Normal

I've been thinking a lot about "normal" lately.  If you were at my presentation last week at The Best Fitness Center in the World, you already know I talked about how our "normal" eating patterns are making us fat.

A couple weeks ago, I talked to a very interesting woman who is a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association.  She said this it is so "normal" to be on blood pressure medications and/or to have had a stent (or 4) that people do not make the connection that either of those things mean you have heart disease.  Heart disease -- think about that!  Heart disease in a large proportion of our population doesn't seem normal -- even though we are perfectly accepting of blood pressure meds (and yes, "just a water pill" counts, too) because it's "normal". 

And here is another quote from Weight Maven:

“If you’re inactive, you probably don’t need much in the way of carbs. But humans aren’t metabolically normal unless they’re active on a regular basis. So the healthy solution isn’t to go low-carb, it’s to increase activity level to the point where you need the carbs” (Amber at Go Kaleo)

 

The relationship between metabolic health and exercise is one primary focus of my blog here, so when someone else says so succinctly what I believe is an important and far too often completely and willfully ignored truth, I think it’s worth highlighting. …

Metabolically healthy people do not need to be on macronutrient restrictive diets. Metabolically dysfunctional people may need to follow restrictive diets, but their long-term goal should be to return the body to healthy metabolic function, and the primary way to do that is regular physical activity.

My contention is we've forgotten that moving is NORMAL.  Sitting for hours on end is ABNORMAL (yes, I mean you!  And only because I know what I do in a day....I work at an FC for goodness sake, I workout, and I keep a clean house....and I sit much more than I should!  Research shows I'm not the only one!)

So you can tell yourself that you're active enough ... and if you're a triathlete training for an Iron Man, I will believe you.  But if you're just about anyone else, maybe your kind of active but you could do with an additional boost to your activity levels (especially this time of year -- at least here in the Midwest).

Let's get back to Weight Maven's quote:

The goal of a "diet" and exercise should be to return your body to balance and health......not look better at the May wedding you have to attend.  But that's not really how we look at weight, is it?  And that, my friends, is why most of us return to our heavier-than-we-want-to-be selves once the wedding is done.

We looked great -- goal achieved -- back to our "normal" non-wedding selves.....and the weight.  The weight comes back on because that is the "normal" we've chosen to put our energy into.  We've chosen to believe we can be healthy without moving A LOT.  We've chosen to believe that we can eat more than our body burns so the excess needs to be stored as fat -- and that nothing bad will come of it.  We have created fantasies around our "normal" that many times turn into nightmares.  Is this really the way you want to live?  Which begs the question:  What do you want to be normal for you?