At first I read this and was astounded that you could reconcile, in your own mind, the fact that being lazy is a good thing. Regardless of the string of excuses you put together for the ‘whys’ you don’t exercise, the fact that exercise will keep you alive, fit and as a better asset to society, you still try and justify your laziness.
I will, however, agree with you that starting or even continuing an exercise program has gotten progressively harder in the modern era. Most people work longer hours now than ever before. When they do get a break from working, most folks don’t want to go “work” in the gym to stay fit.
This is/should be seen as a necessity to conduct yourself in an adult manner to benefit the entire society. Your (general you) obesity will continue to be a drain on society until something is done about it or until you die.
30 minutes of brisk walking is shown to significantly increase the health and happiness of ANY individual (yes even you). The 30 minutes daily can be broken down into ten minute intervals. Surely, EVERYONE has 3 ten minute intervals in their busy daily routine.
Nobody’s flubbing definitions here. If I’m understanding you correctly, the point of your post was that people are fatter now because lifestyles have changed. We’re not getting much exercise because we’re not outside laboring in fields all day for work, and instead are sitting in office chairs typing on keyboards, sort of like what I’m doing right now. Also, it’s natural and normal to eat the food that’s there, so when someone serves you a big ass plate of food, you eat everything on it. Weigh gain ensues.
So right, mastodon hunting or field labor isn’t normal for most people anymore, but there are certainly changes to our lifestyle that involve exercise that are perfectly normal, like riding a bicycle about town as opposed to driving. Walking and running are about as natural and normal as you’re going to get. You only have time to drive? How far away is the movie theatre, book store, market, job, or wherever it is that you go? Serious question. I do realize that some people live in rural areas where getting around on bicycles may be difficult, but for the rest of us who live in cities and suburbs, riding a bike around town is not impractical or abnormal.
Regarding this:
Well I guess I’m out of touch with reality then. Most people I know do not eat out at restaurants regularly, so I suppose I’m shrouded in some enclave of people who buy groceries and cook. Yes, most people I know eat at restaurants, but they primarily eat at home, and when they do go out they don’t eat the entire meal. Putting half your meal in a to-go box is apparently so common in my enclave, that frequently the waiter will ask me once I’ve stopped eating if I’m still working on my meal, or if I would like the rest to go.
It won’t? Buying your own groceries, and preparing healthy food for yourself, as opposed to eating at Burger King, won’t work? The celery diet is what’s required in order to lose weight? Wtf?
In order to be fair here, it might not work. The relative ease of losing weight fluctuates so much between two different people that a one case scenario may well fail and lead him to believe that NOTHING works.
While the former may be true, the latter certainly is not.
It all comes down to desire. If he has no desire to become an asset instead of a drain (to society) and no desire to live a healthier lifestyle for his own benefit then he will get fat and die, period.
My primary concern is the drain upon public funds to live a life-stlye that has been proven detrimental.
To go to MacDonalds.
We have learned to love fat, sugar and salt. Ice cream which is frozen sugar and fat has a heroine like grip on my wife. She can convince herself that she has to buy it when it is on sale. Then she eats it from the carton. It takes a lot of exercise to get rid of that many concentrated calories.
I’ve always been lazy, even when I was thin. Fatness is a function of input > output, regardless of motivation, or trivialized simplistic criticisms thereof.
On a personal note, I’ll pass.
You did notice where I conceded that what’s ‘natural’ should probably be defined subjectively, right?
210 pounds is obese? Dang. If I get that low I will be done, basically.
Do bad knees count as a physical disability? I don’t know I have them, mind you; I only know that three of my four siblings have had repeated surgeries on their knees. (I think my brother didn’t, anyway.) Not being in marching band myself, I have adressed my issues with strenuous* leg use through avoidance strategies. It’s cheaper!
(Cue people telling me that I’m imagining/lying about the bad knees to justify my sloth. 'Specially since I don’t know my knees are bad. I knew I shouldn’t mention it…)
Strenuous beging defined as “running for a few minutes” or “standing up for a few minutes”. Curiously, I can walk for considerably longer without comparable difficulty. Kind of odd, really. Doubtless people will tell me I’m hallucinating it all, regardless.
I’m dubious about this in principle (high fat is good?) but there’s a chance I’m already doing this to some small degree. (Dunno if you missed it, but I’m down 70 pounds since March. Lest I be seen as bragging, I have 80 pounds to go (estimated), I still look fat to me, and of course still have no stamina. To me this glass is half-empty). I don’t count carbs, just calories, but undoubtedly my carbs have gone down loads. And I have started snacking on beef jerky some in a kind of weak nod to the high-protien thing. (Side benefit: this keeps the snacking down as much because jerky is so insanely expensive.)
I wouldn’t know a lipid if I was introduced to it, my energy levels are normal (lowish, but then I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately), and my skin will never glow. And honesly I don’t think eating more fat will help with any of that. (My doc says my cholesterol is good, except I don’t have enough of the “good” cholesterol, apparently.)
My laziness can be fully justified by the fact I have sampled exercise and prefer other activities to it. Abandoning my other hobbies to make time for pain is a lose-lose situation, especially since I remain certain that I would not be able to do enough exercise to make it worth the while. I mean, I’ve done the ‘casual’ exercize thing, and it didn’t make a single bit of difference. Not. One. Single. Bit. Let me repeat that for the theistic exercizists. Not. One. Single. Bit.
(Yes, I know I just wasn’t doing it hard enough. Marathons, here we come! :rolleyes:)
You don’t pay me enough to waste my time at a gym, and I don’t give a crap about your self-serving notion about how society should reject fat people.
I don’t have that kind of time to waste on something that WON’T increase my health and happiness. I’ve spent months at a time (though I’m admittedly slacking at the moment) doing an hour a night, every night, on my stationary bike. Surely that counts as much a half hour of “brisk” walking, and there has been no increase in health and the only increase in happiness came from the shows I was watching at the time.
People spout off about the effectiveness of trivial levels of exercise, but it’s bupkis. If it don’t hurt, it don’t work.
Movie theatre: Four miles. Book store: online. WalMarket: five miles. Job: two miles. Other shopping: four miles.
Is is impossible bike these distances? No. Impractical? Yes, obviously. Aside from the wasted time, most of my shopping trips aren’t one-baggers. Would other people bike everywhere anyway? Yes. Will they think it’s insane not to want to bike. Yes? Do I care? Not really.
I don’t eat out much; never have. I also don’t cook (don’t bother asking - what to me is an explanation would be excuses to you). What I do do is buy things, and eat them. And it makes a rather lot of difference whether you’re buying potato chips by the pound or little piles of celery by the ounce.
Yes, at 5’7" and 210 pounds I was obese by BMI standards. A lot of people think the BMI system is flawed, of course. I didn’t really think of myself as “obese,” personally, but I was really, really uncomfortable being at that weight, both psychologically and physically. I was having a lot of back pain problems that have cleared up now that I’ve lost about 20 pounds.
I don’t really know (or, frankly, care) if your bad knees “count” as a physical disability. It sounds like you’re trying to get an excuse not to go to gym class. Well, I’m not your gym teacher and nobody is going to make you go to gym class. Or run a mile. So as far as I’m concerned, the only reason you need to not run is, “I don’t want to.” You’re an adult and can make your own decisions. I was responding solely to your assertion that some people have a natural lack of cardio endurance and that some people just can’t run a mile, which I believe to be false, excepting physical disability.
FTR, recent studies have shown that running actually seems to have a protective effect on your knees. I am sharing this only to provide information and not to convince you personally to start running, so you don’t need to defend yourself with a bunch of reasons why this does not apply to you.
Okay, fair enough. This sort of thing is pretty subjective. Myself I’ve never felt any different as a result of my weight either way, even when I was a skinny teen.
I am prescient!
I only mentioned it because it seemed directly relevent to the discussion - but fine, believe what you want. I’m actually an adonis who is physically capable of lifting buicks with my pinky finger, and am only pretending to have had a lifelong experience of physical incapability unaffected (either way) by my weight or exercise level. And I’m only pretending this to prevent people on the internet from making me do things. Yes, that’s exactly it.
I am certain that some people have a natural lack of cardio endurance and can’t just run a mile - if it wasn’t the case then by definition nobody would lack cardio endurance and everyone would be able to run a mile! The degree to which these problems are correctible through prolonged and possibly severe physical labor may be up for debate, but the idea that everybody is an olympian or even an olympian waiting to happen if they’d just do a couple pushups, is nonsensical at best.
I don’t believe for an instant that running will help my knees. But then again, I’m not laboring under the assumption that they are merely in need of some muscle tautening or whatever.
I wasn’t suggesting that you were making up the bad knees, just questioning your need to mention them in the first place. You don’t need to justify your lack of exercise to me or anyone else, so I am wondering why you are still here doing so.
As for the rest, I didn’t say that everyone is an Olympian waiting to happen. That would be a very stupid thing for me to say. I said that anyone can run a mile if they put their mind to it, and I stand by that assertion. I think I was very clear in one of my earlier posts that I don’t mean that you could rise up off the couch this very second and run a mile. But there is nothing special about your body that makes you incapable of learning to run a mile. Trust me, it doesn’t take herculean effort, you don’t have to be an Olympian in training, it’s not something superhuman that only a select few can do, blah blah blah. It’s a mile. Anyone can do it. Hell, I’ll go on to say that probably most people could run two miles, but let’s not go crazy.
If I were you, I’d examine my reasons for needing to assert that a relatively low level of physical activity is akin to winning an Olympic medal.
Oh, and by the way, have you ever actually biked two miles? Depending on how long it takes you to park your car at your destination, it might actually be quicker than driving. It really doesn’t take that long. You have some weird ideas about physical activity.
I waffled over mentioning them, because I knew some yahoo would think I was making excuses. However, when dealing with a person who is confidently asserting that anyone “short of having a physical disability” can run, and “But don’t think that you are somehow innately different from people who can run a mile. You can run a mile too, you’re just not conditioned for it at the current time.”, I felt it was relevent to the discussion that I very might be in the category of people that you consider exceptions to your optomistic rule.
As for why I’m still here, I came in here to argue a point about pejorative word misuse, which nobody wants to discuss much. I’m not sure why I’m still here; it probably has more to do with responding to slander than some moral high imperative - though I do believe I’m fighting false statements here.
I don’t trust you in this. Persons always think that everyone can do what they can do - it’s easy! Ignore the physical disabilities, they’re just an excuse.
I will note that my being unable to run a mile has nothing at all to do with my weight; I was quite demonstrably unable to run a mile as a teenager in that PE class you think I’m still in. Curiously enough, I didn’t drive at the time; I rode a bike to get around. (Never more than a mile and a half, though; usually less. My world was small when I was a kid.) Biking was no problem. Running killed me.
Given that I didn’t assert that, I don’t have any reasons to examine. I did assert that you seem to have the confused belief that people do not differ in the level of physical capability that they are capable of developing - if we weren’t such lazy slugs, that is.
I don’t bike to work because 1) I don’t want to risk getting my work clothes dirty 2) I want to sleep in as late as possible (parking takes no time at my work, so no time savings there), and 3) I don’t own a bike (and don’t want to make space for one in my apartment). I don’t bike to stores because I often have five bags of stuff to haul back - and you’re talking a six or eight mile round trip. (Also, no bike.)
But you don’t care about the reality, do you? Such considerations are “weird ideas”.
No, the weird idea is that 2 miles is an “impractical” distance to bike. You just gave plenty of fine reasons not to bike to work. And as I hope I have been clear, “I just don’t want to” is a fine reason not to bike to work. But you offered up the impractical distance of 2 miles as an example of why biking to work would not work for you. Uh, OK? 2 miles really isn’t that far, especially on a bike.
Also, you did equate running a mile with Olympian effort. You said, in response to my statement that everyone could run a mile:
Running a mile /= olympian.
Btw, I couldn’t run a mile as a teenager, either. I was a pretty sedentary teen, apart from marching band, and asking my body to suddenly run a mile for one gym class was just not happening. I rebelled and walked just because I wanted to piss off my gym teacher, but even if I’d given it a good try I doubt I could have run the whole mile. When I did decide, earlier this year, that I wanted to be able to run, I worked up to it gradually and slowly.
Anyway, I’m not quite sure how I got sucked into an argument about why you can’t run a mile. I certainly don’t think that running is for everybody. You could probably run a mile if you worked up to it, but maybe you would still hate it and find it difficult and spend the whole time wishing you were doing something else. I really don’t have a problem with this. I think it’s important for people that want to get to fit to find something that they enjoy doing, and running ain’t it for a lot of people. No big woo.
If you’re not in a hurry and not carrying cargo and don’t care about braving the elements, then two miles isn’t far on a bike. (On foot is another story - depite your implication here that it isn’t.) Of course, this scenariou doesn’t have any relation to my life; ergo biking is an impractical option for me.
Read for comprehension.
I, on the other hand, did try to run the mile when asked. It killed me. I’d run a distance, then be forced to drop to a plod, much slower than walking, as my body attempted to recover. Then, having recovered somewhat, I’d try again - going a shorter distance until I ground to a near halt. This happened over and over, but I never quite gave up and just walked it - though it would probably have been faster. It took me 25 minutes to “run” the whole mile - I’m not kidding; they timed it. (In retrospect it’s a little surprising they didn’t stop me early. So I now fully expect you to believe that this is all a lie.)
Of course, this little jog wasn’t just out of the blue - we’d have to do laps around the gym every morning. I was obviously not in the lead, but the distance was short enough not to push me past the first breaking point. But you will ignore this and pretend that the run was out of the blue because the fact that the ran was not preceded by a couple months of PE classes contradicts your little belief that with a few week’s brief practice all physical hurdles will vanish.
I think you got sucked into this because you declared that everybody can run a mile (or could, with a little bit of working up to it) and I called you on your bullshit.
Regardless, even if I wanted to get fit, clearly running isn’t the way I’d go about doing it. Not walking either, because walking alone is a titanic waste of time - you can’t even hardly do anything else while you’re doing it. No way. Me, when I get inclined to exercise, I use my stationary bike. As best I can tell it doesn’t actually improve my health at all, (though people with religious beliefs about the benefits of health care will call me a liar here), but at least I can watch TV at the same time, so it’s not a complete waste.
Of course, it’s hard to get motivated to do this, because it doesn’t work and I’m not really motivated to get fit anyway, at least not that way. I mean, what’s the benefit? Being able to run for the sake of running? Meh. Now, I do want to lose weight, but that’s different; it’s so the diabetes won’t get me. I don’t care if I can’t run, but I do care if it’s because my legs have been amputated.
Where did I say that a few weeks’ brief practice would “vanish all physical hurdles”? I said, and maintain, that anyone who doesn’t have a physical disability can learn to run a mile. I didn’t say it wouldn’t take significant work and effort. I didn’t say it would take a few days, or a few weeks. Call it bullshit if you want. You keep accusing me of calling you a liar, and I don’t know why, because I have no reason to doubt anything you’ve said about your personal experiences. I just disagree with you on this small point. You are getting incredibly defensive about this and perceiving me as personally attacking you, so I’m just going to drop it.
This one astonished me when I went to the gym most recently. I had made about .3 miles – pathetic distance – in walking for a few minutes, but my back was hurting brutally and I’d started the workout nauseated. I went to a recumbent bike and went seven miles barely thinking about it.
I can’t believe I’m continuing to engage with this, but when we had to run that mile for the President’s Fitness Test (god, never in my life have I hated a politician as much as when that came around) in ninth grade, my gym teacher had to stay into his lunch break because it took me 40 minutes because I started out trying to run it. Not because I was fat - I probably weighed 90 pounds. Because I was sedentary.
Last year when I started running as an adult, I worked up to it and wanted to do it, and I did it. It isn’t easy - if it was easy everybody would do it, duh. When you did your exercise biking, did you work hard or did you just make the wheels go around and around? Because there isn’t much to making the wheels go around - if you tried riding a bike you’d find that it’s a shockingly efficient mode of transportation, if you don’t have to go up a hill. You burn surprisingly few calories for the distance, just because it’s such a smart little machine.
I know I said I was dropping this, but I want to clarify here because you misinterpreted what I meant, and I really didn’t mean it the way you are taking it. My comment about your sounding like you wanted a note from the gym teacher wasn’t my way of saying, “You’re making up your knee injury.” It was my way of saying that it sounded like you were wanting someone to tell you that it was OK not to exercise, i.e. asking for a pass from gym class. My point was just that you don’t need anyone else’s permission for that. If you don’t want to exercise… well, don’t.
Well, first of all bergbet2 does not see any benefit from exercise. He tried it once for a few minutes and it didn’t work. Plus, exercise is a waste of time unless he is watching TV–then it is a useless uncomfortable experience with the benefit of using his time more wisely–by watching TV. There is no TV in the bottom of pools.
