from physical fitness to physical fatness

how much things have changed, most of all how we talk about it

obviously, we live in a strange time, a time where nothing is ever anyone’s fault and every pathology and lifestyle choice is not only tolerated but validated to the point of accommodation and accolade, an ongoing and deepening hallucination driven by the need to “normalize” the unhealthy and abnormal and to grant “victim” or “oppressed” to anyone who opines “i am marginalized! give me status and acceptance!”

this is not alliance, it’s enabling. it’s taking those who might otherwise find ways to better and stabilize themselves and telling them “no, you go get worse and we’ll adapt our perceptions to accommodate you and tell you it’s OK so you can tell yourself it’s OK and maybe even believe it.”

and the pantsless emperors stride proudly down the boulevard.

there may well be nowhere that this is more acute than physical fitness.

the claims and asks have simply lost all grounding in reality.

working out? sure. you should. but being fit? no, this is not fit. this is severely, tragically, dangerously unhealthy. seeking to change this is laudable and worthy of respect, but seeking to call the state itself somehow “normal” or “healthy” is not. and that’s an important distinction.

because in the end, reality is not optional and heart disease does not care if you “identify as skinny.”

it’s an implacable and non-negotiable fact and all this endless denial about truly frightening levels of obesity of a severity heretofore unknown in the human species is not helping. it’s enabling and ennobling self-harm.

i live on a beach. let me tell you, if anything, this is a serious understatement.

it’s absolutely astonishing the proud obesity on display. growing up in the 70’s, there basically were no fat people. when you saw one, it was like “wow, a fat person. how unusual!” to the extent you saw them, it was modestly. they covered up. now they wear thongs that look like they must have used a tow truck to get into them.

apparently, in the 19th century this guy was considered so fat people paid to see it.

today, he’d be middle of the pack at the grocery store in most parts of the US.

guys, this is not OK.

a whole industry of enabler imperialists has taken hold and is pushing “confidence in self-harm” as a lifestyle choice.

the same publications that carry so much advertising from pharma and med device to treat the outcomes of obesity also encourage obesity.

there’s a really bad set of incentives here.

morbid obesity is a big business. and business is good.

“this is healthy!”

no, it isn’t. these semantic word games do not change anything about health. you cannot prevent diabetes by defining 8% HbA1c as “normal.”

bodies don’t work like that.

and obesity and diabetes and heart disease all go hand and hand.

not having these conditions resulted in a 92% reduction in rates of covid deaths. (98%+ in older cohorts) yet they pushed dangerous and ineffective drugs and closed the gyms and locked you in the home to put on your “covid 19” binge eating and day drinking.

there are 100 other things that look like this. obesity ups your risk for absolute legions of bad health outcomes.

it’s the leading cause of health cost expansion in the US because waistline expansion is illness expansion. period. it’s not a negotiable fact.

and what’s been going on has been surreally bad. (recent points added by me using CDC data)

the average woman today is heavier than the average man in 1960 and damn near at the rate of 1980. yeah, height is up a skootch, but nothing to justify this.

the average american male now has a 40.5 inch waist. pants did not even come in that size in the 70’s. women are 38.7. ditto.

the change in sizes is outlandish, especially women’s “vanity sizing.” in 1970 a size 8 had a 23.5 inch waist. in 2011 it was 28-29.5. i shudder to imagine what it might be today.

this is not some wild new genotype running loose. it happened in one generation. it’s not somehow unavoidable, it’s the result of choices. and we can choose to do something else.

here’s a speech from JFK back in the 60’s. it’s likely to be jarring to current “sensibilities.” it’s blunt, direct, and it’s not coddling anyone. there’s no enabling here. one might even call it a bit of a shaming. but once you get over the shock of hearing someone speak so directly, ask yourself a question: is there really anything controversial being said here? is he wrong? or perhaps have we become a society of buttercups desperately in need of toughening up who have been coddled and addled to the point of not being able to call simple things by name and erect simple, sensible standards about them?

16 push ups for a high school male is hardly a stretch goal. back in HS i would have been humiliated to have had to stop at 100. i doubt there were more than a handful of boys in my high school who could not have easily ripped out 16 pushups.

this used to be considered a high school fitness program. it was arduous, competitive, ranked, and standards based. imagine even discussing implementing this today. it would be what, 30 seconds before some 40 BMI “activist” starting calling this “far right fascist nazi oppressor privilege”? hell, the army cannot implement this anymore. that’s how far we have fallen.

but this used to be normal and it easily could be again.

so how about we normalize that instead of calling fitness and health right wing extremism?

perhaps we should be asking some pointy questions about just what the purpose of a public school is. if the purpose is to produce healthy, happy, high functioning children, then how is it that they have so little physical and nutritional content in their curriculums?

this does not need to be some hyper-complicated thing.

“get outside, get some exercise, and don’t eat like a troll.”

humans knew this for millennia. it’s just the last couple decades that we forgot and the first step in remembering is becoming able to speak frankly about it.

saying that obesity is america’s number one health issue is not shaming. it’s not even controversial. it’s simply a fact. something like 1/3 of US health spend is for diabetes related issues alone. 38 million americans have diabetes. type 1, you’re born with. it’s an autoimmune condition that kills your beta cells and manifests once it has done so, often in late childhood, sometimes earlier. but that’s only 2 million people. 36 million of them are type 2, and type 2 is acquired. it’s a disease of lifestyle and obesity. it ups the risk of all manner of other bad health outcomes as does obesity itself. obesity plays havoc with the endocrine system and crushes testosterone levels.

it’s linked to depression and there is a vicious reciprocal cycle where obesity causes depression and depression causes obesity.

exercise leads to physical and mental health. it works as well as antidepressants for many/most people but the side effects are positive instead of dangerous.

so how is this not front line therapy?

selling people on quick fixes, pills for symptoms, dangerous pharma, and “normalizing body positivity delusions as healthy” is not a solution. increasingly, it’s the problem and like so many things in the world today, if we’re going to start getting a handle on it, we need to start being honest about it, drop the hyper sensitive, over-accommodating coddling, and start calling things by their real names.

normalize good diet and active lifestyles as a path to sound bodily and mental health.

the life you improve will be your own.

welcome to gatogym™