{"id":11214,"date":"2023-02-09T22:28:44","date_gmt":"2023-02-09T22:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.womensrunning.com\/?p=130750"},"modified":"2023-02-09T22:28:44","modified_gmt":"2023-02-09T22:28:44","slug":"are-we-a-fit-nation-or-are-we-just-obsessed-with-fitness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/09\/are-we-a-fit-nation-or-are-we-just-obsessed-with-fitness\/","title":{"rendered":"Are We a Fit Nation? Or Are We Just Obsessed With Fitness?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Get full access to Outside Learn, our online education hub featuring in-depth yoga, fitness, & nutrition courses, when you <a href="https:\/\/www.yogajournal.com\/outsideplus" class="o-content-cta-link" data-analytics-event="click" data-analytics-data="{"name":"Element Clicked","props":{"destination_url":"\/outsideplus","domain":"<>","name":"in-content-cta","type":"link"}}”>sign up for Outside+<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

A historian by training, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela has a PhD and is a history professor focused on the 20th century United States. But her new book Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America\u2019s Exercise Obsession<\/i>, which delves into the history of exercise in the United States, really was driven by another passion in her life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a kid who was very unathletic and very intimidated by what was presented to me as the options to be physically active\u2013which was basically organized sports, physical education class, or maybe dance,\u201d says Petrzela. \u201cThrough a funny chain of events where I realized I could take an independent study in PE, I discovered group fitness as a junior in high school. And I realized, wow, there\u2019s this thing called fitness that\u2019s really different from sport and I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the next decade, fitness was very much part of Petrzela\u2019s life, separate from her life as a student. \u201cI would always joke that in another life, I\u2019d want to be an aerobics instructor,\u201d she says. At the same time, she was always very aware of some of the problems in the fitness world. \u201cI noticed that I feel so good, but on the other hand, this whole project is very much about making me feel bad about my body. So much of the language in fitness environments, particularly geared toward women in that time, was unapologetically \u2018You better burn off dessert. Were you bad this weekend? Bikini season is right around the corner!\u2019<\/i> I was enough of a feminist to know, that\u2019s problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she continued to pursue her PhD studying the history, politics, and culture of the modern United States, Petrzela maintained her identity as a gym person, working the front desk at a gym so she could take classes. In 2002, she moved out to California for graduate school and discovered the running program Team in Training.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember walking on campus one day and I saw all these people together and they were all different shapes and sizes and ages. I found out they were training for a marathon and I thought, \u2018Marathon runners look like that?\u2019<\/i>\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Even though she\u2019d never run more than two to three miles and didn\u2019t think she could do it, she joined the group and ran her first of now three marathons. \u201cAgainst all expectations, I became what I call someone with adult-onset athleticism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petrzela moved back to New York City where her fitness passions thrived\u2013she became a certified Intesati instructor at Equinox, as well as a Lululemon ambassador. At the same time, she got her PhD and was a new assistant professor at the New School, had gotten married and given birth to her son.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore long, I was like, okay, let me be a historian and<\/i> someone engaged in this fitness world and turn that lens on this complicated and honestly poorly understood world and tell the story of how we got here\u2013where fitness is a huge part of our culture, but it\u2019s also something that really reflects inequality in American life,\u201d she says. \u201cSo that\u2019s a long slash short story of how this came to be..\u201d<\/p>\n

We spoke to Petrzela about what it was like to write the book and what she hopes is the future of fitness.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Women May Be More Likely Than Men To Sacrifice Fitness For Work or Family <\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Natalia
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, author of Fit Nation talks to Women\u2019s Running. (Photo Credit: Natalia Mehlman Petrzela)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length. <\/i><\/p>\n

Women\u2019s Running: What was the most surprising thing that you learned delving back into history for this book?<\/b><\/p>\n

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: <\/b>There are a lot of surprises, but I\u2019ll focus on one that comes from running. Running is a big part of the story because it was so important in mainstreaming the idea that cardio is something that everybody should be doing. I really think that jogging slash running (people debate about those terms) is so important in making fitness an expectation for everybody.<\/p>\n

One of the things that I thought was super interesting is that I always thought of the women who were trailblazers in the running world as so obviously a part of feminist history. Someone like Katherine Switzer, all of these women who were really early in embodying what women were capable of physically and athletically. To me that really just made sense as being a chapter in feminist history, or a facet of that 1970s feminism era. Reading Katherine Switzer\u2019s memoir\u2013as well as Linda Huey who wrote a phenomenal memoir in 1976 about her own running career\u2013I was really surprised by the fact that quite a few of these women did not identify as feminists at the time at all, and actually even resented a little bit being claimed by that cause. I\u2019m not saying anything negative about it, and I think quite a few of them have changed their perspectives over the years as we all do, but I find that really interesting.<\/p>\n

I think in some ways it\u2019s illuminating when we think about running and how much individualism is part of that sport. Usually what these women were saying, and I\u2019m paraphrasing, is \u201cI just want to run. I\u2019m just out here like doing my thing, stop trying to make me part of something bigger.\u201d I found that a really interesting aspect of feminist history, and also the way we sometimes deliberately forget the past to make it fit into a narrative that might be a little bit easier.<\/p>\n

WR: What\u2019s another story that stands out to you? <\/b><\/p>\n

NMP: <\/b>Another story that I trace is about the rise of studio fitness, which comes just a little bit after the jogging craze takes off.<\/p>\n

I thought of those as two very different things, but I was surprised in reading the coverage of both women joggers and the early studio studio crowd that quite a few women gravitated to studio fitness because they were sick of getting cat calls on the street.<\/p>\n

It made me realize there was the impulse in this period that was widely shared among women to want to be physically active, and we tend to think of running as the most inclusive thing because of course it\u2019s free and anybody can do it, but actually there were plenty of women who in that period especially\u2013when it was kind of odd to see a jogger on the street\u2013we\u2019re like, I want to be active, but I need a space that\u2019s a little bit more protected because of my experiences. That was surprising to see spelled out so clearly.<\/p>\n

WR: There\u2019s a subtitle within a chapter that really stuck out to me: Wellbeing is for the Wealthy. It feels like such a huge problem with where we\u2019re at right now. Do you think that will ever change?<\/b><\/p>\n

NMP: <\/b>I think it is changing, or I hope it is. That notion that health and wellness is a luxury item is still out there, but it was very strongly felt in the early days of the wellness boom, like the 1990s. There\u2019s a quote that I have by Lucille Roberts, who gave the name to the gym chain, where she basically says I catered to a middle class clientele and those people just wanna fit into their jeans. They\u2019re not worried about this higher level pursuit of health.<\/p>\n

I think that that really is changing. We still have real health inequalities in the most basic fundamental way\u2013whether it\u2019s diabetes, obesity, all of these very fundamental health issues. I do think that the wellness discourse, which once was such a luxury pursuit, is becoming more widespread in a positive way where more people are expected\u2013hopefully not pressured\u2013to expect that they should do more than just not be sick, right? That they deserve, to use a cliche, to thrive\u2013not just survive. I think that\u2019s a positive direction in sensibility. Unfortunately, access has not caught up with that.<\/p>\n

WR: It feels like we\u2019re just pulling at two extreme ends. There\u2019s the one end where being fit and healthy is the new status symbol, which is driven largely by corporations and investors who are incentivized to make money off of that pursuit. Meanwhile, we\u2019re not really doing anything for all the Americans who aren\u2019t even getting a basic level of physical activity per week. How do you think we start to change or shift that dynamic to actually help the people who need it the most? <\/b><\/p>\n

NMP: <\/b>What you\u2019re pointing out is the impact of having a fitness culture, which is mostly available through a private industry where profit is going to be the number one motive for providing access to fitness. That is the world that we live in. I do think the marketplace has seen that it is profitable to have lower end options; we\u2019ve seen a boom in places like Planet Fitness, which are offering really inexpensive access\u2013but it\u2019s still all within the private market.<\/p>\n

A storyline in Fit Nation, which I don\u2019t get asked about as much but I think is really important, is about the story of the physical education profession. Even as this fitness industry has boomed, we have not at all invested in the public institutions that would make us genuinely a fit nation and would make fitness a more democratically available experience.<\/p>\n

What would that look like? I think it would be a real reinvigoration of the physical education profession, within the education field but also within our culture more broadly. It would mean really making it a priority to invest in public recreation facilities\u2013that\u2019s pools and parks but also things that you don\u2019t think of as part of better recreation, like street lamps, better paving in rural areas, and sidewalks so people can walk places.<\/p>\n

I was doing an interview recently with Alison D\u00e9sir [author of Running While Black<\/em>] and she brought up a really great point. She was talking about how in lower income neighborhoods there\u2019s much less tree cover, so the temperature can sometimes be 10 to 15 degrees hotter. That makes it that much harder to go for a jog outside.<\/p>\n

To me, it\u2019s all of those pieces. Expressly, access to recreational fitness places, but at the same time, it\u2019s also thinking about fitness and equality as part of a broader landscape that involves planting trees, building streetlights, having people\u2019s work be such that they can afford to live near where they work so they\u2019re not spending the time commuting that they might exercise. All these things are connected, but of course you can only take on so much in one book, so I try to lay that foundation to say: Hey, fitness and equality are connected to our broader context. We\u2019ve got to think about it that way.<\/p>\n

WR: Another piece that stood out to me was a quote that read \u201cIf neither our doctors nor the government can be expected to bring us good health, to whom can we look to?\u201d There seems to have always been this disconnect between doctors having this different opinion or understanding than fitness professionals. What\u2019s your feeling about that disconnect and who should we be looking to for answers?<\/b><\/p>\n

NMP: <\/b>I\u2019m glad it stuck with you because I think it is powerful. It also speaks in some ways to the problems with fitness culture, which tells us all you have to look to is yourself and you can\u2019t trust anyone, right? I think there are very good reasons why we should be mistrustful of institutions like the medical profession, like big pharma, like the government. But on the other hand, the answer cannot be that the truth just resides within whatever YouTube influencer catches your fancy or within your own sense of your personal journey.<\/p>\n

To me, the biggest challenge of our time, even beyond fitness\u2013this is what I stay up thinking about at night\u2013is what is that balance between giving experts the respect and authority that I think many deserve, but balancing that with appropriate skepticism and maybe confidence in your own intuition. I don\u2019t know what the answer is. I didn\u2019t get into it so much in the book except a little at the end, but I think the fitness and wellness industry is really struggling with that.<\/p>\n

I mean, we\u2019ve seen it throughout the pandemic. Where did anti-vaccine sentiment really catch on? Within the yoga world. And I understand why. It comes out of, in some ways, a very good resistance to medical doctors telling you that they know what your body needs. That\u2019s been so core to yoga and fitness culture for all of its history. But on the other hand, I think we\u2019ve seen that get reduced down or oversimplified into rejecting all authority and I think that\u2019s a real problem.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to not be able to give you a good quote, but it\u2019s so much bigger than fitness. No one has a monopoly on truth, I guess is what I would say to that. Not one doctor, not your favorite Instagram influencer with perfect abs and 10 million followers. It really is a constant process of being humble about knowledge and listening to your own intuition, but also realizing you too don\u2019t have all the answers and expertise does mean something.<\/p>\n

WR: It is both fascinating and frustrating to sit back and watch all of the cognitive bias we all experience. In whatever realm, whether it\u2019s fitness or politics, we all have these little blind spots and you\u2019re right, questioning your own beliefs I think is such an important thing. <\/b><\/p>\n

NMP:<\/b> With fitness it\u2019s really interesting because on the one hand it\u2019s so intimate, it\u2019s your own body and you do kind of know what you need, right? You do know what works for you and what doesn\u2019t. And I don\u2019t wanna diminish that in many ways this book is stories of people who listened to that and created meaningful practices for people. But on the other hand, I think in the fitness industry\u2013especially because it has such a complicated relationship with expertise and professionalization and credentials and all that\u2013it can go too far into rejecting established authorities who don\u2019t say what you want to hear.<\/p>\n

WR: Yeah, it\u2019s all too easy to think I want it to be exactly like this<\/i> or if this feels good to me, then I\u2019m doing it right<\/i>, when sometimes the \u201cright\u201d thing might be pushing your comfort zone a little bit or doing things a different way.<\/b><\/p>\n

NMP: <\/b>A hundred percent. Depending who you are and where you are in your own trajectory with fitness, it can be both things. It is a really hard balance, and unfortunately, I don\u2019t think our rather simplistic media environment is contributing to fixing this problem.<\/p>\n

WR: No. The nuance is definitely not getting picked up and it\u2019s very, very frustrating. <\/b><\/p>\n

NMP:<\/b> In some ways the subtitle of the book\u2013\u201cthe Gains and Pains of America\u2019s Exercise of Obsession\u201d\u2013is meant to invoke that simplistic, no pain, no gain mentality. When it\u2019s actually much more complicated.<\/p>\n

WR: It\u2019s wild reading history books that are focused on this topic because so much has happened in such a short time span. It\u2019s easy to forget that women weren\u2019t allowed to run until a few decades ago, and Title IX isn\u2019t that old, etc. From your perspective, when we look back 20 to 30 years from now, what do you hope are some of the changes we see? <\/b><\/p>\n

NMP:<\/b> That\u2019s a great question. Optimistically, I hope things that now feel like exceptions in terms of what are considered healthy behaviors\u2013like regular exercise every day in one form or another\u2013I hope that becomes normalized and we look back on this time when a minority of Americans exercise regularly similarly to the days when kids didn\u2019t wear seat belts or when people smoked in offices and planes. Like, can you believe that such an unhealthy practice was just a part of everyday life?<\/p>\n

I really hope that that\u2019s the direction that we\u2019re moving in. What would that look like? There is no question in my mind that we will not get there unless we address much deeper rooted causes of inequality. Per all the things I was saying before in terms of the way we organize our work life and our streets and our parks and decide to allocate our public funds.<\/p>\n

WR: Maybe I\u2019m wrong, but it feels like other countries don\u2019t belabor the idea of exercise as much. They don\u2019t have as big of a gym culture, they make it more accessible to walk around, etc. Do you think part of our problem is the rigidity of the recommendations themselves? Do you think we have shot ourselves in the foot at all with how we label or instruct \u201cexercise\u201d overall to people?<\/b><\/p>\n

NMP: <\/b>So the reason we have this kind of cultural expectation or pressure to do what people call \u201cpurposeful exercise\u201d\u2013to take time out of your day to go work out\u2013is because so many aspects of American life are set up to not be great for your physical and mental health. We have largely a service economy here, and that service economy means a lot of sedentary work. If you\u2019re sitting all day, then you\u2019ve got to take that time and build exercise into your days; it\u2019s not going to happen \u201cnaturally.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are also a culture where since at least the 1950s leisure has been positioned as part of the good life. If you have a car to drive you from place to place, if you go to the drive through, if you have labor-saving devices in your house\u2013a washing machine, a dishwasher, all things that used to take some muscle to actually get done\u2013well, that shows you\u2019ve made it. Unfortunately, there\u2019s a real bodily cost to that. So there\u2019s this expectation that you should exercise because all these other aspects of your life, by design, really don\u2019t include much physical movement.<\/p>\n

Now I also want to say, I don\u2019t want to glorify manual labor; because there are people who look back and say \u2018People used to work with their hands!\u2019 and yes there\u2019s something to that, but I wouldn\u2019t glorify people working with their hands on a factory floor or in agriculture. They had repetitive use injuries, they were getting their hands caught in meat grinders; it\u2019s not exactly like there was ever this golden age of exercise.<\/p>\n

The last thing I\u2019ll say as to why in the United States I think exercise has this powerful hold on our culture is it fits so much into American individualism and self fashioning, right? This myth that if you want it enough and if you have the motivation, you can make it and be successful all by yourself. The gym is such a perfect arena for that myth to kind of flourish, because what better canvas to put that idea to work on than your own body, right? That\u2019s totally in your control. And I\u2019m being facetious because it\u2019s not\u2013for all the reasons I outlined in the book\u2013but I think that\u2019s yet another reason why fitness culture in the United States has caught on with such fervor and stuck with us and really only grown in the last century plus that I covered.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Want to Get Fit? Keep Your Running Simple And Consistent<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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A new book examines why Americans are more obsessed with exercise than ever, yet also unhealthier.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The post Are We a Fit Nation? Or Are We Just Obsessed With Fitness?<\/a> appeared first on Yoga Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37,35,36],"class_list":["post-11214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ayurveda","tag-blogs","tag-yoga","tag-yogacourseware"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}