We have two philosophies about food that stand opposed to each other. One is the enjoyment of food as both a source of individual pleasure and deep cultural significance, the other is of food as a fuel that drives our physical prowess. This is a great opportunity to stop and reflect upon the propensity for wanting to have things both ways, often at the expense of finding meaningful balance in life.
Food is something we enjoy thoroughly and which has important cultural significance. We use food to celebrate and to commemorate, to form bonds, to lift our spirits, and even to express art. All of which is important and probably even indespensible. On the other hand, food’s most basic function is to keep us alive. At its simplist level it is nothing more than the delivery system for the sun’s energy to our bodies. Food is fuel, not a party.
Now here is the important point: both views are valid and we would be better served to remember that when we talk about health and fitness. It’s a constant battle that I see so often in fitness. As much as we would like to, we can’t look like the cover of Men’s or Women’s Health magazine or like some of the celebrities out there and still eat based on pleasure. We have to treat it as a fuel and nothing more. But that’s just it, food is not just fuel, it’s a socially and culturally significant part of our lives! Tossing all that aside only makes people unhappy.
So what should we really do? Well, the bottom line is, we should stop trying to have it both ways. If you want to look like the cover of a fitness magazine, then you can’t give in every single time there is a social reason, or a personal one, to eat something you know you shouldn’t. It’s important to know that because too often people try to make up for poor eating with more intense exercise, but this is something that will never work (The Reality of Calorie Burn). On the other hand, we should stop demanding from ourselves and each other that we look like the cover of a Men’s or Women’s Health magazine in the first place. That doesn’t have anything to do with health and it creates unnecessary stress. Our culture isn’t set up like that, and I don’t think we’d really want it to be. If we give ourselves that bit of leeway, then we can understand that food isn’t an all or nothing proposition in order to be healthy (There Is No ‘All Or Nothing’). Skipping every enjoyable part of life just so you can have Ryan Reynold’s abs can be a really unhappy existence, and that isn’t necessarily healthy.
CONCLUSION
Health can be paradoxical. If you really want to be Hollywood fit, then Thursday happy hour, and other similar social pressures, really are out of the picture. On the other hand being ‘healthy’ is about more than your body fat percentage. Insane strictness about how you live doesn’t necessarily make your life better, and eating really isn’t all that comparable to filling your car with gasoline. So take some time to find balance and be fair with yourself when you do it.
PHOTO – Todd Anderson, Rock-Scale. License
