Fitness is a Religion
Posted on 10/18/2016 by dsjohndrow
Since the beginning of mankind, religion has often turned the world upside down. Everyone has an opinion about the unseen whether it's good, bad or somewhere in between. They worship, they teach, they hope, they pray, and they even spread the word about their personal enlightenment.
Folks can be just as religious about fitness!
That's right, some of us have become enlightened and now everyone needs to become like us! What, you don't believe me? Here are the basics constructs of religion.
Belief in Supernatural Being, Deity or Absolute: fitness-ians believe that the calories are supernatural. Then sneak in at night and shrink your clothes and meddle with the zero balance on the scale.
Sacred and Profane Objects: Sacred objects include the scale, skinny jeans, the tape measure, cute running shoes and skirts and the almighty fitness-tracker. The profane; beer, chocolate, ice cream, donuts, wings and pizza.
Rituals: Morning runs and badass gym sessions, and scale worship is like daily vespers. Then there is something akin to high mass like cheat days.
Moral Code: You must eat clean, lift heavy, do intervals, or zip your pants. There are many factions.
Religious Feelings: I ate donut, I feel fat. I ate a salad I feel skinny. I ran a marathon and I am sore.
Prayer: There are wrote prayers like the names we call the scale. It's a universal language. Then there is the second donut prayer and the skipped my workout prayer before ascending to the Altar of Poundage. (I heard the Brits get stoned there.) Add to this the religious high celebrations like the race PR and PB on the bench press or squat rack.
A World View: Our world is about weight and rarely about fitness. We have a hard time seeing ourselves as we really are. We say it's OK to have curves and type II diabetes. But then we hit a goal or two and sanity clears our vision.
Intolerance: Skinny people make us angry enough to trip them on the escalator at the mall. Heavy lifting experts are just posers, while super-fast runners are just plain raceholes.
Divine Destiny: We are dream of the afterlife of being strong, fast, well defined, sexy and skinny somewhere in life.
Problem of Evil Explained: We know about sugar, Aspartame and GMO's, just ask us!
A Social Group Bound Together: Umm, we are here on MFP and collect out pathetic selves in Facebook running groups.
Belief in a Sacred Scripture: Fad diets and training experts are everywhere, but heretics like me have written their own.
Thanks for reading along. I appreciate the votes and comments.
SO, for me, trying to find a balance. We can't "serve two masters" as the bible says, so trying to put God first while getting fit and healthy is hard. It seems really dumb that it would be hard because of course God wants people to be healthy and take care of their bodies with exercise but it's difficult not to get absorbed into focusing all my energy into fitness and food. At the same time there are so many temptations since there are many more people that are unconcerned with their health/fitness. It's like another scripture about "staying on the cramped and narrow road to life", not everyone wants to work on their weight/health/fitness etc.. and even encourage unhealthy lifestyles of inactivity and food in excess or unhealthy foods.
Anyway, I could go on, but I think you get the point. All in good fun yet some truths there..
Now that I've written a story, I wanted to say that I love all of your posts, you write well and it's funny. Thanks.