It always amazed me at how two-faced our society is. On one hand, everyone is talking about exercise and healthy living/eating/etc, while on the other they’re criticizing and discouraging anyone who actually decided to follow the advices everyone is so full of.
The first one I always hear is:
running is bad for your knees, you’ll have trouble later if your running on pavement/dirt/at all.
Sadly, this is often the most encouraging thing people can say once they learned that someone decided to start exercising and already went for a few runs. There is often no alternative suggested, beside the one where you go for a beer with them instead.
I imagine the world is full similar excuses for other sports and this is not limited to running.
The second one, that I love is that once I start thinking about the food I eat. Mind you, just thinking and wondering what’s healthy. The answer is usually:
you have to eat meat and diary products because otherwise you’ll get malnutrition and sick
once again, coming from the people who survive their days on pizza and fried steaks, as you suggest that maybe having a more vegetable rich lunch might be a good idea (and I’m not talking about salads). Based on my anecdotal experience, the abuse received from conformist eaters must the be the hardest part of such diet.
Feel free to comment with the excuses you hear for not doing something that is good for you.
Well, running can be bad for your knees. Cycling seems to be least dangerous if you discount the traffic.
Still, better risking troubles with knees later on then with whole body.
It’s also true that eating vegan does present certain challenges, but it’s not like eating meat or dairy automatically makes diet healthy.
Well, running can only be bad for your knees if your running technique is wrong – that’s a fact you can say to someone telling you that 🙂
I have to agree with Marko on his comment about nutrition, lets not forget another saying which is wrongfully spread and goes like this: There is no meal without meat.
Cycling considerably raises the risk of prostate cancer development in men.
The only way to be on the safe side is to sit on an anatomically designed couch in a nuclear shelter, doing absolutely nothing.
The added bonus is that when it’s time to go, nobody will notice, so you even spare others some grief.
But I don’t care. I still run and cycle and swim and hike, because doing stuff solely to relieve peer pressure (which is exactly what it is when people mock other people for leading a healthy lifestyle) is dumb.
I noticed that too – everyone agrees that doing exercise is good but as soon as you start exercising, instead of being encouraging people start being negative. Maybe it’s because they feel guilty because you’re exercising and they aren’t.
I think the answer with food is balance – the four food groups and all that stuff. My wife wants to be a vegetarian but I suspect that it takes more work – having to make sure you get enough iron and potassium and who knows what versus just eating a balanced diet.
About the food:
As ghosttie said getting the right nutrition while being a vegetarian is doable, but being a vegetarian normally means you have to be better informed when making choices about your diet. Nevertheless I know vegetarians who have been so for years and are healthier than most people. (again I think this is because they are more informed and smarter about their diet than most people out there)
Exercise is a good thing (TM). Sometimes it might have long term repercussions, but these days I would like to see what does not have any of those.
For running and knee issues… It’s true if you’re overweight. But then, how can you lose weight if you’re not running? 🙂
I’ve never tried them, but Powerisers look perfect for some running-like goofing around. I’d like to try them myself…
I have nothing to say about the food part…
It’s not so much that you have to be better informed as vegetarian as is that consequences from poor diet tend to show up more quickly.
Plus side to it is that they also tend to be milder and easier to correct.
It does however take more effort than being an omnivore.