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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-06-02
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjKox4PX1kM
I have a question for you which you exercise if you thought it would not impact your appearance as a culture we are deeply invested in appearance modern western culture emphasizes perfection and you in stigmatizes individuals who don't meet certain ideals we feel the pressure we risk our good health every day to look a certain way the relationship between exercise and appearances murky the deeper health benefits
for their prevention of brain and heart disease improvement of bone and joint health increase muscle strength so back to my question if you knew that you might not lose weight you might even gain weight but you can improve the functional healthier body we still go to the gym today I can run school I devote to technology that measures how people perceive their body weight size and
shape our work at the time from that more often than not it even across diverse cultural backgrounds we are unhappy with the way our bodies look so much so that the term was coined to describe the fact normative discontent basically we've normalized being unhappy with our parents struggle with the way we look in health behaviors you doing exercise thinking water marketed to us for the sole
purpose of helping us look the way we think we should if there is a huge disconnect here the disconnect between health performance in appearance as a scientist of spent nearly two decades studying how we can optimize our body's a performance in thrive psychologically or be happy at the same time let's take a moment think about this in a slightly different way take architecture in the late
nineteenth century shifts in economics technology and design made it necessary to create new architecture styles Stalin shape of a building we're not gonna be chosen from past models something had to determine its form or with the building would look like the leaf Louis Sullivan said architect former follows function a profound shift in thinking at the time because basically what he's saying is that function its first
inform come second the concept is not hard to see in our world today houses in south Louisiana built up off the ground to protect them from floodwaters Pentagon has intentional design that supports its function it needed to hold forty thousand people have ten thousand spaces to park cars four million square feet of office space and not be higher than four stories so if you look at
how and why we design our buildings today easy to conclude that function comes first but why is it so hard to apply the same logic to our bodies today I'd like to offer a shift in perspective on our bodies for us to consider function over form not unlike the architecture example form ever follows function means prioritizing performance and purpose over appearance however every day in many
different moments in many different situations we ask ourselves how does my body book framing it up as an object to be judged what if we shifted the self reflection and we asked ourselves how does my body of work if we look at those in our population and take cues from those who first expected to be high performers what US army soldiers and athletes we would be
focused on just thought performance how does my body work soldiers engage in readiness training which is designed to prepare them for their mission optimize performance and prevent injury in recent times military training also includes resilience the ability to bounce back from challenging sort stances mental and physical soldiers on a mission our athletes performing a high stakes competition get distracted by form if you have serious and
life threatening consequences for example female athletes who are focused on appearance goals such as being worried about being judged in tight fitting uniforms often engage in unhealthy behaviors to achieve those appearance goals this can result in weak bones severe injury and problems of fertility in these are problems that affect life for the long term through the study of these high performance populations we realize that our
focus on performance and function and resilience is not just for the elite so our civilians not soldiers not athletes I'll be thinking about optimizing our bodies for the long haul re thinking about something else I was a competitive gymnast for ten years quite a while ago now and after spine injury I left the sport and struggled to really figure out what my health coverage should be
eating exercise stress reduction it was overwhelming and after shoulder repair and a left ankle reconstruction all I could think about was getting back into shape I thought this was healthy but at the time the correlation between my habits and my body function never occurred to me because doesn't body size determine health so a few years ago I found out that I have a condition that makes
me more prone to injury so after I cracked a renewed and have a complete right foot reconstruction in then was told I needed a neck fusion I was thrust in this period were all my time and energy was spent trying to regain the ability to use my body parts and strengthen others to prevent further loss of function it's a defining moment because we are focused on
retaining function from an injury from surgery art fighting to survive an illness chefs are perspective in a mixed function our primary focus former secondary focus forces us into this head space so why is it so hard to get there when our lives are on the line given the explosion of social media and technology we all have access to overwhelming amounts of health information in a constant
stream yet with all of this information at our fingertips a crisis point it's the truth is we no longer know what healthy behavior religious health behavior is often not really healthy behavior its appearance driven behavior disguised as health behavior and given our cultural climate it's become really difficult to tell the difference health behavior behavior to attain maintain or regain good health minimum physical and prevent onus
so given this definition if we're only exercising the body parts that we want to look a certain way are we cheating ourselves out of so much St training for example can prevent injury down the road drinking water for hydration sleeping for recovery practicing mindfulness meditation for stress reduction or the Baum was science that sick just nutrition as fuel and medicine for the body verse is a
simple calorie count maintaining good health and function is complex in individual lives factors our bodies don't always promising way to healthy behavior for example there is great data that shows that our bodies don't all respond the same way to exercise so because of this our appearance goals and our function goals often or even compatible so guess what healthy body function doesn't look the same on everyone
if we take athletes at the top of their performance game we see significant diversity in body type now this is a radical fought because it's our default settings make assumptions about people's health habits in their body function based on appearance simply cannot judge function by appearance if you can't judge function by form it would seem that we are way off the mark is using appearances some
metric for halt despite reaping condition the belief think about that for a second culture says it's how we work what if we said it's how we feel and what we can do with our body why should we care about this because as fate would have it science does it it is a good thing to focus on function we focused on function we are more likely to
engage in actual healthy behaviors is balanced exercise eating fruits and vegetables wearing sunscreen not smoking going to check ups but even more powerful than that is our intention because when more focused on form is our main focus you can sabotage or health behavior for example were only focus on what exercise can do to change our appearance we get less satisfaction out of the exercise and we
are more likely to develop so this focus on function I've been talking about it's a deeper appreciation to respect it's a respect for our bodies that includes attending to its functional needs even if it doesn't meet the parents I DO you have in mind for it as an athlete as a scientist developing programs for soldiers and athletes treating eating Sir patients in the hospital and guiding
bariatric surgery patients along their weight loss journeys I've learned that we all work through these functional needs rather elite performance or in daily life ask yourself what does your body do for you it does more than you realize take time to appreciate the things about your body that work be proactive in deliberate about how you want your body to work every moment is an opportunity start
where we are an optimizer function start with your intention science also says that we cultivate an environment appreciation and respect for diverse bodies and we encourage each other to engage in healthy behaviors not based on appearance goals we all do better drop the body bullying it's not our judgment to make we must convince our younger generation but a healthy body is an ideal body in the
