicks ass whenever she feels so inclined.
|| I think my new diet is eating nothing but Wasabi & Soy Almonds. I was going to say that Halford would approved, but presumably soy is worse than Hitler+Melamine-in-Baby-Formula. |>
I have exercised (for the first time in about a year) twice already this week, and intend to do so again today.
Wasabi & Soy Almonds
I love those so much.
I'm in a no-exercise spiral for the last month or so -- Sally started this swim team that stomps my bike commute (if it were next year, I could use a bikeshare bike to make the oneway trip to the Upper East Side from here, but it's not next year), and work's been making me too droopy to go to the gym. I should really restart.
The problem is that I don't like exercise and never have. It's less unpleasant when I'm in better shape, but it's never fun unless it's an actually fun activity, like bikeriding. I can self-medicate through treadmill running with podcasts, but there's nothing other than the longterm liking not to get out of breath too easily that makes me actually want to get to the gym.
I wish I'd ever picked up enough athletic skills to enjoy playing games.
To the OP, no, I don't particularly find it offensive. The dude is doing something to try to understand his clients better. Maybe it's a marketing thing, and it's certainly not an accurate representation of a lifelong experience of being overweight, but posts like this reveal what it might be helpful for. The thing is, someone who's never been fit can't really imagine what it would be like to have a ton of energy and be able to do everything without any difficulty. A super-fit person may not be able to imagine what it feels like to run out of energy. He's getting to experience both, which I think would be helpful for communicating what the difference feels like to his clients.
Analogy ban and all that, but, if you're trying to quit smoking, there's nothing more obnoxious than someone who has never had a cigarette lecturing you about how smoking is gross and you should stop because it's so disgusting. They have no idea. Someone else who's been addicted, even for a brief period, and quit can tell you how different they felt, or what motivated them.
I dunno; I think it's fine.
This has been a satisfying exercise for me b/c when I sent in the link I was basically like, "this link is making me crazy but I am too stressed out to articulate why." And all these observations ring true. I think 11 gets at the heart of what was bothering me about it, but also LB's general observation, and Halford's/Heebie's. The whole thing about confusing fatness/slimness for fitness . . .or even fitness for health. . .makes me wonder about the potential damage to his liver from going overboard with this.
He does seem to want to get some insight into what it's like being truly obese and trying to exercise, and that as an isolated desire for a trainer seems kinda useful to me. But this doesn't seem like the way to approach it.
Also, fit people seem to overestimate the sense of shame and self-loathing that less-fit people must feel every second of every day, and that's really offensive, and probably the main reason I don't enjoy the idea of taking classes at the gym. No, unlike you, I think, I'm not driven by intense shame and hatred of myself.
I wish I'd ever picked up enough athletic skills to enjoy playing games.
I am very far away from having children, but when I do, I've already decided that certain friends (who have agreed) will play ball with them so they won't be overly influenced by my nth generation Bengali allergy to most organized sports. They shall be kept the hell away from football though.
Also other than the standard trick of having him tan and smiling and without scraggly body hair when he's at the lower weight, he looks like a bear in the after and a steroidal muscle freak in the first. Somewhere in between is hotter than either but there is not much hotness differential between the two per se.
Yeah, I know, it's about health except I can never, in my heart of hearts, believe that anyone tries to get in shape for any reason other than to look better. If I'd ever seen any results on that front from exercising, I might have stuck with it one of the two dozen times I've tried to start.
Following AWB's link, this guy really doesn't seem like an asshole. I thought this was a good comment, left in response to a reader who left a comment: "So, this is all well and good for those of you who love physical activity and working out, but what are you going to offer for those of us who hate sports and despise working out, and always have? ....Now that I'm getting, shall we say, well into middle age, my doctor is telling me that I should probably try to get thin again. I don't relish the prospect. Unless I can find friends to beat me and drag me to the gym, I can't ever seem to find the time, self-discipline, or ability to go on my own. Did I mention how much I detest gyms? So, what do you suggest to help motivate me to get thin?"
Thanks for your comment. One thing that I will focus on in my fat 2 fit stage, isn't necessarily that we all have to be thin to be healthy. I will be focusing more on becoming at least medically healthy (good blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, glucose levels, etc.) In order to become medically healthy you do need to eat right and exercise, but exercise doesn't mean you have to go to a gym. There are a ton of other options out there that have to do with hobbies and lifestyle. Mountain biking, skiing, running, tennis, basketball, racquetball just to name a few. Or you can always workout from home if you don't want to go to the gym. So let's focus more on you becoming medically healthy and let the thin/weight loss thing take care of itself. So feel free to follow me on my journey back to fit to learn how to do all of that.
Yeah, my kids have sort of picked up that some kind of athleticism is a normal life activity, but I've done it by paying for classes and signing them up for organized sports. The times I've tried playing catch or something have been ludicrous and ineffective. (Seriously, remember the thread where people were talking about what you'd do with a seriously extended lifespan? I would learn to play some sport well enough to enjoy it. It seems impractical now; I'd never put enough time in to get good. But in a longer lifespan. I'd do that.)
Aw man, play sports with your kids. Watching my sister play with my baby nephews was like watching Fallow's article on how men and women throw balls come to life. The nephews are going to think they've always swum and that throwing a ball is an instinctive, natural, untaught movement, but they absolutely went through every step of an awkward overhand throw, and not predicting where the ball would go, and getting better by repetition. They just did it too young to remember.
The thing is that you need one person in the catch to know what they're doing. If everyone is starting from the ground up, no one has any fun.
I think the author might be a decent guy. I don't share his idea of what a great body looks like--as for Smearcase, the oily brown ripply thing is alienating to me--but he doesn't come across to me as condescending or stupid. It sounds like he had clients whose experiences he just couldn't be compassionate toward because of a lack of experience, and he wants to know a hint of what that feels like.
Yeah, I know, it's about health except I can never, in my heart of hearts, believe that anyone tries to get in shape for any reason other than to look better. If I'd ever seen any results on that front from exercising, I might have stuck with it one of the two dozen times I've tried to start.
Yeah, I've gone through fairly large swings fitness-wise, and while there hasn't been no visual effect, it's been pretty minimal. I focus on being pleased with floating effortlessly up subway stairs rather than slogging sadly along.
I do exercise because I want to feel better, rather than look better. It helps some of my anxiety symptoms fade a little, and even a little relief on that front without drugs is extremely welcome.
Chasing, and being chased by, dogs around a park can be a ridiculously fun and intense workout, I've found (though I haven't turned this into a long-term program as I would never own one of those filthy creatures). They enjoy a variety of low-skill games.
as for Smearcase, the oily brown ripply thing is alienating to me
*SNIFF*
58: I don't think he's a bad person, but I think he's doing a silly thing.
being chased by, dogs around a park can be a ridiculously fun and intense workout
This sounds like a bit of the Unfogged Diet and Exercise Plan. First you have to reduce your diet to raw meat and raw vegetables, then you go out and get chased by dogs for an hour, come back, eat some dubious yogurt from the back of a fridge, go out on a protest march...
If he were doing it privately, for the experience and ability to empathize with his clients, would you still think it were a silly thing to do?
Going through major weight swings in your adult life is pretty instructive, about yourself and how people treat you.
56: Oh, I'll play sports with my kids, but a) I know 57 is an issue b/c my parents half heartedly try to play games with me and I did not learn how to throw at all and b) I don't want my kids to be overly influenced by unintentional but now firmly embedded attitude that most sports are dumb and boring. Hence the getting other people involved.
My mother often says that her single biggest regret as a parent is not realizing the importance of sports, both in life and in American culture. When I was in middle school and high school and asked if I could join the soccer team, she was too frazzled by the expense and the extra time commitment on what already seemed like a packed schedule for me, and the tradeoff seemed totally not worth it. Sports was a complete non-entity in her youth; she didn't even have to walk most places because she had a chauffeur and fitness was always caste in terms of looking good. While she rationally realized that fitness is also about feeling good as an adult, and did all kinds of yoga and calisthetics at home and encouraged me to as well (and sent me to dance class), *sports* seemed totally insane and stupid to her. She also didn't understand the social stigma that goes with being uninterested in sports in American culture, even for girls. (At least, California culture in the 90s.) Somehow in the last 15 years she has grokked a better sense of the social impact of sports.
Interestingly, her other big regret is not doing something very stereotypical of Asian immigrant parents--hiring an outside math tutor for me to make up for sub-par math classes. On paper I look pretty math educated (physics BA, etc.), but it went from being my favorite subject to a struggle and a pain in high school and most of college.
65: Er, maybe? The devil's in the details, it depends on what he learns from it. But the fact that he does this for a living seems to really strip it of the difficulty that would give rise to real empathy (of course, I'm assuming that dropping the weight will be easy for him. If it's hard in practice, that's different.) I don't think DeNiro knows much that's important about the experience of being overweight.
I don't see where he claims that now he has a full and complete understanding of an entire life spent overweight and unfit, and so his own weight loss is going to be emblematic of how much better he is than regular fat people. The OP made it sound like that was going to be the point, and I'm just not seeing him make that point.
Some empathy is better than no empathy?
Maybe? But some empathy leading to the belief that you have lots of empathy can be more annoying than no empathy?
I am reminded of an American vacationer who hung out with some PCVs in Samoa for a week or so, and explained to us that we were not fully taking advantage of our chance to learn about people from other cultures, which she was completely up to speed on because she'd dated a guy from France once.
But I'm not committed to his being history's greatest monster, just seemed irritatingly silly to me.
My parents actually made a laudable effort to get me to be active. They took me to little league, which I hated and cried when they drove off, and as for the cultural involvement with sports (important--you can talk to almost any stranger about baseball; not so much about the career of Vladimir Horowitz) we went to Reds games and college football and basketball. It's just that I found watching sports tedious and participating in them actively unpleasant, even then.
It's turned into an entrenched hostility toward the "sports are great! you just gotta get up and try!" mentality and I guess toward athleticism in general. I have friends that do marathons and I feel like I'm supposed to throw up with excitement for them or at least think "oh hey I should do that" when of course my honest reaction is "that sounds brutal and expensive and ultimately pointless." My hobbies are pointless, too, but expressly so. You can't go on facebook and say "Hey everyone who wants to contribute to my fundraising for buying this season's concert tickets?!"
70: I think the thing that makes the empathy-quest slightly less appealing is that it feels a little dehumanizing but more importantly, there's a certain hubris involved that sort of takes the shine off it.
72: I'm hoping one advantage I'll have is that I'm not particularly wedded to any one sport, though I do have some small liking for soccer & basketball, so I'm hoping I can just get help trying many sports on them until I find one they're remotely interested in. Just not football.
I'm not quite sure how I ended up so unsportsy. My family is all sporty, and while I'm not a natural athlete skill-wise, I'm a natural brute: big, strong, and durable. My sister got a lot of encouragement and support for sports, but it was just sort of always recognized that it wasn't my thing. Might have been the combination of introversion and glasses: I fit the nerd stereotype so well that it was just kind of assumed that non-athleticism goes with it.
But your hostility is absolutely legit. Fitness is an ego thing (I don't get much out of it looks-wise, but I get very vain about what I can do, as anyone who's been listening to me preen over the stupid commute for the last couple of years knows) and a hobby, but it's not a moral virtue.
74: From someone who's been through it, baseball is really really unforgiving unless you've got a skilled family member who's putting in the catch time. My guys did a couple of seasons of pre-Little League, and it was just stupid. (Not just them, none of the kids were good enough that what they were doing was recognizable as playing a game.)
Soccer and b-ball are much more forgiving for incompetents in the early stages.
Also, they got lice from the batting helmets.
CA'S brother and s-i-l are already gleeful about unloading all outgrown hockey equipment on us (they're Canadian). I am ambivalent!
75.--We really are very similar, LB. I actually do have some real natural athletic ability, but I got so used to the introverted technique-based sports where nobody was throwing things at me that I really can't be bothered with the team sports that normal people do.
I put the iPad on the treadmill control panel, punch up the TV series I'm watching (30 Rock right now) and set the t-mill to "vomit". By the time it's all over I don't want dinner. So, about a pound a week down so far.
75: "Fitness is an ego thing"
It's also a make it up the stairs with the groceries, or walk around the art show, or vacuum the floor, and lots of other stuff thing y'all take for granted 'cause you're (relatively) young.
You hit your Fifties unfit and unable to reverse it and the downhill slide will be much, much faster.
she didn't even have to walk most places because she had a chauffeur
caste
Heh.
That's true. I look at my athletic parents in their 70s, and boy are they having a better time physically than lots of people their age. Mom's quite overweight, but she's still hiring a highschool kid to hit tennis balls at her when she can't find a game with people her own age and moving her own refrigerator.
You can't count on that working for you, of course -- you can put all the effort you want into fitness, and then anything can happen to you. But I do think of staying in shape as a certain amount of old-age insurance.
I've always thought I'd have been a good at bullriding. Anything I've ever tried that's remotely similar to bullriding, I've been great at. The was especially true as a kid--less so these days since as I've been sedentary for so long I've started to lose some balance, etc.--but I still seem way above average, with no practice. But they didn't offer it at my high school. And I think at this point I've probably lost my chance.
Anything I've ever tried that's remotely similar to bullriding, I've been great at.
Please, please don't clarify.
Talking to my wife the other day, I floated the idea of heading off to a rodeo. I think she thought I was joking.
Actually, this may explain the bicycle-sex conversation.
Anything I've ever tried that's remotely similar to bullriding
I'm having trouble populating this set using reasonable values of "remotely similar".
Like Lady Catherine de Bourgh, if urple had ever learnt, he would have been a great proficient.
"The dude who plays Mac on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia gained 50 pounds for the role because he thought it would be funny. Some muscle magazine wanted to do a thing where he would lose it all and chronicle his experience, but he said no, because that would be unrealistic. At least he has the courage of his admittedly confusing convictions."
That guy is power lifting in order to distribute the fat in the way that he wants:
"I was gaining weight but just in my stomach. I wanted to accumulate the fat in other areas. So the trainer suggested "Why don't we do power lifting? It will create a big,fat,sleek look like an albino seal."
Those infomercials on tv about losing weight often use injured athletes who put on some weight as the before and then can quickly lose the weight.
I wonder how much money Pabst has offered the Professional Bull Riders Association for www.pbr.com.
It's only been in the last 10 or 12 years that I've become unfit. Previously my base-line fitness was fine just through being active and enjoying doing certain sporty-ish things. It occurred to me when I thought about it that my self-image is of someone bookish and not-sporty, but I played soccer two or three hours a day from about age 6, and when I was in my early twenties I used to do karate a couple of times a week, run three or four days a week, have a couple of weights sessions a week, and for six months or so, used to go to a boxing club on top of that.
It's one of those don't know what you'll miss till it's gone things. These days I'm much fitter than I look, but still way less fit than I'd really like to be to get the full benefit out of the fun sport thing that I like to do.
Team sports can fuck off, though. When I used to play occasional five-a-side football with workmates a surprising number of them turned into total pricks. I prefer the honesty of actually-allowed-to-hit-people sport.
I played soccer two or three hours a day from about age 6
This is so maddening for me. Newt's really enjoying his soccer team, but there seems to be no way of causing enough walking-distance kids to wander outdoors and play informally. Everyone's booked up, or not allowed out without an adult, or something.
re: 94
Well, yeah. Different culture, different time. As mentioned many times before, 1970s/80s Scotland was very much a 'fuck off and don't come home until your tea is ready' place. But even though I didn't especially like football, it was played morning and afternoon break time at school, all lunch time at school, then at home in the park until dinner time, and then if it was light, sometimes for an hour or more after that. That was just what you did, on pain of being an antisocial odd-ball no-one liked. For a couple of weeks a year other sports might take over, and there was the usual hide-and-seek, bike-riding, and so on. But football dominated more or less every rain-free leisure hour.
77:eww.
82: for what it's worth, he was probably the same caste or even higher b/c he was probably a distant relative of a relative working his way through school.
72: It's too bad you didn't knit back then. I very much enjoy going to the community college basketball games because I can get a fair amount of knitting done, though less of course since Mara came along.
|| It's not just western culture that is degenerate|>
97: Yeah, I get a lot of knitting/crocheting done during swim practice. (Although I'm kind of stalled -- I'm doing a lacy baby blanket that I don't have a pattern for, it's an improv rectangle of a lace stitch in green and yellow stripes, and I'm really not sure if it's ultimately going to work out to something useable. Which is slowing me down; I won't know how it's going to turn out until I finish it and put a border on it, but I'm not psyched about the outcome, which means I'm not putting in any time on it.)
93: "It occurred to me when I thought about it that my self-image is of someone bookish and not-sporty, but I played soccer two or three hours a day from about age 6..."
Yes, this. We were on the go constantly after school and not at a walking pace. I was nine years older than the DE but was still more active and with more endurance even before she was dead.
Urple, have you ridden on a mechanical bull? There is probably a bar near you where you could do this every Friday night.
I don't really think fitness is a moral virtue like, say, not killing people or not voting for Michelle Bachman. But it's certainly an equivalent virtue to things a lot of people here would consider actively virtuous, like, say, cultivating an interest in literature or politics or the sciences.
I thought I was unathletic for many years because I wasn't interested in team sports. Sure, I loved to ski and rode my bike a lot and was pretty good at frisbee, but I was terrible at sports. This belief persisted even after I started playing Ultimate somewhat regularly.
I still don't really gravitate towards the fun, communal neighborhoods of athletic endeavor that seem so motivating for other people. Raise a bunch of money for charity and go do a big run or ride wearing a bib or whatever or join some kind of team doing some kind of team thing? Meh. Play some tennis and then go for a bike ride at a time and on a route of my choosing? That's good stuff.
actively virtuous, like, say, cultivating an interest in literature or politics or the sciences.
I have never seen any evidence that an interest in literature or politics or the sciences is in any way related to the development of ethical or virtuous behavior.
15: I think it's both more accurate and better for the world to think of fitness as a series of constant, almost daily, choices that can be made
The other advantage of Halford's way of seeing things is that it allows for experiencing constant, almost daily failure!
101.last: I wouldn't think of any of those things as 'virtuous' rather than as 'the sorts of things that make me compatible with people', if you see what I mean.
The first team sport I learned to loathe was soccer. Next was little league. I never played football, because by that point I distrusted all of them. Always thought I would have been a pretty good d-lineman if I'd played in high school. Large-ish, low center of gravity, pretty fast in very short bursts, pretty good reflexes? I could have probably been that!
Team sports are quite different than just "fitness" in general. For starters, they are competitive, and the winners in the competition are preternaturally talented superfreaks. It took me a long time (30 years, at least) to learn that there's a difference between being good at sports and being fit; the latter is available to everyone, whereas the former mostly isn't.
19: I'm going to Comment before I either catch up on the thread or read through the full OKC thing, but I found it pretty sad that one of the contestants describes her motivation for gaining 30 lbs, and hence bring her weight to 150 (at 5'7"), thusly:
"I have a nice bod. That's all anyone ever looks at--so I want to get disgustingly fat and see how everyone reacts."
150 at 5'7" is "disgustingly fat," apparently. Ugh. Yet another datapoint for how incredibly toxic any discussion of personal unhappiness with being Weight X is, no matter how you try to frame it.
"and hence bringing her weight", goddamnit.
Little League is a waste of time, for the most part, because it involves a lot of standing around doing nothing. It's much better to just get a game of catch going.
preternaturally talented superfreaks
I'm not sure that's the case for a pickup game of basketball or softball. The above point about childhood training is important, I guess, in that I am only good at softball because Dad drilled us for hours and hours when we were kids, and I played little league for a year. Even with an 18-year gap between my last game and my first softball game, it came back really quickly.
The only team sport I've played is Ultimate, which has an unusual pro-fun, pro-good spirit ethic. That said, there are a lot of ways to be good at it, and it is damn fun, and the winners aren't superfreaks.
allows for experiencing constant, almost daily failure!
Not bodily failure, not if you're training consistently and well. There is very little more predictable or certain than steady improvement from good training. You might fail at going, or fail at prioritizing exercise, or fail by training poorly and getting hurt. But the truest thing at my gym is that you can work on goals and meet them, slowly and steadily.
Come to think of it, Little Leaguebaseball is a waste of time.
Actually, I rather like baseball. When I was a kid, I got stuck in the outfield, which is not a good position for me because I have poor depth perception and if I lose my concentration, it's hard to get it back. As an adult, I figured out that I'm a pretty good infielder. It's fun for me and uses my skills, such as they are.
107 was mostly meant to apply to team sports at the high school level or above.
115: It's a social issue -- something that could be a common pastime gets treated like a tournament. The 'most kids play a couple of hours of some sport a day on a casual pickup basis' is going to produce a population of kids with sports skills, but by definition most of them are going to be pretty average.
The way things tend to happen in the circles my kids in, though, is just like you're saying; the kids who are awesome at whatever the sport is do it on a more and more intense organized basis, and no one else plays much at all. Which seems dopey to me.
114: I loved fielding grounders and fly balls, and throwing, but the actual game I just remember as mostly standing around.
You might fail at going, or fail at prioritizing exercise
Yes, these were the failures I had in mind.
103: Engaging with some types of literature, politics, or the sciences is itself virtuous. No need for it to cause other good behavior.
Also I am pretty sure reading Austen and Frost made me quite a bit kinder than I otherwise would have been.
Also I am pretty sure reading Austen and Frost made me quite a bit kinder than I otherwise would have been.
For everyone I know who says this I can name an Austen or Frost scholar who is a nasty vicious pig. I like the idea that literature makes us better, more thoughtful people, and I know plenty of wonderful folks who've devoted their lives to the study of it, but I know just as many who are some of the worst people I've ever met in my life--small-minded, selfish, whiny, bigoted assholes.
I have never seen any evidence that an interest in literature or politics or the sciences is in any way related to the development of ethical or virtuous behavior.
I don't have a well thought through opinion on this and I don't think I disagree exactly, but for the sake of discussion, why do you teach literature if you don't think it makes people better in any way?
(Probably we have discussed this. I'm in a minor fog today.)
But I do think of staying in shape as a certain amount of old-age insurance.
About three years ago I started working with a trainer at the gym for 30min, once a week, most weeks. It's been great for me, I'd never spent time in a gym before that, and found it unfamiliar and scary, and this has really helped me get over that fear.
The thing that the trainer said to me, on our first meeting, which really helped me commit, was that he really believed that exercise, done right, could help you to maintain fitness over time, and to avoid accumulating an increasing number of aches and pains as you age. That was a way more compelling goal for me than "trying to get stronger" would have been.
And it really works. I go to the gym for 30 minutes 1-3 times a week. I feel like I'm doing the low end of, "working out" but I've been amazed that, for example, I've been working way too much the past three months, and I haven't started having neck and shoulder pains. In the past this sort of work schedule would have resulted in a nasty knot at the base of my neck at some point.
(One other note, I love the trainer and I keep thinking that if there was some way to create a chance for Megan to work with him for a week she would love it. I don't have much to compare it to, but he seems both incredibly knowledgeable and incredibly creative. We basically never do the same exercises twice. He's really big on the idea that it's important to not only challenge muscles in terms of strength, but to also get them out of habitual patterns of movement by doing unfamiliar things.
So, Megan, if you're every going to be in the PNW, e-mail me and I'll try to convince you that it would be worth making a plan to meet him.)
I am ethically motivated in my work, and I think that interpretation and analysis are extremely important and empowering skills to teach. If a student is ethically motivated, s/he will find ethical reasons to read. But certainly, having an ethical commitment or understanding of the world is not a requirement for being a scholar of literature, even--or especially?--a successful and well-regarded one.
I'd probably like meeting your trainer, although I'm a little dubious about his philosophy. We do repeated movements consistently so we can pick up even heavier things! But it sounds great for mobility and fitness, and best of all, it keeps you interested.
123: So, to be annoyingly reductive, the study of literature will make good people better/more efficacious, but perhaps it doesn't do anything to improve bad or unethical people?
Medically healthy is an interesting concept in this context. I'm obese in BMI terms, and not borderline either, but am relatively physically active (bike-commuting) and my BP responded readily to medication; no other worrying problems.
Does this mean my situation is good, though? I don't think so. I suspect that if you're merely overweight and medically healthy, it is nothing to worry about, but obesity is a different matter.
I am pretty sure that a knowledge of music, or literature, or science, or being fit, makes you a "better" person (that is, living into your potential, or something) in a very real sense, but that it definitely does not make you a more ethical person. But I'll leave the boring teasing out of all of the implications of these things to the moral philosophers.
I'd probably like meeting your trainer, although I'm a little dubious about his philosophy. We do repeated movements consistently so we can pick up even heavier things! But it sounds great for mobility and fitness, and best of all, it keeps you interested.
I'm not saying that he'd win you over if you met him (though he might), but I can guarantee you that you'd have a great time.
Maybe one out ever four sessions I'll have an experience where I'll be doing some exercise that he's just shown me and I'll start giggling -- not because the exercise is silly but because the experience, in my body, of that movement is unfamiliar in way that's just funny. Just in the way of, "wow, you mean that all I have to do is move my arm this way, drop my hips, and then try to lift the ball of my foot and suddenly my body just feels unfamiliar." What amazes me is how you could do everything except for the lifting the ball of the foot and it would feel completely normal. But add that in and all of a sudden you're dripping sweat and working really hard.
Well, I'm certainly overweight, bordering on obese by BMI, but my cholesterol levels and BP are Himalayan Sherpa/will-live-to-100 sort of levels. My resting pulse is in the mid-60s now, which isn't brilliant, but still not terrible. It was in the high 50s a couple of years ago when I did more walking.
I'd like to be slimmer because I'd look better, and also because I could jump 4ft in the air and spin-kick people in the head. Currently I can do the spinning and/or kicking in the head bit, but the jumping is comically inept. Also, better upper body strength would be nice.
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I thought the musicians of Unfogged should know that the name "The Pressed Meat Band" is available.
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125: I think so, although I'm resistant to any definition of "better" that isn't in any way related to ethics. I don't believe rich people are better than poor, or that educated people are better than those denied education. I tend to find that words like "better," when applied to cultural interests, are a very easy way for the selfish, bigoted, whiny pigs among English professors I know to say racist, classist things without having to acknowledge their bigotry. When I first started teaching in New York at school where students were predominantly black and poor, a professor sat me down to explain that "These kids, you know, they don't *even* subscribe to the New Yorker magazine!" as a way of explaining that they weren't good enough for my fancy innovative pedagogy that I learned at a private college.
"They've never even been to the Metropolitan Opera!"
That sounds like the story someone just linked about Ira Glass having been a shit while dating Lynda Barry: "You probably don't even know what the IMF is."
I am pretty sure that a knowledge of music, or literature, or science, or being fit, makes you a "better" person (that is, living into your potential, or something) in a very real sense, but that it definitely does not make you a more ethical person. But I'll leave the boring teasing out of all of the implications of these things to the moral philosophers.
It is standard to distinguish "being the best you that you can be", self-improvement ethics from "contributing to something greater", social ethics. In the longest run, I think the two coincide. If you really are the very best you, you will be contributing to something bigger, like all of us being a better all of us. In the short run, though there are things that make you a better you (like playing music or reading literature or being a total freak in the sack) that don't contribute to all of us being a better all of us.
Yeah, the "better person" phraseology (which I just used above) is lame, because it implies that your inherent worth is tied to your cultural knowledge (or fitness, or whatever). How do you feel about "it's better to know about literature (or to be fit) than not, so try it out, it's a good thing in life"?
I don't think he's going to learn anything. Other than how easy it is to lose the weight once you decide to prioritize that. Which, as noted above, is an easy decision for him to make, since it's his job and is baked directly into the thing.
I have always hated exercise; when I was skinny, fit, and not either. I like doing things that are incidentally exercise, and if I was fitter I guess I'd enjoy the punishing mountain bike rides the wife takes with her Dirt Girls. But im happy to ride, and waiting a little impatiently for the snow.
I had more fun playing softball in my thirties than before or since. My last at bat, I got off a towering shot, which would have been a HR if we'd had a wall or I'd been a faster runner. A stand up triple bringing in two runs was good enough, and while my retirement wasn't intentional, I don't feel bad about it.
135 before seeing 134, although 134 makes very good sense.
Dogs and B-12, people. I'm pretty sure what works for me will work for everyone.
130 is totally awesome. The sports conversation has encouraged me to look up signing Mara up for basketball, clearly her favorite sport. That'll probably mean Val and Alex too if practices start this fall, though I suspect they may be back with family by the time games start in the spring.
I was never a sporty person, but my parents made me play some combination of soccer, softball, volleyball, and basketball through eighth grade. In at least the last two, I found things I could do very well (serve and make foul shots) in a way that let me feel they sort of compensated by my utter lack of prowess elsewhere.
One great thing about having tiny kids is that I can impress them with my athletic skills when we're kicking a ball around at the park and so on. Mara will probably surpass me by the time she's eight, but I can enjoy it until then.
I'd sort of like to relearn/play basketball as an adult and have pushed Lee to teach me, but we don't have the time for that right now. She did teach me to play pool and I love that, though also don't get out to do it much for obvious reasons. I regret that I was so anti-sport when I was younger, but I'm still tempted to agree with my younger self that deliberate fouls are morally impermissible.
||
To be the best you can be, the assistance of a suitable life partner may be helpful. If the ceremony binding that life partner to you involves reference to Aristotle, Little Murders, Coca-Cola, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Laura Kipnis, the Prop 8 decision, Stephin Merritt, and the Real Housewifes, logic and courtesy both dictate that said ceremony be shared with the Unfoggedtariat.
|>
"They've never even been to the Metropolitan Opera!"
A serious interest in opera makes you much, much worse, for most values of "worse."
Fit2Fat2Fit Guy isn't undertaking a "Black Like Me" project. He's trying to prove that losing weight is not all that difficult, using a method that proves no such thing.
And "Black Like Me" projects are inherently oversimple, anyway, even if they are an attempt at sympathy.
Goddammit, now I'm looking at various local gym websites. Fuck.
Get a trainer, urple, and lift heavy things. Don't bother with anything else. If that's not convenient, look for a local Crossfit.
144: Why, when for the same price as a few years of a gym membership, you could buy this?
142: You know, for years I have had this conversation with my father about opera being kiiiiind of a gay thing and he thinks I'm on crack.
126, 129 I went to a talk the other day where the speaker, a biostatistics professor, professed to show a terrible problem with the Framingham study's use as a preditive model, but his argument veered so violently from general/pop-level discussion of statistics to extremely technical statistics that I got lost and started reading unfogged on my phone.
I should get back to some of the weight-workout stuff I used to be doing. I used to go to a bootcamp-ish weekly workout with a lot of weights involved, and I liked it a lot and felt it was doing good things for me. However, it eventually caused me a lot of shin pain (probably too much high-knee jogging in place), and I dropped it. I don't even know if the gym still has the class. In the meantime, I started doing a cardio-kickboxing class that's run at my office, and it has definitely improved my ability to jog up four flights of subway stairs, but my strength is down.
Group classes seem to work really well for me. Working with a trainer was OK but a bit too expensive.
(I was into my 30s before I really enjoyed physical activity, but the reasons around that seem well-covered already).
131: Right, "better" is a tangle of thorns as soon as you start to devaguefy it. But I think most people who read do so as much out of an unexamined conviction that it makes us better as for enjoyment, and teaching almost has to come from such a conviction, though it may be more unpacked.
teaching almost has to come from such a conviction
Well, either that or "I like surrounding myself with people who are dumber than me for the satisfaction of my ego."
Things I love that have been mentioned above:
1. Mac from It's Always Sunny
2. Wasabi&Soy almonds
3. sports, all sorts
145: oh, of course. I wouldn't even consider anything else. I can't afford a personal trainer, but people sometimes forget that I was the original unfogged crossfit evangelist.
Wow. You must be so proud of Halford.
Also: I only exercise to feel better. I've never gotten to look better from exercise. My weight has fluctuated based on my eating, only.
But my mood, my restless legs, my backaches and hip aches, my general restlessness: typing this all makes me want to go running right this very moment.
I'm still doing my dopey baby core exercises, for which I'm extremely proud of myself. That's the thing that helps my hips and back the most. It took me awhile to figure out how to integrate it with the semester schedule, but now it's there.
A lesser commenter might feel embarrassed to post two such obnoxiously self-congratulatory consecutive comments.
While reading about high-glycemic index food and simultaneously eating a piece of lemon-poppy seed bread from a bakery and drinking coffee.
154: He's been carrying the torch admirably over the last few years. Which allowed me to shut the hell up, which was good since I can't credibly preach the gospel of fitness to anyone these days, since I'm at this point I'm a good half-decade backslidden into a completely sedentary life.
I'm about to start some physio/training to work on a hip injury. Not had the full details yet, but I'm guessing it's going to be shit loads of core and posterior chain work. Luckily a very cheap (and hopefully not shit) gym is opening round the corner.
150: But I think most people who read do so as much out of an unexamined conviction that it makes us better as for enjoyment
This totally confuses me, but I've only skimmed the thread. Maybe it's true for most people ... and I see it's a response to an ongoing subthread with AWB, which I haven't followed. So never mind.
I'm with 161. I read, and have read voraciously since I was kid, primarily because I really like reading. I've read my fair share of 'improving' stuff: things I've read because I ought to, either for academic reasons or because I think it's something I probably should read, but I'd guess some vast percentage of everything I've ever read has been read for pure enjoyment.
Yup. I used to read novels becauase I enjoyed them. Then I read nonfiction, because I liked it. Now I read unfogged threads.
I have no interest in self-improvement.
Hang on, though. Quite a lot of the time when I read, it's because I know -- think -- that I will be improved by it, assuming I've chosen well. No forced reading here. Said felt improvement will not be because anyone else thinks I'm improved. It's pretty much completely internal, wheels turning.
I had no idea that Urple was so O.G. I bow before him.
But I'm slipping. A combo of (a) the world's most dripping-out-in-increments-trial, just ended (Judge: hey! it's a bench trial! why not have your trial every third day or so, for a few hours, based on my other scheduling and whims, oh and did I mention budget cuts mean that we may or may not have a reporter when you show up, so you'll have to go home) and (b) being sick has kept me out of the gym for almost two weeks. And I had PIZZA with my kid on Tuesday, at which point I felt very sick.*
*I honestly think some combo of food avoidance and psychosomatic something has given me an actual gluten allergy. Attentive readers may recall the Pad Thai incident of earlier this year, in which another product of neolithic agriculture produced a similar result.
Huh, ok. I'm maybe fairly wrong.
My own motivations are mixed. I find reading to be some combination of pleasurable and not. I read out of sheer joie de lire far less than I used to because it's fairly hard to find books that bring me that. To some extent, I read so I'll have things to talk to people about, which is closer to "conviction that it makes us better" than "I love reading!"
re: 166
To be fair, I read a lot genre fiction, trashy and non-trashy. It's not like I'm sitting on the train every day reading Proust in French. Basically if I'm reading it's usually either entertaining fiction, or something relatively academic.
I played some kind of baseball and soccer as a kid, but stopped by the time I was 10 outside of gym class, and I never missed it. I practiced Tae Kwon Do for years, but that's not a team sport and despite many other things it was good for I never thought it did much for me in terms of fitness. I went to gyms off and on from college until this past year, and it was rarely any better than a boring, annoying chore. I've never looked into CrossFit before, but the Wikipedia page makes it sound like a cross between Dianetics and everything I hate.
This spring I finally found that commuting by bike was a great exercise routine for me, though. The best exercise on a regular basis with the least disruption, and certainly more fun than any other way to commute. I've been slacking off a bit for the past month, with the crappy weather and while suffering from a cold, but even so it's been great.
That being said, this makes me realize that I've always been in relatively good shape to begin with. I might have been out of shape compared to the other guys at Tae Kwon Do, but really not compared to what I would have been if I hadn't even done that. So this is me being overly self-conscious or whatever.
I don't think there's gluten in pad thai (rice noodles). Probably guilt, like the little kids who vomit back the candy they gave up for Lent.
No, but seriously, it's food avoidance. If you don't eat dairy for a long time and then load yourself up with it, you'll feel pretty sick.
I honestly think some combo of food avoidance and psychosomatic something has given me an actual gluten allergy.
I'd bet it's not an actual allergy, just an intolerance. Or, at least, the same thing happened to me for while when I first fell off the wagon, but now I can and do eat pizza happily (sadly). The same thing happens with lots of things that are bad for you--you don't eat much sugar, right? Try eating a pack of twizzlers and see how you feel. Trust me, it's not a sugar allergy. A similar concept: how would a non-smoker feel after smoking a pack-and-a-half of cigarettes in a day?
165: I honestly think some combo of food avoidance and psychosomatic something has given me an actual gluten allergy.
There really is such a thing as your stomach/gastrointestinal system/entire system ceasing to produce the requisite enzymes (or acids or whatever) to process foods you haven't eaten for quite a while. It's why I can't eat a whole hamburger or hunk of steak without being constipated for like 3 days afterwards. And why I can't eat significant fried foods (say, KFC, or a whole serving of french fries) without getting zits within 48 hours. Heavy-duty sugar load makes me feel ill -- I'll try to avoid a piece of cake with frosting, even if it's supposed to be awesome.
The situation is neither good nor bad, assuming your nutritional profile is otherwise okay. Just learn what your body can handle, and don't overdose it.
There is no quantity of sugar, fat, or gluten that my body cannot process with aplomb. White bread with butter and honey? Bring it on.
167: I would do that if I enjoyed genre fiction, but I don't seem to. Maybe I haven't tried the right stuff. If I'm sitting on the train, I'm usually either knitting or reading The New Yorker: short, generally interesting ergo enjoyable, fulfilling of some "there, I read that and am smarter" bullshit, and commonly enough read around here that I can be the asshole who says "did you read the thing in the New Yorker about [whatevs]?" and someone probably did and we can have a conversation about it.
If I'm at home, unless I happen to have stumbled upon the rare piece of fiction I am really into, I'm much more likely to watch a movie, and more likely than that to be swallowed whole by the #*$% internet.
OK, thanks. That makes sense all.
The gauchos of argentina knew every laxative herb to be found on the pampas. Chimichurri, both an attitude and a flavor.
Reading is pretty clearly morally neutral-- there was a time when books were the messengers of new ideas and could open up a sheltered mind, maybe still in Iran or Utah. But above some baseline of basic education, the virtue returned with each new book diminishes quickly.
Well-read monstrous people are easy to find. Even well-read monstrous cultures are not so hard to spot.
Further to this, but in the opposite direction: a lot of people who don't eat many vegetables insist that this 'roughage' -- heaven forbid that it's raw, even worse -- gives them a tummy ache. That might be true. A lot of people say that eating beans is awful for the flatulence. Might be true too. It's because they aren't used to it! Not because it's yucky food or something.
125: Yes. Virtuous but not ethical.
IOW, it makes you more powerful, but only makes you nicer if you want to be changed in that way.
101: I don't really think fitness is a moral virtue like, say, not killing people or not voting for Michelle Bachman. But it's certainly an equivalent virtue to things a lot of people here would consider actively virtuous, like, say, cultivating an interest in literature or politics or the sciences.
103: I have never seen any evidence that an interest in literature or politics or the sciences is in any way related to the development of ethical or virtuous behavior.
I was assuming that Halford was using 'virtue' in the classical sense of an excellence (i.e. a tendency that helps what has it achieve the end it's meant for). In this sense there can be purely physical virtues (e.g. athleticism), intellectual ones (e.g. curiosity) and moral ones (e.g. honesty). In the classical picture, the end these help to achieve is human flourishing.
165 -- I was a junior guy in a trial that went one or two days, then a month off, then one or two days, then a month off, and then back. It settled. I'm not sure how long it really went -- 3 or 4 months of this anyway. Always at least a dozen lawyers, sometimes more. EDNY.
I think the idea that adults should eat hot dogs while watching their kids play sports, instead of playing sports themselves, is the downfall of our culture (no.73 ).
"There really is such a thing as your stomach/gastrointestinal system/entire system ceasing to produce the requisite enzymes (or acids or whatever) to process foods you haven't eaten for quite a while."
Yes, for something like eating meat, it is enzymes produced by the actual human, for most plant foods the issue is probably the colonic bacteria. You need to regrow a population that can digest the particular fiber and asssorted molecules in beans or whatever.
"Medically healthy is an interesting concept in this context. I'm obese in BMI terms, and not borderline either, but am relatively physically active (bike-commuting) and my BP responded readily to medication; no other worrying problems.
Does this mean my situation is good, though? I don't think so. I suspect that if you're merely overweight and medically healthy, it is nothing to worry about, but obesity is a different matter."
It is probably non-ideal, but not a big risk either.