What is Fitness?
Over the span of a lifetime, our definition of fitness inevitably changes. These various seasons are marked by continual improvement across a variety of sports and skill levels. In grade school, our parents make us play little league baseball, or soccer. Then as we enter middle school, opportunities to play contact sports like football become available. We carry sports like these through high school, typically playing on one of our school’s varsity teams. Jumping forward 50 years, we’re playing golf in Florida, or swimming laps at the local community center.
As stereotypical as this natural progression of life sounds, everyone reading this can relate to it in one way or another. Physical fitness during life’s journey is as closely integrated to our personalities as our sleep schedules, or our favorite foods.
The United States, and broadly speaking, the rest of the world, is facing a new kind of nutritional challenge: obesity. Roughly one out of every three people in the US is considered medically obese. With this diagnosis, type-two diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, strokes, and potentially heart attacks are sure to follow. In fact, when you google, “health risks of obesity,” the first result says, “All-causes of death (mortality).”
For the first time in human history, we have a bottomless pit of various foods which we can choose to eat. Government programs have been established to ensure that no one goes hungry, but in the process, neglected to convey the importance of a healthy diet.
But there’s an even greater issue. Once someone decides to take control of their physical health, we have far too few programs to help them regain control. As a result, they jump to three things: starvation, eating the wrong foods, and overemphasizing the time spent at the gym. Some say fitness is as simple as, “calories in, calories out”, but I disagree. Choosing the proper nutrient allows your body to metabolize, or extract energy, with minimal effort, eliminating the feeling of prolonged emptiness associated with diets like intermittent fasting.
The gym isn’t going to fix someone’s weight problem. Changing their identity and mindset will. Time spent exercising is the route by which a healthy lifestyle can be maintained, not achieved.
I’m certain that there are dietitians with more degrees than I have fingers to count them on who probably disagree with me. But they have likely never visited the gyms that I attend, or been introduced to the student athletes that I’ve met.
My preferred methods of exercise include many activities: running, cycling, weight lifting, and most importantly, swimming. These things combined allow me to maintain and incrementally improve my athletic abilities, but by no means is that how someone looking to lose weight should start their journey.
Remember my comment about small decisions turning into large outcomes? The same is true for someone’s BMI. Small decisions, like drinking one less tablespoon of sugar in your coffee, could completely change your life.
“You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results,” says James Clear. And I couldn’t agree with him more.