Culturally, we believe that more is better. Would you like to Supersize that? How about a jumbo-pack of toilet paper? Buy one, get one free! There are a lot of problems with this mindset, but I’m just going to focus on the ones that relate to fitness.
Possibly the most obvious problem with more-is-better and fitness is when it comes to food. Roughly two thirds of us are overweight. I’m not into body-shaming, at all, not even a little, but a large proportion of us eat more than we need to be healthy and happy in terms of calories (maybe not so much in terms of the micronutrients we need). Overeating is so pervasive that a lot of us don’t even recognize when we are satisfied and only stop eating when we are truly uncomfortably full. The solution, of course, is to unplug from the mindless eating of more more more. It’s not an easy solution, but it works. When we pay attention to what we are eating and how it makes us feel, we learn to make better choices.
The other big problem with more-is-better and fitness is in workouts. We do not need to be gym rats to be healthy. Workouts do not have to last forever. This one does not have to go to eleven. We want about half an hour of cardio on most days, a little stretching, and one or two weight workouts a week. That’s less time than most of us spend surfing the web, or than we used to spend in traffic back when we worked in offices.
Eat enough. Do enough. And then go do the rest of life.
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