What “Body Image Activists” Are Actually Telling You: It Does Not Get Better

Illustration from the Los Angeles Times

The agenda promoted by chronic underachievers encouraging others — as a twisted way of justifying their own personal failures — to accept and embrace their weak, clumsy, sick, unfit, obese or skeletal body as it currently exists and what they themselves have created, voluntarily by intent or neglect, is as shameful as it is ludicrous.

Misery loves company.

"Accepting" your current body as-is, the way it functions and looks, with no thought or effort at improvement, as these as these so-called “Body Image Activist” losers demand, is as identical a concept as accepting any other troubling aspect of your overall present state. It's no different than accepting your crappy job, your insufficient income, your stalled career. It’s the exact same thing as accepting your dysfunctional marriage, the dangerous neighborhood you live in, your kids’ associating with unsavory friends. These "activists'" message is "don't let anyone pressure you into bettering yourself or your situation."

Our one and only body is the vehicle that transports us through life, the one and only life we will ever have. Sure, go ahead — run it into the ground! Stop caring for it. Stop caring about how it looks, how it functions, how it feels. Forget all about the future consequences of not caring for yourself — the disability, the pain, the lost opportunities. Be in denial about how you yourself judge others based on the outward expression of their self esteem and then hypocritically demand that others not judge you similarly.

People who claim they don’t have the time or inclination to exercise or eat in a healthy way do not get to complain about the consequences of their not exercising or eating in a healthy way, much less have the arrogance to demand that others step up to fix them, or pay for them to get fixed, or accommodate the deficits they have created willfully for themselves.

When it comes to our physical fitness or lack thereof, there’s no such thing as “I don’t know how this happened.”

What most people are okay with doing to their body they would never do to their car. Most people would be ashamed to be driving around in a wreck, with dents, scratches, patches, flat tires. Most do not ignore their car’s upkeep. They want it to look nice and avoid it breaking down in the middle of nowhere and leaving them stranded and afraid. They get the fluids changed, the tires rotated, the dents fixed. They get a tune up. Few just say “I’ll accept my car as it is. As it ages I will do nothing to keep it looking good and running well because I don’t care about what others think, nor do I really need a car all that much. And when it ultimately breaks down I’ll just demand that my friends and family rescue me, accommodate me, go out of their way to drive me places. Because it’s my right to let my car turn into a wreck — and when that happens it’s everyone else’s obligation to step up and help me regardless of what’s going on in their own lives because I’m so special and that’s what friends and family are there for anyway.”

Self identified “body image activists” aren’t fooling anybody. If they have half a brain in their addled heads they had damn well better be concerned about the way their body looks, feels and functions — and fast.

The way our bodies look is the manifestation of our overall health and fitness level. Pretending that the way our bodies look is something wholly separate, unrelated and apart from our self regard and self esteem is preposterous.

Fix yourself, people. Time’s running out.

Your Workout: Just Get It Over With

Richard @ age 52

If you’re disappointed in your fitness progress most likely it’s because you view your workout as something to get over with as quickly as possible. One major magazine’s writer states in a recent “motivation” article that the best reason to work out first thing in the morning is “to get it over with.” Yeah, right.

If improving the very vehicle that transports you though life, if looking good, feeling good and functioning well is so unimportant to you that a workout is some unpleasant task that needs rushing through just so you can get onto more urgent things like going to a bar or vegetating in front of the TV, so be it. That’s why you’re disappointed. 

Until you accept fitness as a lifestyle, your workout as being as necessary as sleep, as indispensable as eating, and your body being as worthy of attention to detail as your car, you will get nowhere.

Stop Wasting Your Workouts: Learn Proper Form

Normally at the gym I keep my head down and stay focused on the workout at hand. But yesterday my eyes landed on quite a few guys who had one thing in common: absolutely terrible form and technique. How is it in the age of YouTube that people do no research, have no curiosity about the thing they do religiously 3 times a week or more? To spend all that time preparing for the gym, going to the gym, spending money related to going to the gym, and make no effort to school themselves about how to go about performing their workout is baffling. These guys are throwing away their opportunity to excel and grow.

If you are not investing time outside the gym to learning and improving, then expect no sympathy when your longed-for results don’t show up. 

Fitness is a lifestyle, not a three-times-a-week activity. Do your homework. See what you are doing wrong. Spend time vetting workout videos on YouTube rather than bingeing on Netflix. Start with MIKE THURSTON’s series on what you’re doing wrong:

 Mike is not the only voice out there; JAMES GRAGE has a lot of good technique advice:

And sports rehab JEFF CAVALIERE’s Athlene-X channel gets right to the meat of the issue with anatomically-themed schooling to help you undertand how your own body works and why you are having problems:

I like to rag on GQ Magazine for all its preaching about style by those who have none. GQ editors and staff look like absolute crap yet seem entertainingly unaware of this irrefutable fact as can be seen by anyone viewing their YouTube videos. But I digress.

What is actually COOL about GQ is the list of links at the bottom of their splash page directing readers to all the international editions of the magazine. Americans especially tend to be myopic and self-focused, but it is both uplifting and captivating to see what other countries are up to via these GQ links. Especially engaging are those editions from India and South Africa, but each country’s edition reveals its own personality and quirks to the benefit of the curious reader. Check them out.

Privacy?

This may be both enlightening and useful, but who protects this information? I sure don't want my DNA information floating around, accessible by questionable entities. Until there is a way to go about this entirely anonymously, and I am assured of that, I'll pass.

Overweight Is Not A Physical Problem, It’s A Mental Health Issue.

The New York Times is currently re-running a December 2016 article outlining the high cost, both physical and financial, of fitness inactivity: Savings, Longevity and the Year in Fitness.

Readers comments are always informative, often distressingly so, and a number of commenters felt the need to detail their justifications for their inactivity, which for some was pain and injury. How many of these have this pain and injury due in the first place to their physical inactivity? That equation eludes these excuse-makers.

I think people should be happy, even if that means sitting on the sofa all day eating snacks. However the line is drawn when these people expect sympathy, or worse, that the cost of their choices becomes a burden for others, whether it be the relatives they live with, or taxpayers in general.

Scant attention is paid to the mental condition of those who go out of their way to self-destruct, then when the piper requires to be paid, demand others step up to rescue them in some way or another.

Writers of articles such as this NYT piece seem bafflingly unaware that the reasons people don’t exercise or eat clean is due to emotional problems, not physical. Overweight is not a physical problem, it’s a mental health issue.

The Proof Is In The Pudding.

Dan McCarthy from http://www.crowhillcrossfit.com/

Here’s the main reason why all these fitness-related articles online never picture the author or the designated “expert” doling out their know-it-all advice: it’s because you take one look and them and say, “why would I ever take bodybuilding advice from someone who looks like that?”

Pictured here is Dan McCarthy of Crow Hill Crossfit, who warns against mainstream exercises that have benefited tens of thousands who swear by them, I'm guessing, just because — but what do we know? He's the expert.

Here’s his golden advice — on Fox News yet:

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/03/03/6-worst-workouts-at-gym.html?utm_source=zergnet.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zergnet_1366344

This less than impressive selfie by the way is the one and only photo of him on his own website. 

Cross Fit is not bodybuilding or even strength training — it's a competitive endeavor, and these "fitness" articles don't even acknowledge the difference. People can do whatever they want, God bless 'em, but just know that Cross Fit has permanently fucked up far more wannabes than any other sport:

There’s No Such Thing As An “Expert.”

From Huffington Post / reprinted from Details.

It’s cringe-worthy each time we are introduced to someone by the media who is identified as a so-called “expert,” as if their word is the final be-all and end-all. The trouble with that is there’s no such thing as an expert; there are only individuals possessing various levels of expertise. And expertise is something we all have. 

The audience’s knee-jerk reaction to such an introduction tends to be that they accept that person’s word even when it conflicts with the individual’s own experience. Always question the “experts.”

Recently, recognizing it as clickbait, I read one of those online articles that had been passed around from website to website bearing the counter-intuitive headline “5 Exercise Machines You Should Never Use at the Gym.” Full of shit as expected, the article's author “K. Aleisha Fetters” warned users against three machines that happen form the bedrock of my own routine.

In her ignorance, the author quotes “training expert BJ Gaddour, C.S.C.S. owner of StreamFIT.com,” who roundly demonized these machines “They’ve been dumbed down to the point that they just don’t do your body much good,” the expert claims. The author goes on to write “Besides parking you on your butt, most machines isolate a single muscle, meaning you’ll burn fewer calories and gain less muscle mass rep for rep.”

What? Girl, the whole idea behind building muscle is to isolate the target muscle, you dummy; that’s how we achieve optimal growth.

The article’s reasoning why each machine named was problematic was laughable, revealing the "experts" had no idea that the form they were using on these machines was wrong. Instead of it dawning on him/her they might be at fault, that their form might need adjusting, it was concluded instead that it was the MACHINE that was the problem. 

The Only "Cure" For Ageing Is Muscle.

Jack LaLanne

Male or female, you look, feel and act old because of all the muscle you’ve lost: the less active you are the less calories you burn, the more muscle you lose, the more fat you gain, and the less active you become: it’s a vicious cycle, a Catch 22.

Your metabolism resides within your muscle mass: the less muscle you have, the slower your metabolism. The cure for that? Increase your muscle mass.

Your immune system also resides within your muscle mass. You’ll stave off illnesses more often and recover quicker from those you acquire if you increase your muscle mass.

Is building muscle easy? Nope.

Is it fast? Not really.

Is it enjoyable? Not at first. 

Is it worth the effort?

Absolutely.

GQ: Your Main Goal While In The Gym Should Be Fashion

The poorly dressed, sloppily-groomed, flabby-waisted staff at GQ magazine insist that fashion and style and the latest thousand-dollar sweatpants should be one's primary focus during their visits to the gym. GQ's idea of looking good at the gym has nothing at all to do with workout technique but rather "impressing" all the wrong people with your deep pocketed stylishness.

If you really want to stand out at the gym, all you have to do is employ proper workout technique and stay focused on the task at hand. Those others present who also know what they are doing will respect you for it.