mehjoon
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 10, 2022
The gym isn't primarily for burning calories, it burns hilariously few calories for most routines. The purpose of exercise is to improve other aspects of health, heart function, mood, etc. Yes, it is still privileged to not be doing manual labor, but it really is silly to view any exercise as purely a reaction to caloric excess.
I do not understand the "I feel foolish" crap, and the only people I've heard this from were obese and up. It's a strange ego thing to find exercise embarrassing, especially when it can be done in private in the first place. Don't people find getting winded by a flight of stairs embarrassing? Having a 350lb person ask me how I do exercise without feeling stupid amazed me, they don't feel a general shame when they can't even stand up from the floor or lift a bag of groceries?
And fuck's sake, listen to an audio book, watch a show, listen to music, play a fucking video game, listen to a lecture, listen to a podcast, set up a standing desk and work. How people think you have to exercise staring agape at the wall is beyond me.
I can understand both perspectives here. Going to the gym can make you feel like a hamster in a wheel if you are forced to have a sedentary life and you depend on the gym to save your health. It does feel a bit mindless to think modern society can often confine you to a lifestyle that restricts your activity so you have to overcompensate for it, and workouts are in a way empty simulations of the active lives we once had. For me working out now that I also have a somewhat active lifestyle feels way more purposeful, but if the gym is your only chance to get moving I can understand feeling trapped.This is probably the first thing I will ever agree with with a deathfat about. Hopefully, it's the last.
Going to the gym makes me think about how stupid it is that I need an artificial means of burning calories when there are billions of people on the same planet who would love to have enough to eat. It kind of makes everything feel even more pointless and hollow than usual, and reminds me of this very old point-counterpoint piece from the Onion: I'm So Starving versus I'm So Starving.
That being said, even in the case of the most mundane, repetitive exercises there still is purpose. While there might not be an immediate objective, any kind of workout brings long-term benefits that you can focus on (unlike digging a useless hole). And you can also find other ways to exercise that do not feel hollow. Working out from home did the trick for me, especially when combined with natural light and fresh air, something that my gym didn't really have.
This often gets me Sad at the internet. A generation of autistic people that could've have been perfectly functional members of society and live almost normal lives until they were decked by activism and now they are beyond saving (something that also happened to normal people). If the 2020 quarantine came with an Internet blackout, we would probably live in a utopia right now.This one kind of makes me sad, to be honest. I think she's actually autistic and she's emulating what she sees from the other fat acceptance chucklefucks.
She could have been saved.![]()