Thoughts about Fitness. Part 1.

Two years ago this week I rode a bicycle across Britain.  It was a modest undertaking by these sorts of treks – starting from the Lake District the journey spanned 200 miles over 3 days and finished in Edinburgh.  It is a beautifully scenic stretch of land with much to recommend it, but that’s not why I was there.  I was trying to get fit. 

My whole life I’d been a big boy.  At 6’1” and 235 lbs, I’d enjoyed an active life of rugby, volleyball and other exercise, but was still chubby.  It seemed to suit my frame.  Even as a kid I was a bit heavy.  I had plenty of girlfriends, though, so I guess it wasn’t too bad.

Only once had I been close to being slim.  In a two-week period I’d climbed Mt Kenya and Mt Kilimanjaro and lost about 35 lbs.  I was startled.  The lesson was clear.  The secret to getting fit was massive, sustained aerobic activity for many days. 

So there I was pedaling a bicycle across Britain.  After several days of riding, the log of which is its own blog account, I arrived in Edinburgh spiritually cleansed by the experience.  I knew from my Garmin bike computer I had burned over 12,000 calories a day.  It was tough as hell at times, but I felt confident about my trimming strategy.  So I stepped on the scale with confidence.  Followed by confusion.  I had gained 5 lbs over the previous 3 days. 

         At first, of course, this was a triumph.  As we all know, muscle is heavier than fat, so I had created a lot of muscle in the previous few days.  Aren’t I impressive, I thought.

Nevertheless, the demands of logic began to gnaw at me.  If I had lost 10 or 15 pounds of fat, as I hoped, then I had created 15 or 20 pounds of muscle.  In three days.  Was this possible?  Think about a pound of beef at the grocery store.  It’s a lot of meat.  I should be able to see 15 pounds of new muscle, right?  Well, I couldn’t see any.  Even being conservative, let’s say after riding all those miles I had lost 5 pounds of fat and had created 10 pounds of muscle.  According to my grocery store calculations, this should still be a visibly palpable creation of muscle.  Only problem was, I couldn’t see it.

This deduction made me question what I understood about my body.  It made me stop and think.  I wanted to understand this stuff.  Over the next few months I learned some things that allowed me to get very fit and lose about 50 lbs (or nearly 4 stone for you Brits).  Two years on I am still 185 lbs with a 32-inch waist. The majority of the difference between then and now has been what I learned.  So I thought I’d share that journey for whoever might find it either entertaining or useful.

         That journey starts in the early 19th century.  Britain enjoyed an unprecedented onset of wealth.  As the sun rose in New Zealand each morning, spanned across its colonies in India and Africa, and set in the Americas, the coffers of British merchants filled with the lode of the British Empire.  It was a period of exploitation and invention.  The ever-resourceful British invented many things, but this blog’s introduction is about a particular invention that has come to permeate Western life.   Not only has this development become ubiquitous, almost everyone that enjoys this creation has no idea it was even invented.  In fact, most people think this discovery has been around for centuries… when it simply hasn’t.

         What had the British invented?  Lunch. 

         As ever, necessity was the mother of invention.  According to Bill Bryson in ‘At Home’, the expanding wealth of the British Empire expanded the role of society in everyday life; the rigors of social etiquette produced a bewildering array of new social graces.  When invited to a meal one must not only accept the invitation but also had to return it.  Which had to be returned.  And so on.   This created a social diary so packed that new occasions had to be created to deal with the overload.  This is why not only lunch was invented, which has been embraced by the majority of Western society, but also tea-time, which hasn’t.  

         To be completely clear, lunch as a midday meal wasn’t what was invented.  In 1750 if you were invited to “dinner” in Britain it was most likely held just after midday.  In much of the north of England, the midday meal is still called dinner.  People ate two meals a day, in the morning and early afternoon.  At the end of the day there was no ‘meal’, although some would enjoy a snack.  By 1850, however, dinner was a formal meal held in the evenings and had become the largest meal of the day, inculcated with Victorian ritual.  With such a long period between breakfast and dinner, and a flourishing social diary to satisfy, the invention of lunch as a third major meal of the day was almost inevitable.

         This was an extraordinary revelation to me.  My entire life, I was taught one should have ‘three square meals’ a day.  It was the healthy thing to do.  Here was evidence this was simply untrue.  Three meals a day weren’t a careful gastronomic strategy for humanity – they were a tool for social climbing in Victorian Britain.  It wasn’t something the adults who taught it to me had thought about.  It was a habit.  Their parents had simply told them the same thing.

         This got me to wondering.  How many other false assumptions lay deeply buried in my psyche?  How often had I tried to make a healthy choice, only to inadvertently fall prey to a habit carried on by generations of unsuspecting supplicants?  What did I actually know about being healthy?

         This multi-part blog is going to share some of the ideas I came across in trying to answer these questions.  Previous to this journey, I thought all the books and articles about this subject were tedious and slightly extremist.   Having spent the last two years exploring this arena I can relate that, essentially, I was right.    So part 2 of this blog will share some tedium and extremism.  I think the essential aspects of learning this stuff is part of why our cultural habits are so much easier to perpetuate.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to distill what I’ve learned in a way that’s enjoyable to read.  In return, I hope you'll share any interesting ideas about fitness you've come across with me, either via comments or email.  

Before and after.  The first was taken on day one of my cycle ride to Scotland.  Actually felt pretty fit at the time.  The second one is a few months later.  Slightly embarrassing to share it, but hey, these things need proof.  And not feeling too embarrassed at 40.