Relative Something

With our society’s drive for lowering the cost of food, and corporations that have a stake in the food industry who are more than happy to take advantage of it, in search of maximizing profits, the American diet has become, as one article tells it, “the elephant in the room in the debate over health care.” At the rate we are going now, even if politicians come up with the greatest health plan possible, it won’t relieve the stress our health care industry is under in dealing with the chronic health problems we bring on ourselves due to the way we choose to eat. And that is only half of our battle.

In addition to the sad state to which our diet has evolved, the other significant aspect of our physical health is our level of activity. Together, they are the one-two punch to our well-being. The daily demands of our 21st century lives just don’t provide the automatic exercise to adequately balance the calories we consume. Putting our bodies to work is something we must consciously choose to do. And it doesn’t come easy, as represented by the physics property of inertia: a body at rest remains at rest.

The difference between someone who, by all definitions, is “athletic” and someone who would never describe themselves as such, probably isn’t as great as our minds are inclined to frame. It just might be similar to the way our minds perceive the speed of  passing vehicle on the freeway. At the moment the car is passing by, it appears to be traveling at a much greater speed than after it gets ahead. Then it lingers in view and appears to be traveling at the same pace as the vehicle it just passed. Our minds tend to perceive the athletic activity as passing by too fast for us to compete. But athletic activity doesn’t need to be limited to athletes.

I like the way Jim Klobuchar expresses this thought: Everyone has an Everest. For inactive people, just becoming active can be as heroic as necessary to reverse a dangerous trend. But, when a normally sedentary person tries to do something active, they immediately experience a feeling of becoming short of breath due to exertion. In addition there is the feeling of being too hot, getting sweaty, maybe a little light-headedness. It’s enough to stop the loftiest of intentions. That’s too bad. Because there is a world of entertaining recreational activity waiting just a little ways beyond that moment of feeling miserable which stops most non-athletic people. I fear that these limitations become established all the way back at school-age phy-ed classes that fracture participants into the two distinct stereotypes of those who have ability and those who don’t. What if we found a way to teach people how to get beyond that first experience of oxygen debt to discover the possibilities on the other side?

I think it is sad, really, that athletes are the only ones that get to know what it’s like. It doesn’t take an athlete to learn how to get over that first hurdle and play active games, even a simple game of tag, and continue to play for a period of time after that first onset of the feelings of oxygen debt. It is a time that you might hear described as having a “second wind.” It is a magical place to discover. It would be a valuable tool in the journey toward optimizing physical health. And we can use all the tools we can get, because it matters what we eat and do.