Why Fitness? How Fitness? Choosing Fitness, The Mental Game

Doctor S and M.G. are starting a new type of post for this blog. We are sharing our correspondence related to fitness and health.

M.G.: We are starting a new project to address a few things:

Why Fitness (why should we do it?)

How Fitness (what’s the best way to exercise)?

Choosing Fitness (how do we stay motivated every day?).

Is the universe calling for us to do this…? If it is, then we must do it even if it makes us anxious, trembling, fearful.

But. I don’t yet hear the universe saying, “There MUST be a book, blog, chatter, content about health, fitness and how not to constantly sit down and eat Oreos instead of exercising….”

I think smart people have tried to write that book.

I think the book usually takes the form of “I am the smart author who has studied and observed things. And I have the magic formula for how to be healthy and great. Now listen to me and follow my steps. There are 12 of them. Or maybe 18 of them so the book can be longer. Now go and try it yourself, and nobody will be watching you… so good luck.”

But, maybe we will have an angle. Maybe we will have a book, thing, podcast that’s actually entertaining. So maybe the reader who wants to be healthy will come back and pick up the book EVEN after they finish reading it. Maybe it should work like a Billy Connolly comedy routine in which the order is not clear. Maybe it should go on random tangents but come back to the core story. Maybe this is the beginning of that book…?

Doctor S: The universe is totally calling. 

I think that your gym saved my lax-jointed self from further sedentariness (post-pregnancy nearly double-jointed nearly everywhere, preventing a lot of different activities). Inexplicably, I sometimes crack you up, and the Venn diagram of our philosophies is anywhere from total eclipse to sun and moon, depending on what aspect of things we’re talking about.

I literally listed talking as one of my hobbies on my med school application. I love to talk. I love to talk to people who won’t shout at me for having the minority report for how to achieve and maintain health in the world of medicine (I love to talk to people who won’t shout at me generally. I once told a patient that. The person was worried I’d fire them because they were chronically 5-10 minutes late and I just said, no, I really only fire people who routinely shout at me. Or who swerve to hit puppies. But not for being late.)

I have been wanting to write a book for at least 10 years, a re-worked definition of physical health and character strength.

I think it’s great that we will likely disagree on key things but be able to talk it out rather than get polarized. If you’ve never had anorexia, we’ll learn a shit ton from each other about how to relate healthfully to food and exercise because I bet our ideal meals might very closely resemble each other, but our reasons for plating what we do differ subtly.

Same with exercise. Except you exercise way more than me. I bet our description of the things we love about movement will be very similar, but the lines in the sand we draw to protect from overuse are, even if in the same place, not there for the same reason. 

Let’s have a conversation.

Ok. Now I’m hungry!

-M.G. and Doctor S