Beautiful People

"Beautiful people - you know the garden's full of furniture, the house is full of plants" - Australian Crawl

I'm on a psuedo-health-kick. I know that I can become healthier, fitter and feel better physically. I'm not over-weight for my height and age, but I've got a beer gut in training. My daily exercise currently consists of walking up and down 3 flights of stairs to my apartment and a 7 minute walk to and from the bus-stop. I'm generally short of breath when I get home each day, so I know I need to increase my fitness level. And I smoke. Problem is, I'm a lazy prick so I'm going to start by focusing on diet and tackle the other two issues later.

If you want to get rich quick - develop a diet, hire a well known celebrity to endorse it (it's what they're there for after all) and sell it to the weekly trash mags or current affairs programs. There are millions of diets out there (I haven't counted them personally) cashing in on people's desire to loose weight, get healthier and look more attractive. Most of these are genuinely good, healthy eating diets which, when combined with regular exercise, promote long-term health and weight loss. Then there are those quick-fix diets which promise 10kg weight loss in a month by eating nothing but celery and lettuce. Sure, they deliver what they promise, but are no good for your health or for long-term weight loss and fitness.

The driving desire behind the plethora of diets is society's idolisation of the body beautiful. Ask a person who has started a diet as to the main reason behind it and their answer will almost always be "to loose weight". We have become so conditioned to images of beautiful people that it has become an obsession. Girls want to look like super-models, boys want to look like athletes. Girls want to date boys who look like athletes, boys want to date girls who look like super-models. So we end up with a society that is too focused on image and what is on the outside and loose our individuality and what is on the inside. Certainly, the desire to improve one's fitness and health is an admirable one - the fact that your body changes, becomes more defined, slender or taut is side-effect. Unfortunately, it seems that the desire and the side-effect have become reversed for many. Ever been into a gym that didn't have mirrors?

Me, I'm not going on any set, formalised diet - I like a variety of foods. Instead I plan on eating more fruit and vegetables, cutting back on fat and carbs and eating smaller portions. I may try reducing my alcohol intake, but that is very unlikely ;)


Songs played while writing this entry:
"Bow River" Cold Chisel
"Californication" Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Forever Now" Cold Chisel
"(Baby I've Got You) On My Mind" Powderfinger
"When I Rock" Thomas Schumacher
"Skylined" The Prodigy
"W.M.A" Pearl Jam