What do You Suffer From? Need a Cure for Cankles?

A friend recently sent me this WSJ video. Unlike yesterday's WSJ article, this "health" video serves no purpose to help further your well being whatsoever. Kudos to WSJ for trying to serve up lighter fare, but when you start insinuating that people "suffer" from things that might just be annoying, your video may be ridiculed.


Perhaps if you have "cankles", you might have felt compelled to watch this video. Far from being an ailment, however, it's simply a body feature that is most likely 85% inherited, and 15% fixable with a good calf-strengthening / body-fat reducing routine. (Numbers based on no scientific data whatsoever.)

What bugs me is the suggestion that there's something wrong with a woman in the first place if she doesn't have well-defined, skinny ankles.

Fitness guru, C.J. Ong, Jr., worries that the fitness industry's exploitation of the "the desperate, overweight American public" is only perpetuating the American health issue of being overweight, by constantly "feeding upon the lost consumer as the proverbial cash cow." Probably by making them think they "suffer" from issues that do not actually cause suffering.

A person can suffer from arthritis, for example. She cannot "suffer" from being tired when she gets up in the morning. Although I'm sure something will be marketed for that "ailment" before too long.

Is Chief of Fitness a Bad Title for Obama?

Below is an article I recently wrote for the kick-ass site, PeopleJam.com. You can read more of my PeopleJam.com articles here.

Obama is one fit dude. Possibly the fittest president we’ve ever had. With one-third of America’s current population classified as obese, another third classified as overweight, and almost one fifth of all kids under 19 overweight, it’s about time we had a national example of fitness set for all Americans.

Not that Bush didn’t do his part. Maybe we were all too hung up on his unpresidential use of language (misunderestimate?) to realize he actually passed a Physical Fitness Initiative in 2002 that urged Americans to be physically active at least 30 minutes a day.

Bush replaced a running regimen with cycling after tearing the meniscus in his knee, famously going for long rides with none other than cycling great, Lance Armstrong.

But in a collective obsession with deriding everything Bush did, regardless of potential for good, journalists shot Bush’s health streak down. LA Times columnist Jonathan Chait said “Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy…Given the importance of his job, it is astonishing how much time Bush has to exercise.” And asked the question, “Does the leader of the free world need to attain that level of physical achievement?”

These sound like the words of a non-believer. In exercise, that is. Instead of regarding Bush as setting a good example for a nation of rapidly expanding waistlines, journalists wrote Bush’s healthy habits off as somehow making him “unfit” for office.

So will Obama, a noted fitness fanatic (minus the occasional cigarette), fare any better in the eyes of the press? Only 3 days into office, it’s not PC to mock the man whose image alone has inspired an entire nation.

This begs the question: would Obama have risen to such an iconic status so quickly if he had been overweight? Doesn’t it make us feel more comfortable with him as leader of the country knowing that he is first and foremost able to take care of himself?

An ABCNews.com story from last December already tried to paint Obama’s fitness and diet regimens as “obsessive”. In a bad way. It makes one wonder if anyone in the one-third of America that is not overweight has a job in journalism.

Obama never misses his daily workout, it was reported. Typically, said Obama, he gets in a 45-minute workout, 6 days a week, switching off between cardio and strength training. The president himself even said he wished he “was getting a 90-minute workout.”

What follows in the next line of the article? That’s right. The word “obsessive”, accompanied by the fact that one time on the campaign trail, Obama worked out for 188 minutes in gyms in a single day, and played basketball with buddies.

Why wouldn’t we want an obsessive athlete running the country? People who rise to greatness certainly do not do so by being ordinary. Some of the personality perks that habitually come with being a regimented athlete: passion, discipline, confidence, and competitiveness.

While 30-minutes a day of exercise will reportedly lower the risk of heart disease in your average American, it will not put an athlete with a drive for success in the running to be competitive. It takes more than that.

Imagine if Obama decided to become an Ironman triathlete, exercising 15-20 hours per week. Training for an event like that, with a desire to win, must be compulsive, or else the training required will not be completed.

Americans have so quickly forgotten that humans used to walk all over the place all day long in order to find food, to build shelter with their own hands, etc…We’ve abandoned the walk about part of scavenging for the feast part of what we’ve collected, pre-found for us at our local supermarkets.

To ABCNews.com’s credit, they did state briefly that, “Obama's focus on exercise may actually bode well for the country.” Obama himself said that exercise “gives you more mental endurance and more energy to think clearly. For a president, that's not a bad thing."

No it is not.

Perhaps these attacks on Obama’s venerable health regimen are actually journalists’ misplaced disappointment with themselves for not playing the life-long fitness game. Or a lack of “angle” for their stories, so they revert to the tried (since Jimmy Carter’s famed 1979 10K collapse), “this guy is an exercise freak” angle. Never mind that the attitude that brought Carter to collapse—“I’ve got to keep trying”—is exactly the attitude we want in a leader.

Perhaps it’s time Americans and the American media began praising our current and past presidents’ “obsession” with health and fitness, attributing a positive connotation to the word “obsession” itself. Because Obama’s fitness routine is standard in the realm of competitive amateur athletes. And because we wouldn’t want someone without a drive for excellence—in everything he does—running the country.

Maybe it’s time we stepped up to Obama’s game instead of trying to bring him down to ours.

Is Your Training Screwing Up Your Family?

NY Times writer, Abigail Lorge (an excellent runner in her own right, if my athlinks.com stalking is leading me to the right results), recently wrote an article on the toll marathon training takes on a person's family and coworkers, entitled "For Those not runnning, Training can be Just as Taxing."

The article is an unintentional a call to all endurance sports fanatics to marry someone with the same passion, or someone who doesn't mind having his/her guest room transformed into a garage/locker room hybrid, or not having enough money to buy a home because of all the cash shoveled out for equipment and race entry fees. (Two points lamented by a "marathoner widdow" in the article.)

And while coworkers don't need to be constantly reminded of your athletic prowess either, Lorge reports, they can't avoid it when you come to work sweaty, and saran wrap ice or frozen peas to your legs while at your desk.

These actions aren't normal?

There was a time when I was hyper conscious of my training and how my coworkers saw me because of it. There was no shower at work, but I'd still do Ironman training during lunch, and bike to and from the office. Stinky much? Yes. Did I try everything I could short of installing a camping shower in the bathroom to appear professional and unstinky? Yes. (Thanks, Action Wipes!)

But there comes a point, I believe, when endurance sports fanatics realize they're in it for the long haul, and thus begin to loose their grip on what appears normal to those around them.

I've reached that point.

Like John Cohen, the main subject in the article, I've made not just the guest room, but my entire apartment smell like a locker room. My living room is a bike garage. I'd rather clean my bikes' chains and cassettes than do the dishes, and my entire weekends are usually devoted to long rides.

But unlike John Cohen, I married someone with the same warped endurance sports mentality. Good move? From the apartment's standpoint, probably not; it's doubly as stinky and bike-filled. From the standpoint of my sanity and happiness, most definitely.

How many couples spend their weekends outside together riding bikes for 6 hours at a time, or running trails for hours on end? That time spent together is better than having a sparkling apartment. And Glade plug ins can make up for the stink.

Maybe John Cohen's next double-checked purchase should be a pair of running shoes for his wife, and an entry into the 2009 NYC Marathon.