When you focus on health, rather than weight, it means you’re not going to be pushing yourself into a state of deficiency all the time, and that gives you a real chance at happiness and vitality. It means you’re going to invest in foods that satisfy you and training that makes you feel good rather than that which makes you feel bad. When you are focused on health rather than weight-loss, it means that when you fail to lose any weight, or even if you succeed, you don’t automatically revert back to the shit you were doing before. It means you move forward, to something new. It means you make your own decisions, for your own best interests, because you realise you’re in this, with yourself, for the long haul. Notions of being ‘bad’ begin to lose relevance - because it isn’t about obedience. It’s your life, and who the hell else’s business is it anyway? With autonomy comes independence and freedom - the freedom to choose what’s actually good for you, rather than blindly reacting or doing what you’re told. You gain perspective, you understand context, and you realise that your choices don’t need to make sense to anyone else. You don’t need to apologise for - or justify in any way - what you’re putting in your mouth and how much - or if - you exercise.
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Abundance - we could do worse. People like to talk about how it’s healthier to lose weight slowly over a long period of time, rather than quickly like they do on TV. But is one method really healthier than the other? If we’re to take the conventional view of fat-loss, you basically need to be ‘eating less than you burn’, for fat-loss to be successful. So long term starvation is supposed to be healthier than short-term, intense starvation? Long term starvation is supposed to yield better results? It’s just kinda strange, really. Starvation is bad for everyone. Just because you’re fatter than you want to be, we’re expected to believe zinc, B12, and calcium magically don’t matter anymore? “Oh, just eat less. You’ll be fine” – really? Malnourishment doesn’t affect fat people then? So are you better off starving a little for a long time, or a lot for a short time? Should you try to cycle your weight-loss nutrition, so you have planned periods of re-feeding that (I’m told) work with your metabolism, rather than against it? Is making a conscious effort to develop that sort of obsessiveness supposed to serve you for the long term? Should you try to eat foods with a high mineral to calorie ratio? Can you eat low-calorie and high-vitamin, and avoid the feared metabolic apocalypse? Not the easiest diet to follow... This kinda follows on from my previous post. Lately, some people have been asking me what I eat, and it takes a while to explain the process. I’ve been trying to get in touch with what nourishes me, without preconception. Actually that didn’t take long at all, but if you want the detailed version, read on... Worrying about what’s healthy, what’s unhealthy, what’s okay and what’s forbidden, what’s a treat, what has to be rationed, what can be eaten freely – all this gets in the way of identifying what you need. Preconceptions make us sick, as much as they make us healthy. So why bother with them at all? What you need should never be rationed. And we all need food. I don’t care whether it’s for emotional reasons, for the pure nutritional makeup, or for any other reason you like. Systems of rationing make cravings worse and often make for complications later on. The SCALES OF JUDGEMENT. Tremble and BE JUDGED! What absolutely does not help you either lose weight or be more healthful, is arguing about whether or not it’s possible to be both fat and healthy. From an individual point of view, it’s entirely unhelpful (even though I think it’s important on a societal scale). Is believing that you cannot be fat and healthy going to help you lose weight? No. Is believing that you can be fat and healthy going to help you become more healthy? Maybe. Depends on your point of view, and whether or not you care for your own wellbeing enough to dedicate yourself to your own development. A maybe is better than a no, so I find the whole argument rather tiresome. And this is why I’m so into genuinely loving and caring for yourself. Because only then are you capable of growth – only then will you really care about building a better life for yourself. Self-hating practices only chain you to the wheel of failure – I touched on this previously. And anyway, who cares whether or not being fat is healthy if we don’t have a reliable way of getting people thin? It’s totally irrelevant. Whatever your size, it is possible to focus on improving your health. Maybe you’ll lose weight, maybe you won’t, but at least you’ll be doing something practical. You’ll be encouraging nurturing, healthful behaviours, and discouraging practices that harm you. You’ll give yourself a chance to enjoy exercise, and it’s only enjoyment that will keep you training. Discipline isn’t enough and hatred fails everyone sooner or later. And guess what? Most diets are hurtful. Most dieters gain weight in the long run. Are you trying to be one of the (remarkably few) special unique snowflakes who succeeds, or are you going to learn from the rest of our mistakes? What do I want more than being ripped, jacked or muscular? I want a good sense of self-respect and worth. I know all too well that if I pour my efforts into creating the ‘perfect’ physique (as if it was even possible for such a thing to exist from an objective perspective), I only make ‘perfection’ harder to attain. The opposite is, of course, true: happiness lies within. We all know it. If you truly accept and learn to love yourself as you would love another, it frees you to pursue what’s truly good for you, and it frees you from the shame and insecurity that makes us pander to other people’s demands. Sailors 'taking an observation' I saw some people training in the gym today. They were young, and new here. One was showing the other a range of exercises - lunges, pulldowns, sit-ups with a medicine ball. I’m not sure what their ‘motivation’ was, but what it looked like was two people just playing around and seeing what works. I like that. It reminds me - a couple of months ago two girls - they were maybe fourteen or fifteen - came in, and they started training. One of them was like, “okay I’ll be your personal trainer today” and she stood, feet apart, hands on her hips and started saying things like “push harder!” and “you gotta earn it! C’mon go faster… You can do it! Only ten more seconds!” And her friend ‘picked up the pace’. There isn’t a prerequisite size you have to be in order to qualify for having body image issues. All people of all sizes qualify. We are currently accepting applications. I know a lot of personal trainers who are really hard on themselves. We tend to buy into the belief that it’s our job to be thin. I think that’s only true if you make it true. If you are relatively thin and you’re complaining that you feel fat, when someone tells you not to be ridiculous, you aren’t fat – that’s not very helpful. Complaining to someone about your own fatness, when they’re fatter than you are, well that’s also not very helpful. To anyone. The thing is, ‘feeling fat’ doesn’t mean anything. It’s different from feeling bloated. Feeling ugly is different from feeling fat. Feeling heavy is different from feeling fat. Maybe if you’re moving and your belly gets in the way (this sometimes happens to me), maybe that qualifies as feeling fat, but when you get down to it, fat is simply not a feeling. We’re bullied into training. The usual approach is to exploit your guilt and shame and make you feel like you should be training; like you’re wrong and the way to make you right is through penance at the gym. But there comes a time when we start to respect and care for ourselves enough so that we’re no longer vulnerable to that kind of exploitation, and we stop training. We know that we ‘should’ be exercising, but on a subtle level we rebel. We feel guilty, but not guilty enough to train. That’s the point of self-respect we associate with laziness – we stop training because we don’t want to be cruel to ourselves any more. Sooner or later, the constant negativity and prejudice might wear us down enough to get us back to the gym, we might give in to the prevailing view that we’re lazy, uncaring and somehow morally corrupt, and we might start being hard on ourselves again. This is why we think being nice to ourselves means not training, not pursuing our development, and why we think we need to be hard on ourselves if we want to progress – if we want to look lean, ripped and rugged. Wild. Strong and independent. Like we Do It For Sparta. Our chiselled physiques are a symbol of the dedication, devotion and damage we’ve endured. We’re told that if we ‘eat right and exercise’, we’ll lose weight. It looks good on paper, but if you take a closer look, a logical look, a look from an evolutionary perspective (which seems to be in fashion at the moment) it doesn’t actually make sense. If restricted calorie intake plus exercise resulted in weight loss, we would have died out a long time ago. What makes sense is that the humans who survived and procreated and survived again – they (we) are the ones who have the ability to exercise for long periods of time without eating much food, all without losing weight. It’s because these humans who are resistant to weight loss don’t die of hunger. They don’t waste away when times are tough. They persevere. If exercising a lot and not eating much resulted in a massive, or even a marginal loss of body mass – our species would not have survived. If you have two unsuccessful hunts or one cold winter, everybody dies. I have a weakness for chocolate-coated almonds, which is to say - I like them. Considering that, I suppose I have a weakness for sweet potato, salmon and broccoli, and weightlifting too. I guess the difference is that I don’t think of these things as being bad. When we want to do something nice for ourselves, why do we think of being indulgent? Pandering to our ego? Is that treating ourselves with kindness? It may be, but it’s not all there is. What about doing something that nourishes your true self - whatever that is? I like being indulgent, I think it’s great! I enjoy it very much, which is precious. It’s much better than indulging and only feeling guilty - what’s the point of that? But being indulgent is not all I think of when I want to be nice to myself, when I’m in need of comfort. There are reasons we have cravings; they’re not all bad and I don’t think they should be ignored. Be aware. What do you truly, genuinely need, without preconception? That’s key. Take away the judgment – both the positive and negative. What do you need, for you? |