L.I.F.T.

So many articles on overweight/out-of-shape children popped up on my Google alerts yesterday that I have to post about it.  Not that I don’t want to, you know.

The kids in Sacramento are terribly unfit, and getting less fit by the year.  The Sacramento Bee article linked to above does a good job of showing how most “physical fitness” data ignores socioeconomic data.  It’s essential that we start putting these things together, to be able to see the bigger picture.

You see, poor kids are typically less fit than kids from more wealthy families.

One of the schools mentioned also had to reduce the presence of their “physical fitness specialist” from five days per week, to two days per week.  I’m sure that kind of thing is happening all over the country.  “PE” isn’t valued in our culture.

Great Britain is experiencing the same symptoms.  The article says, though, tat the biggest cause is a lack of regular physical activity by the children.  Sounds good.  Again, though, it’s only part of the argument.

This recent article in Scientific American points out how being in nature or in a natural setting not only reduces stress markers, but also creates value change in the people involved.

Out in the Wild, people naturally become more “other-focused,” and less “self-focused.”  Further, our motivational drive switches from an extrinsic drive, to a more intrinsic drive.

In all of these articles, though, where are the parents?

I mean, why aren’t fingers being pointed?  And pointed where they should be?

Socioeconomic status notwithstanding, parents play a huge role in getting their kids active, and into nature.

I suppose what I’m saying is this – we always look for the “cause” in the immediate present.  But those things are just symptoms.

What happened in the parents’ generation that has led them to care less about physical activity and nature?  Or at least, to be less involved in those things, or have their kids less involved?

What happened back then?  Treat the cause, not the symptom…

My mother had a great analogy for me today.

She compared the process (or attempted process) of changing habitual actions in life to a scenario where you’re continually getting hit on the thumb with a hammer.

Sounds painful, right?  Well it is.

But how many times in life do we continue to do painful things, in spite of seemingly obvious (and painless) solutions?  More importantly, why do we continue down our habitual paths?

A lot of it has to do with our individual “structural” histories – our internal structures, our personalities (which are manifest in our flesh, by the way) – and what those structures allow or do not allow us to think, feel, or do.  This is speaking from a “systems” perspective.  The rules that apply to systems apply to this scenario.  Systems are resistant to change.  More on systems in a later post.

When your personal history (which is your “structure”) has no context showing you that it’s possible to move your thumb out of the way of the repetitively descending hammer, there it sits, getting smashed every time the hammer comes down.

It seems strange to me, but the truth is that something has to intervene at this point.  Something has to show you that it’s possible to move your thumb.

Not only that, but frequently, something (and it could be the same something, or a different something) often has also to show you how to move it!

What happens next is odd to me, as well.  Because at this point, you have to muster up the determination actually to try the new thing.  It doesn’t happen just because something showed you it was possible, and then something (else) showed you how to do it.  You have to make an effort and actually try it.

And that effort is not small.  Even for the tiniest action (like moving your thumb), and even in a situation where all you can do is gain from the action (you aren’t going to get the thumb chopped off if you move it out of the path of the hammer in this scenario, you’ll just risk not feeling pain), the effort to do something different, with unknown consequences, is ENORMOUS.

This fact of nature is the mother of the phrase – “Better the devil you know, than the devil you don’t.”

It’s easier to stick with bad, destructive habits, than it is to change.

But why would nature do this to us?

Michelle, over at the For the Life of Me blog, recently wrote a post about motivation as one of the key factors to success in incorporating healthy diet and exercise into our lives.

I agree with Michelle 100%, and I really like her take on the issue in her post.  Motivation is a key issue in having a healthy lifestyle.  But why is motivation so difficult?  What’s behind our motivations to do (or not do) certain things?

I think the source of the issue go straight to nature, or, what’s natural in general.  The law of inertia applies to everything that exists, and says that a body at rest will tend to stay at rest, and a body in motion will tend to stay in motion.  This is also “habit” – we tend to keep doing the things we’re used to doing, and not to do new or different things.

There’s also a law among living things demanding them to be as efficient as possible – to expend energy only when necessary.  For instance, one of the first things they’ll tell you in a survival school is to stay warm (conserve energy), and move around as little as necessary (conserve energy).  Building a log cabin is something a person does who already knows for a fact where they’re going to get their calories for the next year.

You can see this behavior in still-existing aboriginal/native cultures.  They don’t run around any more than necessary.  They spend a lot of time hanging out talking.  They do what is needed, and then rest.

So, what’s going on with us, in our culture?

First, we have a steady, stable, and reliable supply of calories (not always from the best sources).

Second, we don’t have any difficult physical demands in our lives, especially no demands that are necessary for our survival.  We have crafted environments that don’t demand any activity at all (going to the grocery store is a lot different from going out on a hunt, or even digging for your vegetables in a garden, or a natural setting).  Our “work” isn’t physical (building huts versus building websites, tending to crops or herds versus tending to your computer).

Third, we’ve created environments that trigger our stress response frequently.  Stressful work situations (with no physical outlet) lead to a constant release of adrenaline, and a buildup of cortisol, which leads to malfunction in the body.

Fourth, we’ve created an isolationist society – how many of your neighbors do you know and trust?  In an aboriginal culture, you know all of your neighbors (maybe up to 100), and you trust them all equally.

Fifth, and I think worst of all, we’ve created a culture of rules-based thinking, instead of creative-based thinking.  Everything we’re taught from an early age is designed to get us to follow rules.  Hence, when we get older, we do what everyone else is doing.  We think that it’s crazy to go off and follow our dreams – because there are no rules about that, and no one else is doing it (except the odd-ball cousin or friend-of-a-friend that you hear of on some occasion).