The point of fitness

I hate blogs that apologize. No apologies. I do what I want.

I have been slowly getting out of shape over the last few months. My diet isn't as great as it should be (although I have been sticking to 100% vegetarian... about 60% vegan which is not too bad), and I haven't been running much at all. There have been a few hill workouts with the track girls, but being a head coach has been pretty demanding and there were only a few days that I could actually sneak out with the athletes. But anyway... I dragged myself out of bed this morning and went for a run as the sun came up. My lungs hurt a little more than they should have and my legs feel a little bit like jelly even though they really shouldn't... but I made it through the run. I may be out of shape physically, but I haven't lost any of the mental strength I built up earlier this year. With the shape that I'm in, I never would have been able to convince myself to run for that long a year ago... but this morning it was just another run.

Anyway... aside from the results of my run, right now I'm thinking about the point of fitness... the point of working out. I guess I get caught up on the fact that working out seems to create an unnatural state of being. If I worked out every morning I would be lean, muscular, and in great cardiovascular shape... but how do I need that in my daily life? It's not as if being stronger is going to make me more productive to society, or does it? Lets assume, because there are so many benefits of being active, that we were built to lead active lives. Why is it that that activity is so separate from our productivity and liveliness? It's a hobby rather than a necessity.

I know there are a lot of ways to argue with what I've just said. Runners would especially have a lot to say about it. Once you're a runner, you don't have a choice, it is a necessity. Being active definitely increases the amount you contribute to society because it gives you a clearer head. I know these reasons, I just feel there are some contradictions in the way we are built to live and the way we actually live. I wonder how to rectify these.

The convenience factor

Well... I took a few minutes and wrote the last post about shopping for the girls' track team. I did eventually find a grocery store that accepted the credit card I had and I got so excited to run around the store and fill my cart with lots of good things. I was able to pick up a ton of fruit as well as wheat bread, peanut butter, jelly, and granola bars. I really felt accomplished and felt as thought I was doing something positive for the students in a variety of different ways. First, they would be able to compete better because their stomachs wouldn't be filled with greasy burgers. Second, in a community that is so hard hit by the obesity / diabetes epidemic, I feel as though even the smallest opportunities to model and teach healthy habits are helpful. Plus, of course, healthy food is something I'm passionate about and sharing that feels great.

The kids seemed generally appreciative of the food choices. Especially the fruit. The girls loved the grapes, the apples and the oranges disappeared pretty quickly, and there were a few mumblings about a lack of bananas... good to know... I'll add them to the list. The sandwiches, however, were not a hit. Everyone liked the idea of peanut butter and jelly (some liked the idea of one without the other, you know how it goes...) but because they actually had to assemble their own sandwiches... NOBODY ATE ANYTHING! I was pretty shocked. There were kids who were really hungry by the end of the day and I guarantee that if there had been a cooler full of pre-made PB&J everyone would have gone to town on it. Instead they didn't eat any of it... too much work to make their own sandwich.

I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised, I did just finish reading Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. Clearly, the choices that people make are not always rational, but how do you combat those choices? For example, one could argue that to truly feed yourself a healthy diet, you need to cook. Cooking involves time, work, energy, and... doing the dishes (EEK!). But people are lazy and the many will make their choices based on convenience rather than logic. Does that mean that the new single serving, microwaveable veggies are the best way to convince people to eat healthier? Would a fast food restaraunt that serves "rabbit food" in a quick, convenient way profit and improve America's health?

I don't know. Next time I'm going to recruit some of the free manual labor that I have at my disposal (aka my students) to make up sandwiches in advance.

The world I live in

I am currently the head girls track coach of the high school at which I teach. This is the first year I've been "in charge" and so far it's been a blast... a stressful blast... but a blast nonetheless. I am trying to change a number of things about the team so that all the girls have a better experience and really enjoy the season. In the past, during meets, the girls have been given double cheeseburgers, fries, and sodas... for lunch... in the middle of a meet. This is a huge problem and I don't want to teach these girls that it's ok for athletes to eat like that! In an effort to make better nutritional use of the team's allotted food money, I took a survey this week of acceptable, healthy snacks, and drove the 60 miles into town last night to pick up food for Saturday's meet.

I was shopping for 40 athletes and had a good budget so I definitely enjoyed myself. I pushed the cart around the store for an hour filling it with apples, oranges, bananas, peanut butter, jelly, whole wheat bread, string cheese, and a couple cases of gatorade. I wheeled my haul up to the front of the store with pride... my team was going to be very well fueled this week... but then ran into a big problem. The store did not accept the team's credit card; our school district hasn't been paying its bills so we won't be able to get food this week.

One would think I might have gotten upset at this, but my colleague (who had come along for the shopping extravaganza) and I couldn't do anything but laugh... We weren't surprised, this is just a normal occurrence when one works in a severely underfunded, slightly corrupt school district. We both bought ourselves a bottle of red wine (using our personal credit cards which were happily accepted) and chuckled in amazement as the poor store clerk began re-shelving my track team's would-be lunch.

I've been told that the Navajo grocery store will still accept the cards. That chain tends to have a much smaller selection of produce and healthy items but I will venture over there today in hopes of finding a way to feed my team something other than double cheeseburgers, fries, and soda.

I can't help but think that this is one of the big reasons why obesity is so rampant in low-income communities... it's not easy to eat healthfully when you're running into these problems on a regular basis.