Fitness In America Essay, Research Paper

Fitness in America

Today in America over one third of the people are unfit. All my life I have seen fit people and unfit people and it made me sad to see them. To see the unfit people made me sad because I knew how easy it was to be fit. Many people think that today you must go to a big fancy gym or have a personal trainer to get into shape and stay fit. Many people ask me, “What the easiest way to get into shape?” I answer them by asking what they think of when they picture someone who is in shape or trying to get into shape. Nine times out of ten they will say a runner. I tell them that they are correct, and that is their answer. If people would just take a second to think about how most people start to get into shape they would save a lot of money. You see, there is no reason that one third of Americans today should be out of shape, as well as spend hundreds of dollars a year on fitness facilities, trainers and other equipment.

We are born with an incredible machine that is capable of doing more than any other machine. The human body is a better machine then any other machine in the fact that the more it is used or exercised, the better it gets. What other machine gets better the more it is used? None that I know of ever gets better the more it is used. For example, a car, as it gets older and is used more frequently starts to break down over time, not only the engine but the body and interior start to wear out as well and no matter how much you repair it, it will keep breaking down until you just have to get a new one. Likewise, a computer, as it gets older must be upgraded and parts must be repaired and replaced as well in order to keep using the computer.

Now you may be saying to yourself that the human body does start to wear down as well, and as you get older you are not able to do many of the things that you could when you were young. This is true, but the body does not really start wearing down until you start to reach the age of fifty or sixty and even then it can be used for thirty or forty years if slight modifications are made in daily workouts. I do not know of any car that can last for fifty or sixty years and then keep running another forty with just slight modifications to the way it is driven or taken care of. I know a man that is now in his mid sixties that has always been a runner; he started running in high school and throughout college. This man ran every day on a strict routine of either time or distance never running less then five miles. He has run in four marathons as well as many five kilometer races, ten kilometer races, and half marathons. The amount of training that goes into just one of these races in a three month period is more than just a leisure runner does in a whole year. My point is that this man did one of the most difficult and body stressing workouts that any person can do for at least forty five years of his life until about two years ago. Two years ago his body finally started telling him that it had enough running, he would get small nagging injuries that took longer to go away then when he was younger. The injuries continued to increase until he just had to stop running as much. Not wanting to stop exercising, he went out to find an alternate to running, but would still keep him in tip top shape. His son introduced him to aerobics. The man now does a seventy-five minute aerobics workout three times a week and still feels that he is in as good of shape, if not better now then when he was running. Now the man and his whole family take aerobics together to get into better shape and stay that way; which brings me to the subject at hand

Fitness as a part of family values should be a high priority to all families. We have all heard the phrase, “The family that does things together, stays together.” I believe that a family that works out together stays together. Not only does exercise get you into shape, but working out gives your family time to be with each other and learn more about each other. There are many things that a family can do together to stay fit; walking, jogging, biking, swimming, weight training, aerobics, if you can think of the sport, a family can do it together.

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When it comes to fitness, people start by thinking of one thing expense. Everyone sees the commercials on television and thinks that they have to pay big bucks by joining a health club. You do not have to go to any fancy gym or pay high dollar for a home fitness gym. Some of the most affective and inexpensive types of exercise are the things we do everyday. Just think about it, you walk from the car to work everyday, you jog from your office to the board meeting your late for, and you run from the office to your car at the end of the day. All three of these things when done for extended periods of time will help get you into shape. You will also notice that none of these costs over sixty-five dollars, which will cover the expense of your new shoes. “But, Nate,” you say. “I don t have sixty five dollars for shoes.” I will tell you that I bet I can find one way in which you can budget your money in order to buy those shoes.

Let us go straight to the root of your fitness problems; the grocery list. I am willing to bet that there are numerous items that can be substituted or even taken off the list that will not only save you money but aid in getting you fit at the same time. We can start at the snack or dessert list. Fruits and vegetables are always better snacks then Little Debbie s and even better than the so called “no fat” snacks such as Snack Wells brand snacks, not to mention that they cost at least one half the price. For most families, specially unfit families have the main course of their meal as beef at least five out of seven days of the week. Try substituting chicken for beef three of those times a week. Chicken costs less then beef and again is more healthy for you. Both of these substitutions are not only healthier for you but are also cheaper, and if you want to look at it this way, you are actually making money which can in turn go toward a new pair of shoes to walk or run in.

You are now exercising regularly and have learned many new techniques, theories, and an overall general knowledge about fitness; but how can you use this new information to benefit others? It all starts in the home. Not only will teaching your family about fitness educate them but it can also bring the family closer together. As I had said earlier, “The family that exercises together stays together,” is very true. Not only does everyone learn something new but it gives you all something in common with each other. Such as in my case of when I was in high school, I played many different sports along with some of the same sports my father played as well as some that he did not, but we always had something to talk about if we needed to. We could talk about football and my father would tell me stories and I would tell him some too. It gave us a bond together since we did not really have much more in common. I see fathers taking their kids to gyms all the time and trying to show them the proper way to lift, and mothers taking aerobics class with their daughters. I think that this is just fantastic. Not only do the parents get to share some of their knowledge but the children get to learn what their parents are interested in.

Children often take the same values and beliefs as their parents and do the same things that their parents do, thus, fitness in the family starts with the parents. Parents do not have to be the most fit people or be as active as their children are but they must encourage their children in order to get them to do something. I believe that I became interested in sports because my parents made them available to me at a young age. My parents were the coaches of the first organized sport that I played. They were not coaches before I wanted to play so I did not feel the pressure of trying to fulfill some dream that my parents wanted to coach me in their favorite sport. In fact they did not really know very much about the sport until I wanted to play it. When I told them I wanted to play but the school needed more coaches they volunteered and learned everything they could about the sport in order to help me. Now I am not saying you should be a coach of the sport your child wants to play, but encourage them to play that sport and any others they might want to try. If you do not know anything about their particular sport then go to practice with them or get a book about that sport, practice what you do know and help them where they need it. When you show your children that you are interested in what they are doing then that will make them want to be the best at that task and do whatever they can to improve, and with sports that is to be fit. But do not stop at just taking them to practice or reading about their sport, do more to show them that you care by working out with them. A child learns more from example then from any other type of teaching. If the parents lead a healthy lifestyle and that is the only way a child is brought up, then that child will lead a healthy lifestyle as well.

Some people might think that they should stay out of their children s life when it comes to sports and fitness. They think that in the long run their interference will only deter the children from wanting to participate in any type of sporting event. People always see things on television or hear about a child who only plays a sport to gain their parents approval and respect. I do not agree with this assessment, speaking only from my own experiences here, I chose to continue playing sports even after my parents told me I did not have to play if I did not want to. I did so because I was in shape and I loved the way it felt to be in shape. I just could not imagine what it would be like to get out of shape.

Unfit people might think that they were not raised to be the most healthy or fit person and they turned out all right, so why should they make fitness a priority in the way their family is raised now? My answer to this is that everyone wants to live a long and prosperous life, and the best way to do this is to live a healthy life. If you look back at the life expectancy of your grandparents and great grandparents you will see that a man s life expectancy is around seventy-five, and a woman s is near eighty. With a healthy lifestyle you can increase your life expectancy to near five to seven or even more years longer. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report that thirty-five percent of all cancer related cases are linked to what we eat. By eating a better diet we can reduce our risk of cancer greatly. According to the Harvard Medical School the risk of having a stroke and be lowered to sixty-eight percent just by eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. There are many more statistics about how you can improve your health just by eating properly and exercising regularly, but I will not bore you with those statistics since this paper is not about the statistics of a healthy lifestyle. You can get many books and reports on the statistics of health and fitness at any library.

Gender issues are always a big controversy in every topic that is discussed today. Everyone has their own opinion about what is seen as the norm for men and women and what is not normal for the respective genders. In the past it was always seen that men should be better at sports then women. Women were all suppose to look and be fit, but not have any athletic talent. This attitude is finally starting to change as women s sports are all on an upraise. There are now more women s sports being broadcast on the television now then ever before. It use to be that the women s NCAA basketball championship game was the only game shown, now the entire tournament is shown on ESPN and ESPN 2 with the final four game on open broadcast channels such as CBS or NBC.

For the longest time men and women had their respective sports that they were supposed to be good at and only they should excel in that certain sport. Women were not suppose have large muscles, where men should be the big bodied ones. This line of thinking has changed some now where people see that women are equal to men. This is not always accepted in some areas of today s society where people see a woman lifting weights and having bigger arms then the man next to her. The woman is labeled a freak in looked at in a funny manner. We need to show are children at an early age that fitness is meant for all people, men and women and we should except everyone for trying to be fit and not see them as freaks or anything else people might think of them as. I will admit that earlier in my life I was not too crazy about women s sports, basketball imparticular. I thought that the women s game was so much slower than the men game and that women could not possibly compete with the men s game. When I was a senior in high school all of this changed when I was asked to run the scoreboard and clock for all women s home varsity and junior varsity games. Even though I did see differences in both women s and men s games I found some similarities as well as some things that women did better then men. The games became very exciting for me and I started to realize that women s sports should be just as excepted as men s sports.

Exercise can be a wonderful outlet for emotional energy as well. You can use your emotions to help fuel your drive toward a certain fitness goal. If we were to incorporate learning about emotion in exercise with the family values of fitness families could learn much more about each other. There might be a certain exercise one person does to get them through a problem that would show the parents that their child needs help with something and they can act accordingly. Turning your emotions into energy for exercise can help people be less angry and violent as well as make them feel more confident about themselves. Just think about it, when you look good you feel good. Exercise makes one look good on the outside as well as on the inside, while at the same time makes you feel good on the inside in an emotional sense. When a person is in shape they feel like there is nothing they cannot accomplish physically, there is not a distance they cannot run, no mountain they cannot climb, there is not anything physical that person cannot do with the proper training. Fitness also helps a person set goals for themselves. Lets say you want to set a goal of running five miles in under thirty minutes, you are not going to be able to do that without being in shape. This will help you set the goal to get into the right kind of shape in work toward reaching that thirty minute five miles. I f you have a goal and you set your mind to it there is nothing you cannot achieve.

“The family that exercises together stays together.” is a phrase that I firmly believe in. With the amount of unfit people today, we all need to do what we can together to decrease this number and to do this we need to start with our own families. If we raise our children to lead healthy lifestyles they will raise their children the same way and their children the same way and so on thus creating a society of healthy and fit people. The machine we call our body need s to be exercised in order to be used longer. Unlike any other machine the more our bodies are used in the appropriate manner the longer it can be used. People will always make excuses on why they do not work out, not enough time, costs to much money, do not know enough about the subject and many other excuses. The only reason there really is, is that people are just too lazy to get off their rears and change themselves for the better. We are our children s examples and they will do the same things we do, so if we educate ourselves and practice a healthy lifestyle that we can pass on to our children, it will start a chain reaction of fitness to a whole generation to come. Fitness leads to looking better, feeling better, emotional stability, being more confident and above all living longer. Treat your body right and it will take you to places you never thought you could go.