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supertinks) wrote2007-11-15 01:57 pm
women and exercise
There is an article on the BBC news website today about how women aren't doing enough exercise to be healthy (report is here). Apparently we don't have enough decent rolemodels to encourage us to be fit and sporty, because the only female role models we have are WAGs, models and actresses who are all to skinny. Apparently we are all brainwashed by the media into believing that its better to be unhealthily thin than to be healthily trim and fit.
There is also a debate on the BBC's Have Your Say boards, which I have been reading with interest this morning. The general consensus on there is that PE lessons in school were so awful, humiliating, degrading and unmotivating that this is the reason that most women aren't interested in doing sport. There's also a lot of crap on there about how women are too busy doing housework and looking after kids etc to have the time to do any sort of exercise.
You may be thinking "yeah, but look at you, I bet you were on all the school teams etc cos you're obviously sports-inclined" but you'd be wrong. I hated it. Was never picked for the netball team because most of the girls in our school played for the county (I once played for the school B team and the school C team. I mean, how embarrassing is it to say you had to be in the C team??). I was useless at hockey. I would have loved to have played rugby, but girls weren't allowed.
Outside school I rode my bike all the time, ran round lots with my mates, roller-blading, we played football on the school fields in the evenings/weekends. We kicked rugby balls about on the training pitch over the road. I did ballroom dancing when I was much younger as well.
By the time I was in sixth form, I did very little 'sports', by the time I was in Uni I did none (and was eating atrociously). LARP probably counts as exercise but probably doesnt count when you consider all the booze and burgers and snacks you consume at an event!
Its only since I left uni, starting eating properly again, bought myself a new bike and become motivated to change that I've started doing sport again. At the moment its not working just right because I have no proper routine, but that will change hopefully very soon, when I sort myself out again. So if we look ahead a couple of weeks, my weekly regime will include:
1 hour swimming
1 hr 15 mins cycling
30 mins hardcore cardio gym exercise
30 mins more relaxed fat-burning gym exercise
1-2 hours rock climbing.
Which is approximately 4-5 hours exercise a week. They recommend 2 and a half hours (30 mins, 5 times a week) so I think I'm doing pretty good there.
The odd thing to note there I think is that not a single one of those activities is a team sport. I may be tempted, when I have more money and time, to take up something like badminton or squash, but even thats just a nice activity I'll be sharing with Jamie, and not a team sport. Also I may investigate something like Yoga or Pilates, because there's a place that does classes not too far from home, but its expensive so we'll have to see.
I really do think school PE has erased any desire I had to partake in team sport activity.
So, on to the point of this excessive ramble... I want to know from you guys (not just women, although that was the original prompt) whether or not you think you do enough exercise, and why that might be. What was PE like in your school?
I'd do some sort of poll but I'm cheap and don't pay for livejournal, so you'll just have to make up your own answers :-)
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See now – I don’t totally agree with the BBC there – now don’t get me wrong, PE in school was rubbish and embarrassing and apparently designed to make anyone who isn’t ‘on the team’ feel rubbish – grief, I was on the team and still hated it.
But the majority of women and men are fat because they are lazy. Saying ‘I don’t feel feminine in my gym kit’ is such a feeble excuse it isn’t true (incidentally before you point it out, I’m not being hypocritical here – I am well aware that my lifestyle needs more exercise and less pie).
Of course the other option from lazy is stupidity. Look at Andy – he does far more exercise than me and yet even with me wobble I have a better body / am much stronger and have more stamina than him. That is a prime example of bad diet – Christ, he’s only eating veg because we’ve been having a go at him for 2 years. I dread to think how quickly he’d have got rickets otherwise.
Point is, at the end of the day there should always be time for an active lifestyle – obesity is something that 1 in 100 people should suffer from, not 1 in 3. It’s all about lifestyle choice and sooo many people get it wrong – people look at me like I’m mad when they realise I cycle into work!
Fat women should not be the norm in this day and age – you see some proper goppers, but because they are slim / shaped like a woman / not built like a barrage balloon – they stand out and you find yourself going Hmmmm – because everyone around them is apparently ‘eating for 3.’
Like so many other things, this issue could be sorted by the people themselves getting off their lardy arses and doing some bloody exercise – long hours? Tough - Housework to do? My heart bleeds.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m sickened to the very core that we need shows like ‘how to look good naked’ or ‘inside Britain’s fattest man’ – because the vast majority of people need that sort of advice or shock to galvanise them into looking after themselves.
Rah
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"We need the media to pay greater attention to female sporting achievements. Why, when Nicole Cooke won the French cycling tour on the same day as Andy Murray hurt his wrist, did she become an afterthought on the news?"
Oh of course it's the medias fault, couldn't possibly be a persons fault themselves could it? no! that would be like taking the blame for something.
My experience of PE at school was awesome. It was the only "official" bit of school I enjoyed, I couldn't tell you what I had to wear but then it didn't matter because everyone had to wear it as well, it's not like I was there in a full clown get-up whilst everyone else was in gym kit now was it? Between the ages of 10-18 I did an hour of PE twice a week, and two hours of games 5 times a week, 3 hours on match day (usually twice a week) and then 2 hours of army cadets a week which usually envolved running round woods shouting bang at each other (very similar to modern day lrp really). School hours were 08:30-19:15 mon-sat if your wondering how all that adds up.
I loved sport in other words surely I'd be a prime example of someone to carry on physical excercise in my adult life.
And yet I havn't done a single bit in over 10 years, am 7 stone overweight and am strictly speaking; medically obese. But how does that work? thats the exact opposite of what they're saying is true! lordy!
(All this said I have recently joined a gym even though it's not been built yet*, given up smoking, started getting our veg from a local farm and generally looking at getting into a healthier lifestyle)
*this is the best excuse for not going ever.
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My point is this:
I am are lazy, it is far easier to sit about and do chud all then it is to do something. So that's what I do.
I suspect other people are lazy.
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