Oh, for the Abs of Zeus!
Can Wisdom come from gaining a 6-pack?
Before I begin, I just wanted to let you know that the BRAND NEW The Beauty of Shakespeare podcast is up and running. I shall be reading aloud all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. For more information you may read about and listen to the first episode HERE.
IMPORTANT: In an effort to not flood your inboxes with multiple emails per week I set up The Beauty of Shakespeare so that you have to manually opt into receiving it in emails. You can also click on the tab and set up your preferred podcast catcher. If you have any questions let me know in comments.
I have always found it hilarious that Zeus is often depicted as an older man with a buff body. Can’t blame the internet. We’ve had this ripped bod preoccupation for a very long time.
Several years back, just out of curiosity, I decided to see if I could get a fitness model’s physique. I was in my mid-forties and a mother of five school-aged children. I had no gym membership and ended up buying a rowing machine, new running shoes, 5/10/15lbs dumbbells, and a few resistance bands. In the evenings I rowed in the basement and did my strength training in the living room while my little kids watched television.
I went on a diet where I ate a lot of food, but I did not consume the following:
most gluten products, unless it was made of sprouted grain
dairy, corn, or soy products
grapes or bananas
juices or refined sugar
alcohol or caffeine
butter, mayonnaise, or high sugar/fat salad dressing (had to make my own)
Every day I drank half my weight in fluid ounces in water and ate pre-portioned snacks and meals every two hours.
I did 30-60 minutes of rowing every other day. Monday and Wednesdays were arm days. Tuesday and Thursday were leg and core days. Every Saturday morning I ran a 10k.
In less than a year I looked good enough for Instagram swimsuit selfies. When I was helping a neighbor carry boxes she mentioned, “I can see your abs through your shirt!” She burst out laughing because it was kinda ridiculous.
A stay-at-home, middle-aged mother of a sizable family who, unlike many of the entertainment industry celebrities out there, does not need to rely on their physical looks for her livelihood… yes, ridiculous to put all this effort into one’s body because it comes at an absurd cost:
It was time consuming. I had to chop, weigh, prep, and portion a lot of food. Celebrities and rich people have personal chefs for this work. Normal folk don’t.
It made me worry about numbers. I became obsessive. I weighed myself every day and fretted over every fluctuation. I wanted to increase exercise weights, miles, and just do more every day until it was unsustainable. I had a goal to have a certain body. That meant having very low body fat. One of the measurements of that is weight, and I kept chasing a lower and lower number. It is easy to look in the mirror and see someone who is still not good enough. I knew about the upper limit of a high BMI, but I was ignoring the lower threshold. I started to realize that bodies had limits that needed to be respected.
I developed time anxiety. I had alarms going off to remind me to eat or drink water all the time. I kept looking at the clock.
I had few friends. Much of what I was doing I was doing alone because it required so much concentration on my part. I also had the feeling that even though I got compliments on how I looked people saw me more as an object and less of a person.
I missed pie, ice cream, and whiskey. *All the sad emoji faces*
Also, having abs doesn’t really mean anything unless people can see your abs and… well… I was still going to wear clothes everywhere. And when I did go to a place like the pool or water park with the kids I really didn’t feel like being gazed at. I just wanted to concentrate on keeping my toddler from jumping into the deep end.
I persisted with the exercise regimen for a year or so until one Lent I decided to add a significant amount of meditation and prayer into my life. I started listening to rosaries while I ran, Masses when I rowed, holding plank positions for as many Hail Marys I could say. I started to ask myself important questions:
Who am I?
During this time I created a prayer based on the roles I valued most and put those positions in order:
Lord, make me a better Catholic, a better wife, a better mother, a better friend, and a better writer.
Do any of these roles require that I have abs? Nope.
What do I value?
How one spends their time shows what they value. I was spending time on something for vanity. I was not even pretending it was for health. None of this reflected what really mattered to me:
Charity, Compassion, Forgiveness, Safety, and Wisdom.
I also appreciate Health but having abs is a possible by product of Health, not a goal.
What is my responsibility to the greater community?
An in-home therapist once helped us formulate a family mission statement and 5-year family vision plan. Being overachievers, we also created a coat of arms, a motto in Latin, list of rules when dealing with time travel and self-aware robots, and a blueprint for our ideal emergency bunker.
The family saying we created with was Lead with Love.
In addition, I came up with my own personal goal:
To help everyone around me feel safe, feel seen, and feel loved.
I believe in leading with charity and compassion. This also does not require abs.
So, in summary, does anyone need the abs of a god?
No. But it is possible that in pursuing abs you gain the wisdom that you don’t really need them.
All that time spent on gaining a physique could be used on things that are truly important. Who are you? What do you value? How do interact with the community?
Since having given up looking “fit” (as my Aussie friend would say) I have been able to devote more time to things of true Leisure—and as Josef Pieper wrote, Leisure is the basis of Culture.
It is through culture that we share beauty, teach values, and pass on the best of us to the next generation. Through stories we understand why Charity, Compassion, Forgiveness, Safety, and Wisdom matters. We learn how to be better humans through the pursuit of philosophy, history, art, music, poetry and literature.
And so instead of planks and crunches I am doing things like recording all of Shakespeare’s sonnets for you.
I think it is a better use of my time.
I hope you think so too.
I had no idea you could be so disciplined. But then you have 5 school-aged kids and go to school to study poetry... take care of yourself, please.
How interesting, Zina. For me, the choice isn't between fitness and art, it's a happy cross-pollination between the two. Fitness is more mental hygiene for me than an image goal. I'm not indifferent to numbers, but I like how you caution against too much obsession. For instance, a rough sense of calorie intake can be beneficial for those who routinely overshoot. But micromanaging diets is one of the most boorish aspects of contemporary life. I like to work up a sweat every day and avoid excess, and that generally keeps me in the ballpark of feeling good.