Fulfillment Precedes Fitness
All of my friends know that I'm an absolute homebody. I am allergic to all forms of exercise. But recently, I started to do some exercises. The story begins one day when I was bemoaning my mediocre state of health to my friends. I expressed my worries about if I can't live longer than pathetic dictators dreaming of living to a hundred and fifty; Considering that all seniors and relatives from my father's family have diabetes, I feel like I'm at a high risk of getting diabetes from a genetic standpoint. I should accumulate some "fitness karma" for my healthy retirement life from today.
At the same moment, Bilibili pushed a few fat loss cooking videos to me. Thanks to the algorithm, I systematically learned everything about this fitness theory and found that I am genetically blessed for weight loss: chicken thighs, broccoli, shrimps, and tofu âĻ all of these "healthy foods" are my favorites. As for the carbohydrates, I don't crave white rice over whole grains. Daily cardio is not a problem to me as well â I am quite good at jumping rope and swimming. I tried replacing rice and noodles with oatmeal and milk for a few days. And I found this diet alleviates my food coma a lot, which make me more energetic. What a fantastic rejuvenation thanks to the low-GI food regimen!
In the ancient era, people loving fat-gaining food survived; while nowadays, only people loving low-GI food can survive. Facing such a preposterously indifferent natural selection, what else can we do other than brainwashing ourselves and thoroughly reversing our natural diet preferences?
People say that being resourceful is the prerequisite of starting your fitness plan, which means purely austere physical hardwork doesn't really work on body shaping without a comprehensive understanding of nutrition science. I'd like to add an additional principle: being mentally fulfilled preconditions being resourceful.
Your mood determines your brain's ability to control yourself. Countless failed weight losing stories attest that the essence of body shaping is emotion management: Nowadays, people can enjoy high-fat, high-sugar, high-sodium foods to nip any upsets in the bud; Doomscrolling with emptiness until 3 am, newly produced cortisol breeds visceral fat under your abdomen. You can't really rely on your noble fortitude to adhere to the principles of healthy lifestyle under constant pummeling of everyday life. The emotional damage has to be somehow repaired â whining, gluttony, hysteria â people step on the path of self-destruction while craving the feeling of being loved.
As I said, I am the ultimate weight-loss prodigy â I have never had any silly emotion repairing feasts. But even like this, I am still not good at persuading myself to touch some grass. "Exercise half an hour every day" drains my heart badly. "You should stand for ten minutes for an hour of sitting" is an annoying alarm disturbing me. Only the ephemeral timeless moments pervading the immersion of virtual imagination guide me to my own mindflow and bring peacefulness to me.
The definition of "Healthy" has always been a lie for my generation during our childhood. Chinese parents desperately cram everything edible into your mouth and scold you why can't you absorb more nutrition to grow up faster and be taller than your peers. Motionless quiet kids always become the role model of discipline in school and teachers only care about the stats on paper. Congee and chicken soup are a great legacy from our ancestors while steak and all fat milk are poison imported by evil foreigners. People with all brawn must have no brains. Higher education level means more decent. Women should marry rich men even if the stenchy fatty can't get it up.
Nobody cares what a kid thinks. Nobody cares if all these dictums and operations pushes an ape to its brink of burnout from the perspective of biological limits. All these ingrained dogmas turn out to be disadvantages of survival after graduation. This lifestyle incredibly increases the probability of sudden death. Facing such an upbringing full of lies and violence, what else can we do other than forcing ourselves to change our toxic mindset?
It's weird to be not that stubborn and unchangeable when growing older. I thought that I would always be a sedentary person for my entire life. But these years, I can feel some changes happened on myself. More and more often, sitting for over an hour makes me feel uncomfortable. It seems like I have reached the bottleneck of all my old indoor hobbies. And the guilt of wasting time strolling has been decreased by listening to podcasts. I even bought two dumbbells â I moved or helped people move out for many times in recent years and I realized the soreness from your muscles releases joy to your brain. Since I don't like gym, the best practice for me is to have gym time at home with dumbbells.
I wonder why I am only just now able to be aware of these little things of happiness. Maybe it's just because my prefrontal cortex has fully developed. But I prefer to say that lower pressure level helps. Some angst haunting me for a long time doesn't exist anymore.
To be more detailed, I joined the biggest company in the world. I have a 10 am to 5 pm daily work routine now, which provides me at least two more hours spare time compared to my life in Beijing. I can cook for myself before the dinner time arrives â yes, just repeat between chicken thighs with broccoli and shrimp with tofu, and I can even take half to my tomorrow's lunchbox. I can play video games or read books for a few hours so that I don't need to scroll on my phone endlessly to make up for my lost delusions of grandeur during the daytime. The balance of life quality sneakily turned to another side, enabling one to get rid of the vicious cycle.
Hey folks, I'm not bragging anything about my life in the States but I mean â yea that's true â the two hours leisure helps.