Although you wouldn't guess it to look at me, I've been on a physical fitness and diet regimen since I was 18 years old and entered Basic Combat Training at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Well...except for a 6 month interlude that lasted from the day I retired from the military until the day I went to work again and discovered the shorts and cut-off sweatshirt I'd been wearing daily during that period wouldn't cut it in the business world.
In all those years, I learned almost every single thing you could ever want to know about diet, nutrtion, exercise, and the human body. Seriously. I don't mean to brag, but there are nutritionists, doctors, dieticians, and Olympic athletes out there who haven't read as much about physical fitness and health as I have. The first diet and fitness book I ever read was written by Charles Atlas and the last one I read was written by some wiggler who edits a magazine called Men's Health that's been running the same 132 articles over and over again with different titles since they started publishing.
The problem with having all this knowledge, you see, is getting it "out there." For most people, that means they feel compelled to write a book. But books are tedious. They're long. And they're usually full of little anecdotes nobody cares about except the writer's relatives.
No, I think the way to impart knowledge about anything is with a list.
So let's take this opportunity to examine some of our most compelling beliefs about physical fitness, diet, exercise, the human body, and its social role and function. (I borrowed that sentence from the skirts over at Good Housekeeping, so don't get anything on it because I've got to get it back to them for their February article on divorced lesbians who raise their sons as transvestites.)
1. The absolute worst thing in the world for you, worse than anything else, is commercial white bread.
2. The only thing worse than that is refined white sugar.
3. In fact, anything white, such as white rice, is bad for you and anything brown, such as brown rice, is good for you.
4. The only white thing that's good for you is white wine.
5. The only other white things that are good for you are fish and chicken which are much better for you than beef which is bad for you unless it's veal which is sort of good for you unless it's deep fried.
6. Fish is so good for you that it's almost a vegetable except that it has intenstines.
7. Exercise is good for you and the more vigorous and frequent the exercise, the better it is for you. But you shouldn't exercise too much because exercise really wears you down.
8. Cancer is the result of having a certain personality type that represses emotions and things.
9. Only real straight Republican conservative "business-types" repress emotions. And your mother.
10. All other diseases we get are caused by the foods we eat.
11. All other diseases we get are caused by the environment we live in.
12. American eating habits are very unhealthy and Americans are very unhealthy even though statistics say we live longer than almost everybody else in the world.
13. You can lose weight and get in real good shape by eating 1,000 calories a day and exercising like a madman and within 6 months of stopping that, you'll be out of shape and fat again.
14. All folk medicine works really well, especially Chinese folk medicine.
15. Doctors don't know anything about medicine.
16. It's more natural for a baby to be born on a geodesic houseboat in Bali than a hospital in Nashville.
17. Karate, Judo, and Tae Kwan Do are good, but fighting is bad.
18. Women have more endurance than men.
19. Shaving under your arms is barbaric, but putting half a dozen holes in each ear and one in your belly button is good.
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