New Years Advice for 2009 – Part 2

So continuing the list I reserved the right to continue, I want to talk about perceptions. Specifically, how perception and reality can sometimes conflict.

2. Don’t let desire color your perception

Sometimes I get detached from what ‘average people’ think about fitness concepts. I touched on this in the first part, where I talked about how a lot of beginners come in clueless (through no fault of their own, mind you) and end up completely confused.

It really does stun me from time to time, though; some of the ideas that people have about fitness, about looking good, and about exercise just…well, they boggle me.

Case in point. I was recently reminded on a forum I visit that the concept of ‘toning’ or ‘body sculpting’ is alive and well. This ideology falls squarely under the category of misinformation; it’s an ad-hoc patchwork of various concepts and sound-bites that get thrown into a blender. The outcome is rather – well, let’s just say ‘inaccurate’ and ‘grossly misleading’ will suffice.

Point one: Your body doesn’t select from different pre-determined shapes. It’s not like picking out clothes where you can just pick the one you want. Your body reacts to exercise in a way that is almost entirely determined by your genetics. You cannot change this.

In other words, when you start a strength-training routine, your body is doing what it wants to do. If you feel this has made you unfeminine or bulky or whatever icky thing, then that’s a problem with you and your views on femininity. It is not the fault of any training program – that’s what strength training does, and that’s how your body was programmed to respond to it.

If you don’t like it, then stop strength training and stick to cardio.

Point two: Muscle definition is a function of body fat. The more fat you have, the less defined you will look. This also applies to ‘toned’, ‘long and lean’, ‘sculpted’, or any other adjective you care to use. All of these terms come back to one thing: how visible the muscle is under your skin. If you think you need to ‘tone up’ or that you need to ‘lengthen’ your muscles, then have a hard look at your diet. Chances are you’re holding too much fat.

Same goes for ‘getting bulky’. Fat displaces volume just as much as muscle. If you’re a typical woman, you hold fat in your lower body; this means that when the jeans get tight, odds are you need to drop fat. It’s not the muscle making you ‘bulky’.

Point three: Muscle lengthening. Thank you Pilates for this little gem.

Listen. A muscle is attached very securely to the bones in your skeleton. This means that the muscle physically cannot get any longer unless the bone itself gets longer.

Do you see people that do Pilates getting taller? Do you see them getting longer arms or legs? No?

Then why would you give this any thought?

Point four: ‘Eating clean’ means nothing if you’re not controlling for calorie intake and nutrient intake.

What does ‘eating clean’ mean anyway? Most people seem to mean it colloquially, switching to eating ‘unprocessed’ or ‘healthy’ foods. That’s fair enough, and for a lot of people a change in food quality will go a long way.

Part of it is improved nutrient intake, and part of it is because it’s harder to overeat without junk foods. But it is not impossible to over eat. Don’t assume that just because your diet is ‘clean’ that it is optimal.

At the end of the day, you’re not going to beat thermodynamics. Your body has to burn up more energy than you take in with food in order to see weight or fat loss. If you’re not doing this, it doesn’t matter how ‘clean’ your diet is.

These factors can, by themselves, solve 95% of the misconceptions that men and women both have about training. Yet these myths stick around. Why is that?

It brings me back to the point of his post. Marketing, as a somewhat scientific discipline, is based on the idea of catering to emotions. That’s why beer commercials feature women in bikinis – it appeals to the crowd that will buy beer (young men). It’s all about creating a desire by associating a product with an emotional response.

That’s exactly what these myths do – they sell you by promising to give you what you want. The average person isn’t equipped to resist this. S/he doesn’t have either the knowledge or the critical thinking tools to dissect the claims.

For a long time now I’ve been stating that education on logical reasoning and critical thinking will take you much, much further towards your goals than any information on the field itself. The information is not the problem – it’s out there. What you need is the ability to filter it and separate the gems from the vast piles of garbage.

That’s my second gem of New Year’s advice – don’t let your desires rule your perception. Look at things as objectively as you can.