"If it ain't broke, don't Fixx it"

An awful lot of people out there seem to take great joy in deriding the efforts of those who work hard to get or stay in shape. They're the people who will mock your midafternoon snack of an apple and carrots while they eat a couple of doughnuts, laugh at the fact that you get up early to run before work, or dismiss you as a musclehead if you like to lift weights.

But my all-time favorite refrain from such people is: "Keith Richards is still alive, Jim Fixx isn't."

Monday was the 25th anniversary of the death of Jim Fixx, who has been credited with starting the running and jogging craze in the 1970s with the publication of his best-seller The Complete Book of Running. According to Wikipedia, Fixx weighed 240 pounds and smoked when he began running at age 35. Ten years later, he weighed 180 and no longer smoked.

Fixx died at 52 of a massive heart attack after his daily run near his home in Vermont.

That his death would give fodder to those who make no effort to improve their own health is sad, but entirely understandable. I suppose all of us are constantly on the lookout, either consciously or unconsciously, for evidence that supports our beliefs.

But in using the death of athletes such as Fixx to sustain their own inaction, people are overlooking quality-of-life issues.

I've known people who would scornfully dismiss exercise, but then couldn't walk ten steps without sounding like they needed oxygen. Maybe they were perfectly happy in that state, but I have to think they could have been happier, and certainly healthier, with a little effort.

And it's true, they could well outlive me, because so much of our health is determined by genetic factors. Fixx's father, for instance, had died of a heart attack at age 42.

I'd just like to ask you exercise critics out there to do me a favor and stop making ridiculous comments in an effort to belittle my healthy habits or justify your unhealthy ways.

If anyone really believed that Keith Richards had the answer to health and longevity, by now we certainly would have seen a best-seller on the shelves touting the benefits of an alcohol and heroin diet.

Semi-deep thought, by me

Anybody remember those Saturday Night Live spots called Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey? I used to love those, because they were deeply absurd, but also sometimes absurdly deep.

In case you don't remember or are not familiar with them, here's an example. It's a little bit crude, but happens to fit in exactly with where I was going with my thinking today.



If you'll indulge me now, I'm going to offer a sort of semi-deep thought of my own:

What if we had no access to visual cues about what we looked like, other than what we could see with our own eyes — no mirrors, no photos, no video, no reflections in a pond. How would we feel about our bodies?

This thought came to me after reading a story in Slate about a woman who thought she was too short and took the extraordinary step of having both of her legs surgically broken so she could be "stretched." It seems she had been taunted at school — hey, who wasn't? — and in adulthood felt that people didn't take her seriously because of her stature. You can read the story here.

The surgery — which increased the woman's height from 5'1" to 5'4"— could have resulted in a host of debilitating complications. But it didn't, and the woman went on to become a city councilwoman.

Now even without being able to catch a glimpse of herself, this woman would have been able to surmise that she was perhaps a bit shorter than "average." But would it have mattered so much to her? Would it have mattered — or in reality, did it matter — to anyone else?

I think a lot of us think too critically about our appearances, but what is it that we're comparing ourselves with when we wish our hair were straighter or curlier or fuller, our bodies thinner or more muscular, our height taller or shorter?

Is it our friends? Our coworkers? Strangers we see on the street? I doubt that. Think about that the next time you're at the supermarket or gas station, or just about any public place. Take a good look around.

No, I have to believe we're constantly sizing ourselves up against something more insidious and damaging, that notion of the "perfect" or "desirable" that's foisted on us daily by advertisers and Hollywood and has become so ingrained we're not even aware of its impact on our self-image.

So we find ourselves coming up short, so to speak, when we compare ourselves with this unattainable ideal.

And in assessing our looks, the mirror is our co-conspirator in negative self-talk.

In a recent post I shared my favorite quotation, from Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." It's a great line that I've used quite successfully to deflect the criticism of others.

But what happens when we are our own tormentors?

True friends usually 'have your back'

I was touched last Monday when my friend Esther at Gratuitous Violins gave me a nice big shout-out in her theater blog. Esther enjoys her trips to New York's theater district as much as I enjoy my trips to the gym.

Now I didn't know how many of Esther's readers might be the least bit interested in the fact that her friend was starting a health and fitness blog — and I suspect there weren't many — so I thought it very nice of her to write about my new venture.

Her willingness to do it, unsolicited, got me to thinking about how important social support is when we undertake something new, such as getting in shape, eating more healthfully, quitting smoking, losing weight, or whatever it is we hope to do more or less of or just simply do.

I 'm sure we've all encountered negativity at some time in our lives, but there are some people out there who have elevated it to a lifestyle. You know the type — the ones who, after you've shared a dream or plan, let loose with comments like: "You'll never be able to finish that race." "What do you mean you're going to backpack through Europe? You'll probably be killed." "Nobody's hiring in that field anymore."

They reflexively stomp on ambition as if it were a cockroach.

I have a theory about why such people are that way: they're either lazy or afraid. Too lazy to better their own lives, or too afraid they'll fail trying.

So they become missionaries of misery, preaching the gospel of pain. If they can win enough converts to their view that the world is an uncaring, unjust and hopeless place, then none of us ever has to risk anything, because we're all screwed anyway.

When you think about it, it's really quite easy to be miserable. It's happiness that sometimes takes hard work.

So what can you do if you find your ambitions under constant assault from such people? Try to insert some distance if you can, and if that's not possible, just cover your ears and listen to your heart.

Like Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

It took me a while to learn that, but I get it now.