Is Fitness Just About Sex?

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I know, I know, I owe you guys the final piece of The Alcohol Regimen.

Sometimes an ex-accountant turned fitness guy and mediocre writer sits down and something altogether different spills out.

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I joke around about the point of this stuff, fitness that is.  I take a sarcastic angle raising sex appeal above all else as the why to diet and training.  Physique.  Appearance.  Vanity.

I mean, attention from the opposite sex is awesome and looking good for your boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, certainly feels good.

But, it is a small piece to the why-care-about-fitness puzzle.

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The Real Benefits

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Use your body to do good

My grandpa, though tough as nails and the handiest guy I know, is aging.  Destiny throws health problems at him and he quietly shrugs em off, never complaining a bit.

So, when I had the opportunity to unload something heavy from his truck – saving his body a little wear – I felt like my deadlifts served a more honorable purpose.

Playing with your kids, carrying groceries, having your buddy’s back in scuffle or your little sister’s or daughter’s if God forbid some jerkoff mistreats her – these are the real reasons to stay strong, active and functional.

Improve every area of your life

When you set goals, follow a plan and see results, you experience an increase in confidence derived not from the result (your slammin’ new bod) but from the process.  You set a goal.  You exerted effort.  You achieved.  Accomplishment instills confidence.

This confidence will carry over into your relationships, quality of work, social skills, emotional well-being and every area of your life.

Think about the opposite: Stop working out, binge eat, gain fat, feel shitty about yourself and continue the downward spiral.

Increase Productivity

“Idle hands are the devil’s,” or something like that.

Logically, more free time should result in greater productivity.  You can use additional free hours to get more done.

Under this logic, skipping workouts would yield greater productivity than working out.  The hours you would have spent exercising will be dedicated to other tasks.  Why isn’t this true?

The Productivity Paradox

When I quit my corporate job, I thought my productivity would skyrocket.  I would gain so much time every week – 55 billable hours, five hours of tortuously mundane lunch conversation, ten hours commuting and countless hours of “status update meetings.”

Quitting would buy me 75 hours of quality productivity every single week.

But that didn’t happen.

Why not?  My schedule was wide open; I had all the time in the world. But I didn’t know what to do.  I froze.  I became a lazy bum.  And laziness breeds laziness.  No alarm clock?  No problem.  I was confused, unmotivated and anything but productive.

In time, I started filling my hours with action, and I got in a groove.

Productivity breeds productivity.

When I am running around town working, writing, coaching, training myself and meeting people, I function beautifully on six hours of sleep.  But, when I visit home for a weekend and have nothing but free time, I sleep nine hours a night and take afternoon naps.  The productivity paradox.

Taking the time and effort to train regularly and adhere to a diet program will increase your total productivity.

Be Healthy

Now, I can’t add five years to your life, bringing mean death from 86 to 91, or whatever.

If that’s your goal, bye bye.  I can’t don’t want to help you.  And I don’t think Dr. Oz can help you either.

Manipulation of scientific data is so easy, and unfortunately, so prevalent.  Cherry pick a study –> stretch the facts to match the conclusion with your thesis –> wrap it with a bow and feed it to the herds of sheep general public –> maximize revenue.  Bonus: use a shocking headline and unnecessarily confusing vocabulary.

“Exerting all resources to maximize time on earth is a waste of time on earth.”

-Me

Yes, I just quoted myself in my own article on my own site.  I don’t care if you think it’s douchey.

If you listen to every cancer avoidance tip you hear, you’ll be living in a damn bubble scared of all food except organic blueberries and kale leaves.

I want you to live as full a life as possible – full of adventure, positive relationships and happiness, err, joy – as I was once taught that happiness is contingent upon external factors whereas joy is a state independent of external factors.

Now, eastern religion philosophy aside, the reason fitness improves your health is because not being fat improves your health.  More people are currently obese than during any other time in history, and sadly, acceptance of obesity has become a cultural norm.

Keeping your body in reasonable shape will decrease your risk of the diseases that can pick you off in your 50s – heart disease, type II diabetes, high blood pressure – those ones.

So that’s that.  Not a lot to say for concluding remarks.  Fitness is about more than being really, really ridiculously good looking.

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SOUND OFF:  WHAT’S THE #1 REASON YOU KEEP YOUR BODY IN SHAPE?  I’M CURIOUS, SO BE HONEST.  10 COMMENTS AND I’LL HAVE THE FINAL POST OF THE ALCOHOL REGIMEN UP BY WEDNESDAY!

 



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