Just read a short piece by Augusten Burroughs on his quest to have a six-pack. Oh wow it's good.
You can read it here, on some dude's blog. His pictures and commentary are sort of annoying, but it's worth it to read this, serrriously.
And another thing on exercise-culture, body image stuff, also, surprisingly by a man: Adam Gopnik's essay "The Rules of the Sport" in Paris to the Moon. I can't find a link for that one, but oh it's good. It's about living in Paris, trying to get a gym membership, and how the American sort of gym-rat thing is simply beyond the French comprehension. Those women eat pastries for breakfast, can't fathom exercising on a regular basis, and still are trim and elegant. Why wasn't I born French, again?
5 comments:
sigh. it's never enough.
Ammie, you would LOVE this Adam Gopnik essay. I thought of you as I read it. It would make you bang your head against the wall for your nonfrenchness, but you would like it. Maybe I'll have to make a hardcopy and send it to you. Or you can get Paris to the Moon from the library. Some of the essays are a little too politics-oriented for me to care (whoops), but there's some other really lovely stuff.
That's how I kinda feel lately, like we are all being sold all of these lies about fitness. Commercials, magazine ads. I think of they dumb trainer at 24 hour fitness who told me I must have been just exercising wrong for the last 10 years and that's why I was fat. Duh, I know exactly what would have happened if I had listened to her.....nothing. I swear 99.9 % of it all is diet, NOT EXERCISE. Although, it does feel good to do a good run. I even have the desire to run with you when I come visit, Am.
Oh! you replied! yeah --send me that other essay, cause I know I won't buy the book for one essay, and my library is like the library of the illiterate: technically they have books... I always said 80% diet, but I think I'm with you Meesh. The percentage is going up in my mind every day. Exercise just FEELS good. But, I think weights are in a different class. They make a big difference in a metabolism.
I loved the lines: "Elsewhere in the world bombs explode, villages flood, mothers and children are tortured to death and their bodies abandoned to rot in the sun. But here in the mirror before me remains a resilient layer of blubber over the muscle." We really do lose perspective sometimes.
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