Buff Blog Returns, Part 1

I’m standing in line at the neighborhood burger joint, ordering my Boca burger. The young gal behind the register doesn’t let taking my order interrupt her conversation with a fellow employee.

“I’m getting fat,” the other girl complains. (Given that she could be maybe 90 pounds soaking wet with lead in her pockets, I intuit that this is a bit of hyperbole.)

“You should workout,” says the order taker.

“No!” says Waif Girl decisively. “I don’t think women should have muscles.”‘

Last I checked, this was 2007, not 1907. Yet I still hear and read this same sentiment all the time, and each time I do, I want to say, “That’s funny. I’ve been lifting for ten years, and I still don’t look anything like Arnold Schwarzennegger. What am I doing wrong?”

I ponder the tenacity of the ignorance that, despite well-documented evidence to the contrary, equates women who weight train with the Incredible Hulkette. Then I think of the one person besides myself to whom I give the credit for my life-long healthy attitude toward exercise and food, and general imperviousness to the nonsense that passes as fact about those things.

It was the ’80’s - like, totally dude. I was a junior in high school and, like most kids, had suffered through years of P.E. teachers and classes from hell. Physical “education” meant forty minutes of bashing each other in the head with a dodge ball, or hearing that “situps would keep my tummy flat for my bikini,” or learning one’s place in the peer pecking order by how close to last you were chosen for teams.

But even more often, “P.E.” meant running some established “course” in a certain amount of time. It didn’t matter what your fitness level was, whether you were the class fat kid or jock: you ran. And you ran in a certain amount of time, too, whether you had to vomit at the end or not. If you couldn’t make it in the time allotted, you ran it again. This was standard “P. E.” logic.

Most people I know had a similar experience with P.E. and - guess what? Most people I know hate exercise.

Never having been athletic, I am sure I would, too, were it not for Mr. Hughes.

Mr. Jerry Hughes (whom I just discovered became Dr. Hughes a year after I graduated and went on to become quite accomplished in the field of fitness education) started a new kind of P.E. class. It was so radical, he had to call it “Ski Conditioning” because there was no other niche for it at the time. It was a brand new paradigm, based on the then-cutting-edge science of Dr. Covert Bailey and his 1978 book Fit Or Fat.

This is the “physical education” we received from Mr. Hughes:

• Aerobic exercise burns fat and increases your fitness level, if you do it the right way (translation: no vomiting).
• Muscle is the only tissue that burns fat, so we need it. Only way to get it and keep it is to build it; only way to do that is by doing weight-bearing exercise.
• Workout within your fitness level. Start where you are and build from there, using your heart rate to guide you. If exercise is painful, you are tearing down, not building up.
• To get the fat off your body, get it out of your diet.
• Eat whole, natural food. When all is said and done, the quality of your food is more important than the quantity.
• Perfection is a myth; consistency is the key.

Sound familiar? That’s because it’s still true twenty years later.

You’d never know it, though, judging by the never-ending varieties of snake oil that people in our country suck up like Condoleeza to the President: The Fatkins Diet (twice!) and spawn, Thigh Masters, Ab Rollers, food logs & calorie charts, liposuction, gastric bypass, laxatives, diuretics, Dexatrim, Clenbuterol. Ad nauseum.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

I’ve had better years for it than others, but in general, since that fateful class, I’ve remained relatively healthy and fit. Never was, never will be, don’t wanna be “athletic,” but I enjoy working out. I don’t hate exercise because in that class, it didn’t require vomiting. I wasn’t taught that I “shouldn’t have muscles,” so I’m not intimidated by gyms, free weights, or the Myth of the She-Man. (Besides, I think they have surgery for that now.) I learned the basics of nutrition and metabolism, so to me, food is fuel, not a grail.

And believe me, as I near the age of forty and contemplate the Dysfunctionally Unfit, Processed Food, Quick Fix America I live in, not a day goes by that I don’t thank my lucky stars.

For my health, my knowledge, and Mr. (Dr.) Hughes.

Tune in tomorrow for Buff Blog Returns, Part 2: unsolicited advice, more ranting (probably), and bonus bikini photo!

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