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Heyyyy, ya wanna make sure people don't stick with their workout? Just make your exercise routines all about weight loss and having an arbitrarily "perfect" physique! Bingo-bango-bongo, those less-than-perfect types will drop away like flies, leaving you surrounded by only the kinds of hunks and hotties that a superior specimen like you deserves to be in the company of.
What, me, sarcastic? Surely not! This will totally happen and you completely deserve it! Being a body-shaming concern troll in no way means you should crawl back under your bridge.
All right, I'm setting the Sarcasm Shaker aside now before I risk seasoning this post with too much of a bad thing. Anyway...
As Jennette McCurdy observed in her autobiography, I'm Glad My Mom Died:
People seem to assign thin with “good,” heavy with “bad,” and too thin also with “bad.” There’s such a small window of “good.”
Nobody deserves to be shamed into hating their body. I just did part of Jeanette DePatie’s Everybody Can Exercise video.
The participants in the video are real people of all sizes, not leotard-clad Stepford wives. I was only able to get through 15 minutes this time, but now that I’ve found something that I can tell myself to do at least 15 minutes of, and I’m not having to come up with the routines, I think I may be able to keep up with it. My endurance sucks, but I’m hoping to rebuild it.
Body shaming leads people to give up on exercising. I may not be a genius, but that seems pretty damn counter-intuitive to me. As Ragen Chastain of Dances With Fat (https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com) says, you are the boss of your own underpants. Therefore, if you wish to make weight loss the focus of your workout, you may do that. However, there are several reasons why I don’t recommend that approach. More importantly, you don’t have the right to tell anyone else that weight loss needs to be their focus for anything.
These are my realistic goals.
I have asthma and back problems and I’m almost 60 years old. I’ll never be able to run a marathon.
Did I mention that I hate running?
I like swimming. Unfortunately, there is no place to swim in this town. The nearest swimming pool or rec center is going to be a good 60 miles away.
I like walking, but I hate it when I go out in public and the public be there to attagirl me and treat me like I’m mentally deficient because I have physical problems. I don't want to be anyone's inspiration porn.
I also hate it when I encounter unleashed dogs because fuckers in this town think everyone should love their snarling mutt.
All that being said, I think videos like Jeanette’s are routines I can stick to.
I can do at least 15 minutes a day.
It doesn’t feel like a chore.
The routine is led by a compassionate, encouraging person.
One need not be in perfect shape to participate.
There is no fat shaming or thin praising.
It would make me feel proud of myself if I were to exercise regularly again. Hopefully, it will increase my stamina, flexibility, and strength. Perhaps it may even help lower my blood sugar.
What will exercising not do?
It will not make me a better person than people who don’t exercise.
A commitment to physical activity is not a measure of personal worth. I wish people would stop treating it like it was.
~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~
Hear, hear. I walk because I enjoy it. And to get places. I do not walk to get thin. I exercise so that I can go into the garden (a personal obsession) without falling over. And I still have things to lean on.
ReplyDeleteI miss the beautiful botanic gardens so much! We didn't get there this year. Maybe next year we'll go a couple of times during the summer.
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