The Reembody blog, up to this point, has been a thoughtful exploration of human movement, a subject about which I am extremely passionate.
Today, however, I’m mad and I’m going to tell you why.
I have been planning a blog post for a while on fitness misinformation, and it was originally going to be the same kind of thoughtful deconstruction found in my other installments. But then I read this and it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever found in my newsfeed: so beautiful, in fact, that the rest of the health and fitness propaganda floating around Facebook like turds in a pool started to really, really piss me off.
So thoughtful deconstruction has been postponed for another day. Instead, we’re going to take a good look at a few of those turds and get pissed off together because, when someone preys upon your insecurities in an effort to manipulate or even harm you, “fuck straight off” is a totally appropriate response.
Join me now, as we stare in shocked incredulity at the worst of the worst:
#1. Your Body is the Enemy
What They Think They’re Saying:
“Don’t give up! You may think you’ve given all you have, but you have so much more! You can make it if you just grit your teeth and push!”
Why It’s Bullshit:
Getting mad at your own limbs sounds less like the behavior of an Olympian and more like the crazy-eyed hobo who lives behind my building’s dumpster.
It is absolutely true that, if your muscles finally reach the point of failure, an emotional response like fear or anger triggers the release of adrenaline, which can keep you going. It’s called the fight-or-flight response, and it’s been attributed to everything from moms lifting cars off kids to soldiers who refuse to lay down and die.
It’s also not something to fuck around with.
Pushing your body’s limits just because you want bigger biceps is sort of like setting your house on fire because you’re cold.
Central heating is for quitters! FITNESS!!
Routinely stressing your body’s physical capacity is called overtraining, and it’s a massive problem in the fitness industry. It is linked to everything from joint degeneration, ligament tears and bone spurs to depression and—no joke—post-traumatic stress disorder.
The fight-or-flight response only kicks in during moments of impending danger precisely because the response itself is potentially dangerous. It’s a calculated risk on the part of your own biochemistry: turn it up to 11 and risk the joint damage or become food for a cave bear. When invoking that kind of biochemical gambit becomes less of a do-or-die, last-ditch effort to survive and more of a Tuesday-at-the-gym-is-chest-day scenario, you’re inviting in a whole mess of future problems.
#2. You Should be Ashamed
What They Think They’re Saying:
“Aren’t you tired of not being as pretty as you deserve? Well all it takes is perseverance to be everything you’ve ever wanted to be!”
Why It’s Bullshit:
First of all, speaking as the father of a little girl, fuck whoever made this.
This is an expertly lit, no doubt digitally enhanced image of a girl in her mid-twenties presented here as the definition of what a woman is allowed to be proud of; “until you are proud” seems to mean “until you have six-pack abs, perky, squeezable breasts and the terrible burden of finding size 0 jeans with a 34 inch inseam”. If there were a male equivalent of this photo, it would have to be Iron Man to really capture the shocking lack of realism. It’s the “don’t stop” part, however, that earns this photo its place on my shit list. The message here is that it’s excusable, nay, it is advisable that the ladies in the audience disregard whatever else they were doing, you know, like having some self-esteem, and do whatever it takes to be fuckable. If it was explicit that “don’t stop” meant “hire a professional lighting crew and a makeup artist and maybe a wizard” it would be one thing, but it’s not. “Don’t stop” just ends up meaning “nope, you’re not up to these heinously unrealistic standards yet; keep running, fatty!”
Oh, and speaking of not stopping . . .
#3. Fitness as Socially Acceptable Neurosis
What They Think They’re Saying:
“Commitment is important! People who lack the ability to commit will always try to bring you down.”
Why It’s Bullshit:
So there’s this thing called anorexia nervosa. It’s kind of a big deal. As a matter of fact, it and other eating disorders collectively have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness, killing 5%–10% of those afflicted within 10 years and a bone-chilling 18%-20% within 20 years. Oh, and it affects between 1% and 5% of women in the US … so, like I was saying, kind of a big deal.
But with better public education and awareness, it’s getting harder and harder to starve to death without anyone noticing—and, as it turns out, not wanting to be noticed is a key component in the anorexic’s psychological profile. As a result, with the kind of nuance and ingenuity that is horrifyingly common among the mentally ill, exercise anorexia, or hypergymnasia, was born.
It works just like anorexia and is caused by the same factors, only instead of restricting calories going in, hypergymnasiacs dramatically increase the calories going out. The benefit—if you can look at it from the self-abusive perspective of the afflicted—is that, instead of frequent, attention-grabbing trips to the bathroom, all they have to do is go exercise a lot! Oh man, easy! People LOVE exercise! Friends and family will just think they’re getting in shape, taking care of themselves, self-improving. The culturally accepted language associated with working out is moderately self-abusive anyway, so all the self-deprecation won’t raise any red flags and obsessing over exercise will blend right in to the normal cultural fabric of fitness.
And if someone does start to question the wisdom of a 10k run after CrossFit and two hot yoga classes? Well, the hypergymnasiac can just high five their fellow gym-goers and say, “I’m not obsessed, you’re just lazy!” … and, to a soundtrack of enthusiastic support, go right back to killing themselves.
So, no, obsession is not the same as dedication, and creating a vocabulary that makes it easier for the mentally ill to cloak their illness in normalcy is not doing anyone any favors.
#4. Disregarding Your Limits
What They Think They’re Saying:
“Do what you have to do to get the job done. Don’t be afraid to show your struggle, only be afraid to fail.”
Why It’s Bullshit:
I can’t believe I have to write this next sentence but, here goes: crawling on the floor weeping while you puke all over yourself is not healthy.
Your body has limits. Those limits are there so that daily function—up to and including heavy manual labor—requires a relatively small amount of physical stress and sacrifice. This means that, if you get into a spontaneous bar fight with a group of neo-Nazis and must defeat them to protect the beautiful tattooed bartender with the dark secret—I’m not the only one who has that fantasy, right?—well, it means that you’re not going into action with a bunch of used-up joints. Your back may look like a gunnysack full of angry pythons, but that won’t mean squat (ha!) when you herniate a disk.
The trick is to know your limits. Pain is helpful in this regard. Of course, there’s pain and there’s pain, but part of being healthy is knowing the difference. Training so hard as to induce vomiting and uncontrollable sobbing is to slowly undermine the basic human judgement of what constitutes challenge versus what causes injury; It’s a fundamental component of self-control. Toddlers learn it when they figure out that they don’t need to cry over a stubbed toe, but that a broken arm is a big deal.
Basically what I’m saying is: don’t let your training routine reduce your level of self-awareness to what it was when you still wore footy pajamas.
#5 Strong is the New Buzzword for Manipulating Women’s Body Image
What They Think They’re Saying:
“Beauty used to be about getting thin—but not anymore, ladies! We’re not after waifish waistlines, we’re after strength!”
Why It’s Bullshit:
Quick! What do all three of the women pictured above have in common? If you said, “They’re all skinny,” you’re exactly right!
The fitness industry—from gyms to clothing manufacturers—collectively produces more propaganda than North Korea, a lot of it just as crazy. This particular class of ads is almost comically absurd because what’s written on the picture directly contradicts the picture. It would be like if Oscar Meyer produced an ad saying “vegetables are awesome, eat those instead of hot dogs!” printed over images of freckled Norman Rockwell kids happily stuffing their faces with hot dogs. It shows just how little credit advertisers give the public: they assume that if they tell you what you’re looking at you won’t actually see what you’re looking at.
“But Kevin,” you might argue, “the women in those images have great muscle tone! They’re totally strong!” They certainly are. So is she:
Kristin Rhodes, folks . . .
And you’re not going to find her in a Nike ad, even though she’s a stone-cold badass who probably deadlifts the combined body weight of those other three ladies as a goddamn warm up.
Now, before I get bombarded with angry comments from skinny people, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being skinny. I’m also not suggesting that being skinny and strong are mutually exclusive. I’m only pointing out that strength only sells when it’s sexy—and, make no mistake, advertisers want very badly to make you feel like you are currently failing at both.
Strong isn’t really replacing skinny; being skinny is no longer enough. Now, ladies, you need to be skinny and ripped. It’s an additional layer of self-loathing (perfectly suited for hypergymnasiacs), just in case people had started to get desensitized to the omnipresent and psychologically crippling display of corpse-thin women in the media.
And what’s with the Playboy cover poses? The one on the bottom is basically a picture of an ass. The young lady on the top right is either confused about how to wear pants or the ad was meant to double as a promotion for whoever did her impressively thorough bikini wax. According to these photos, all this notable strength that is the new standard of beauty is only useful for the exact same thing being skinny was: sex appeal. Not adventure or longevity, or even ability. Nope, just for sexy times.
So I guess “strong is the new skinny” is, in fact, a totally accurate statement, just not so much in an inspiring way as in “the gears of modern culture crushing young women’s dreams” kinda way.
#6 Fitness Assault!
What They Think They’re Saying:
“The part of you that wants to give up is the weak, lazy part; dominate it with the strong, committed part and work your way to success!”
Why It’s Bullshit:
Please tell me I’m not the only person made terribly uncomfortable by this. I mean, doesn’t that strike anyone else as a little, well…rapey? I think it’s safe to say that, if your inner monologue during a workout even slightly resembles the script from a poorly translated hentai comic (no I will not include a link) there might have been a little mix up somewhere regarding this whole exercise thing.
If your body or your mind says “it hurts” or “I need to stop”—and I’m going to be as clear as I can about this—FOR FUCK’S SAKE, STOP. It isn’t even a joint health thing at this point, it’s just creepy.
I get that lots and lots of people enter a gym wanting to change: weight, BMI, strength, performance, whatever. Change is great. Change is healthy. The desire to change stems from the admirable ability to introspect and to see that, currently, we are limited in ways that we want not to be. If that desire to change, however, becomes a desire to change at all costs, you will be sorely disappointed with what you end up paying. Work out, have fun, get tired, fail occasionally, wake up sore and set your next goal. Whatever you do, just don’t do it like these poor suckers.
Addendum
It has come to my attention that the guy in the first picture is Rich Froning, a three-time CrossFit champion and a generally respected athlete. It’s not clear whether the text is directly attributed to him. I mean no personal offense to Rich, but I stand by my observation that the text is silly. You can line up respected athletes all day long saying that they “get angry when [they’re] tired” and I will still say it’s silly.
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Sarahockler.com
It’s a pity you don’t have a donate button! I’d definitely donate
to this brilliant blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle for bookmarking and adding your RSS feed to my Google
account. I look forward to brand new updates and will share this site with my Facebook group.
Talk soon!
KevinMoore
Thanks for the support, Sarah!
Emilia
Hi!
First of all i just want to thank you for this amazing post, im so happy that there acctually are people who react on these kind of photos. You see, im a girl wich suffers from both orthorexia and anorexia, and as a person with that kind of illness its so hard to even try to recover from it without feeling lazy, dumb or a real fatty like EVERY time i go in to Facebook, its triggering and “feeds” my illness even more.
So THANK YOU once again for bringibg this up and wrote qbout it!
Best greetings
Emilia
Alyssa
As a powerlifter and recovering anorexic, I wholeheartedly agree with this post.
It was photos like these that I used to pin on pinterest during my eating disorder. I’d force my self to workout even when I was exhausted. Even when I didn’t have the necessary fuel to support it, because if I didn’t, that meant was lazy, right? Not dedicated enough, right?
Now that I powerlift, I definitely don’t believe in pushing past limits in a way that is dangerous, as they are presented above. Why? That shit can lead to injuries, and I can’t believe the people who don’t see that as a possible problem when pushing past your limits. Someone said “reach for the stats if you miss, you’ll atleast land on top of the world!” All I could think was “reach for a 300lb deadlift and strain your back so you are on bed rest and can’t train!”
At my first meet, I squatted 190lbs, benched 90lbs, deadlifted 205. I have a meet in October where I am on track to got 265-270 squat, 125 bench, 275-280 deadlift. The time difference is a year. So yes, you can gain strength with out stupidly going beyond limits.
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Mary
This was an amazing read. I can’t believe I’ve only just realised that in my twenties I was in the grip of hypergymnasia. I was a big fan of pushing myself, mind over matter, somehow feeling that by doing far too much exercise on not nearly enough food I was being admirable and awesome. I ended up hospitalised and wiped out for seven years with chronic fatigue (how the former me would have scorned such a thing!). When I see these fitspo memes and hear people talking about all their workouts part of me still feels a little jealous that my body can never work like that, but I also worry for the impact such an attitude can have. I want to tell people to look after their bodies, to respect and listen to themselves and not be so arrogant as to abuse it in the name of trying to achieve some mythical cartoon-superhero figure.
I’m also a new parent to a daughter and now I’m determined to try to teach her to love her body for all the wonderful things it does, and treat it well – with decent food, activity and rest. And I’ll bookmark this post to help me respect myself, too – even with my post-baby body. Thank you x
KevinMoore
You should be incredibly proud of what you have accomplished, Mary; coming out the other side of an ordeal like the one you have described is an amazing feat. YOU are an inspiration.
Have you ever considered writing your story?
bodywisegirl
Thank you for your positivity and encouragement! I didn’t realise how strongly I feel about this until I read your post. Your reply meant a lot and I’m writing my own (little!) blog, I hope it’s ok that I reference your article in my first page. Thanks again x
http://bodywiseblog.wordpress.com
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lorrwill2014
As a post-50 former fitness addict who has the injuries to prove it, I am in complete agreement with what you have written here. It amazes me that with all the information available to trainers and trainees alike that this sort of thing has gotten WORSE, not better since the days when I really damaged myself (mostly the 80’s).
This is “no pain, no gain” on crack. It needs to stop. Thanks for calling it out for what it is.
PW
All well and all, but you are worring to much about the physical part of what the motivational pics are telling you ,you do need to push physically otherwise you will remain the same and not see results , but more importantly you need a great deal of mental commmitment . All I am seeing is motivational pics that are telling you to be mently prepared ,strong and that you are capable of more than you think . If it. motivates me I’m happy and really do not care if its propaganda ,to me it will always just be a picture.
KevinMoore
The issue is in what we mean by “results”, PW. Also, I would argue that there’s less of a divide between the mental and the physical side than you’re suggesting.
mlefcourt
Kevin, I think I’m in love… I love the sentiments AND the eloquence with which you present them. (@ltethe… the military doesn’t give a shit about the physical and mental problems a 50-year-old former soldier has, they care about the performance that the 20-year-old in front of them can give them. Your post displays an absolutely shocking myopia about the wide range of people in the world, and the variety of negative ways in which media can affect them.) Kevin, your post displays such healthy attitudes (explicitly and implicitly) that I am envious of anyone lucky enough to be in your physical sphere- especially children and other young people that you can influence so positively!
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ltethe
You make good points. But the posters all promote pushing further faster farther. Why, because your mind gives up long before you hit your physical limits. The military knows this, that’s why this kind of mentality has been successful for turning couch flab into frontline boots on the ground for the past century. You are not wrong, but your message is realistically only relevant to a fraction of a percent of people that make it past the hump and tear their bodies apart on a daily basis. For the audience that those posters are supposed to touch, it usually is a cycle of, “get angry” work out, reward myself with ice cream and the couch… Three months later, look at the poster, get angry, work out, reward myself with ice cream and the couch.
Alana
Thank you thank you so much for writing this. I’m only twenty-six years old and I have pretty severs joint issues. I’ve been an athlete my whole life and almost all of my coaches took the “if you’re crying suck it up; if you’re in pain walk it off” approach. And now my body is messed up. And what a previous commenter said about imposing limits being bad, I find irresponsible. I feel “imposing” limits, or setting goals for yourself, is important to help yourself reach the next realistic step, while also giving you safe boundries to keep yourself injury free. So thank you for reminding me of this. And now I will share this with everyone I know 😀
Heather
As a runner you don’t want to push yourself too much or you can have a long-term injury which will keep you from running….I like this and so agree.
Daz
I loved your squat and push up bio-mechanics, and then I read this! Love it! One of the most sensible things I’ve read in the sea of fitness propaganda (not that I’m saying at all this is propaganda, well perhaps it is a plea to use your brain every once in a while). Thank you!
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