Not mine, for once, but excuses I’ve heard a lot about in my family especially, and that I’m growing really fed up with. Because they’re annoying. Because they’re not true, at least not in my case. Because it’s the kind of talk that could still manage to easily poison my mind, and that I need to counter by coming up quickly with counter-excuses.
The first would of course be “we gain weight very easily in our family”. Well, okay. I can’t deny it, because it IS true. We’re unfortunately the kind of people who have to watch their caloric intake closely, because both our genetics and our lifestyle are against us in that.
Right. Okay. But as far as I know, lifestyle can be worked around if only partly, and my DNA still doesn’t carry the message “IS DOOMED TO FAIL NO MATTER WHAT HER EFFORTS. CELLS, PLEASE STORE TONS OF FAT UNTIL ORGANISM DIES”. If I am watchful of my caloric intake and make sure to exercise enough, won’t that body of mine respond in a positive way? Even if it takes time, even if it plays the little rebel at first? I know I’ll never be ’skinny’–I’m clearly an endomorph type, not an ectomorph, anyway–but being constantly 10 to 20 kgs overweight is certainly not what my body needs. How could it want it as well? It’s not genetics that have made me as fat as I used to be, it’s all the junk food. Proof is that if I stop eating it and replace it with decent food, I lose weight, even without lifting my arse from the couch.
This is an excuse. So what if my genes play against me? It’s still not an open authorization to eat whatever junk happens to pass in front of me. It’s not free license to eat crap instead of good vegetables and meats. Frell the genetics. I still want to do it, or to at least try and see with my own eyes if I am doomed to fail or am actually able to succeed.
And then, the killer. “In our family, we’ve never been exercise people. We just don’t like sports”.
I bet the first person among us to come up with that was referring to PE classes at school, which I definitely refuse to categorize as ’sports’ and ‘exercise’.
I don’t think we’re programmed to dislike sports either, but rather that we haven’t been taught to like sports. Standing the last in line to be picked by a team in the gym, knowing nobody wants you because you’re fat and therefore crappy, isn’t sports. Being thrown in the pool when nobody actually bothered to teach you how to swim isn’t sports. Having to climb to a rope tied at the ceiling of the gym is physical activity, but there isn’t that much point in calling it sport either. Junior high and high school activities don’t exactly teach young people to like sports; they just cater to the already active and popular youngsters, most of the time.
[By the way, I used to be a killer at volley-ball. I can’t count the amount of points I’ve earned my team during competitions just because our opponents were clearly thinking “oh, the short, fat girl! She’ll be crap, easy points for us… Oops, what was that? She serves like a bull! Well, it was only luck, wasn’t it? Next time the fatty won’t make it–ooops”. Rinse and repeat five or six times until they would actually decide to react. (I was not imagining anything, because when the leaner girls were serving, the opponents were tense and ready; when I was, they all of a sudden relaxed and snickered.) So there for not picking me in your team. ;)]
Anyway, I’ve only really learnt to appreciate sports in college, when I signed up for a fencing class and loved it in spite of it leaving me with a scarred muscle in my lower abdomen that was still aching three years later (yes, thank you, swords users; I got my revenge at sabre!). When I had to walk half a hour every morning to go to school, repeat in the evening, because there was no direct bus line to go there. When I rented a bike and felt so free to go everywhere in town I wanted, faster than if I had to wait for the bus. When I went to strength-training classes and discovered I loved feeling my muscles at work and then seeing nice results in my body. When I realized I was still crap at swimming, but give me a scuba and palms, and I actuall love skin-diving. In short, I had to train myself to like sports, to discover which of them I liked–and today, in spite of my tendency to easily pack on pounds, I am more active than most people I know.
Take that, family-that-was-never-cut-to-like-sports.
Excuses, excuses, excuses. Why? Because it’s easier to stay on the couch? Because we’re disgusted by the least drop of sweat? Because we’re afraid of discovering the more active, better-eating person hidden behind the sedentary life? Because, like so many people in the world, we’re afraid of change, and decide it’s best to clutch at what we know by turning it into ‘words of wisdom’ or whatever else we want to call it?
So what if my genes are against me and I was always picked last at school for the team?
I still want to try and decide by myself if I’m really screwed up, or if I do have the power to make things change. And I don’t care what’s written about my family in the Big Book of Genetics.
EDIT — I’ve just digged this back in the Skinny Daily Post archives. While it is about an article linking a certain gene to obesity, and not about exercise, I feel like the article, the post and the comments are a very interesting read in that regard.
May 19th, 2007 at 11:37
Guess making excuses is just part of the denial process. Genetics is an indicator of how prone you are to become obese and sometimes knowing what could be in store could act as a preventive.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:24
That’s the way I want to see it, indeed. Knowing is the first step towards prevention, after all.