-M

There are a lot of ways to loose weight, and I’ve seen many people try them all. While there are a few people who can stay motivated to be fit by the way they look or could look in a bikini, for most people it’s not enough.

However if you want to be able to ride 100 miles, do a 40 mile backpacking hike, or run a marathon, the rewards will be higher and the experience will be far more motivating. There are some people who will never be into that. And some of those people just won’t ever care that they are out of shape, overweight, and going to die sooner as a result of it.

To each his own. Let’s not pretend that there are people out there who are fat because of any other reason than they are making a conscious choice not to change.

My point is that you can talk about causes and effects all day and night and the only thing that changes behavior is discussions of motivation. Think about it from a marketing perspective. If america is becoming more obese and less fit then the comfortable accepted place for people to be is becoming sedentary and unhealthy and we are positively reinforcing that all the time.

Imagery of fit healthy beautiful people clearly isn’t helping. When you think about it, the only thing that media shows as a benefit of being fit and healthy is more sex which you can 1) get in acceptable proxy from the internet and 2) doesn’t help those of us who are married.

For me, fitness and lifestyle are the same. To be fit i need to have fun and to have fun i need to be fit. I don’t necessarily look awesome in a speedo, but I’m more likely to skinny dip in a glacial lake after three days on a trail anyway…

-M

Maybe it is that we are free to be, feel and think what we want to be and do with our lives. For some it is an addiction to the taste that they can’t give up and for others there is a void of peer pressure that stigmatizes the fatty content in food. Think about it. How do people eat in California and New York compared to Mississippi or Louisiana. There is a stigma that goes with eating fatty foods in CA and NY vs MI and LA.

I only fear what would happen if socialized medicine actually became a reality in America. Would there be a mandate to educate eating healthy and a penalty for not eating healthy.

Currently there are health care providers that charge extra for smokers on a company health plan vs. non smokers and also there is a similar policy for obese people vs. non-obese people.

Perhaps if we weren’t so concerned with working all of the time (if we had more time in our personal lives, perhaps we would work out more) and dependent on our cars for transportation, we would be better fit people in the United States.