cultural bias against exercise?

05Feb07

If there is a cultural bias against exercise, it can be no better represented than by Times columnist India Knight. She lays into exercising mid-lifers in a column today, particularly middle-class mothers aspiring to the ideal of the “yummy mummy”.

India Knight is flogging a diet book, and in that too exercise is given a bit of a brush off: “The book includes meal plans, medical explanations, recipes, exercise (ugh!), advice on clothes, make-up and hair,” the website says.

The importance of exercise and keeping active is not about personal vanity. Polar, the maker of my heart rate monitor, recently highlighted some user feedback from someone whose fitness goal had simply been to shed weight sufficient to have the strength to manoeuvre a chronically-ill friend for whom she was caring. I would not have known that India Knight had a special needs child, except that she is a public figure and declares it. What other motives hide behind the facades of people we don’t know?

Getting started is the hard thing, whether it is learning to cook properly, holding to a diet, or starting exercise. The beauty of exercise is that cold turkey does not really work. It is OK to walk. That is also the way recovering athletes have to do it. For sure, sometimes we feel beaten if we can’t sustain a jog for more than a few yards. But when you start, that is the way to do it. There are even those that advocate taking walking breaks in competitive marathons.

By de-emphasising exercise, or making it seem too hard or a bit too worthy, these writers aren’t helping their readers. It’s also a little worrying to see a low-carb diet being promoted still.

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