One of the most astonishing phenomena in recent years is the profusion of health clubs in every high street and the dedicated enthusiasm of the younger generation for what they have to offer. I must confess from the start that these establishments leave me cold; ever since my schooldays I have detested gymnasia (I could never climb up a rope or vault a horse), I believe treadmills should have been left to Victorian convicts and I echo Oscar Wilde’s dictum “To get back my youth I would do anything in the world except take exercise, get up early or be respectable.”
My negative attitude leaves me, I know, in a small minority. One of my sons lifts weights every morning, his wife is a Pilates fanatic, another son goes roller-blading, an old friend has completed at least 15 marathons and many people I know have run the full gamut from what my father called physical jerks to Swedish drill, PT, yoga, jogging, Wii board exercises and aerobics. They always tell me they feel much better for it and it is not for me to query these assertions. Between ourselves, and don’t say a word, I think they are all quite mad.
The madness derives from a disproportionate obsession with health and body weight. We would all probably subscribe to Juvenal’s ideal “Mens sana in corpore sano” and recent research supports a connection between the presence of parasites and infections in the mother and the child’s brain development. Average IQ in disease-ridden Equatorial Guinea is about half that in hygienic Japan, so good health certainly brings huge gains; but you do not need to tie yourself into yoga knots to achieve a sensible level of good mental health.
Physical good health is a more elusive concept. Commercial advertising and Hollywood values extol the body beautiful, the flat stomach, the unlined face and the bulging biceps. This body is a mirage, impossible to achieve for the great majority or only achievable at an absurd physical and financial cost. I am convinced that there would be enormous psychic benefits if most denizens of health clubs, plastic surgery parlours and jogging tracks ceased chasing some chimerical body profile and lived normal lives, sharpening their wits with a daily crossword, taking the odd walk and playing sport only for pleasure.
Which brings me on to the vexed question of weight. I am 69, 5ft 10in and weigh a wobbly 17stone. According to some computer programme my BMI (whatever that is) is 34.1 and should be no more than 25. The computer tells me that I must shed 4 ½ stone, an amazing command as I have not weighed 12 ½ stone since I wore short trousers. I reluctantly concede that in an unlikely ideal world I should lose a stone, but to lose 4 ½ stone would probably hasten my demise by a goodly number of years. Actually I intend to live to 100, mainly to spite the NatWest Pension Fund, but also to show that being a fatty pays off.
My food intake is what I judge to be sensible for a man of my age. I am not quite the enthusiastic trencherman of old, attacking steak and kidney pudding with sprouts and floury potatoes with barely controlled gusto and going back for seconds, but I still adore fried fish and a few chips, roast beef, lamb, liver and bacon – just the sort of things dieticians tut-tut about. Yes, I eat salads, boiled vegetables and fresh fruit too (good boy) and ice cream, pastries and trifle when I can (naughty). But Nature helps too; just as one’s height diminishes as you grow older so too your stomach shrinks, and thus there is a useful kind of genetic adjustment.
I am broadly happy with my weight and eating habits and have no intention of going for a jog. I shall never forget stricken Jimmy Carter collapsing after too strenuous a jog, gasping like a gaffed salmon and giving vice-president Walter Mondale an all-too-brief adrenalin rush of hope: or sadly the case of driven Leonard Rossiter, who gave us such manic fun as Rigsby and Reggie Perrin, dying at the theatre after a surfeit of squash-playing.
It is when the subject of drink comes up that fitness fanaticism truly bares its fangs. On an averagely dull day I will drink half a bottle of wine (6 units) and a can of beer (2 units). These 8 units are classed by the UK medical profession as “binge drinking!” What planet does this profession inhabit? I would judge 3 times that consumption slightly excessive but by no means a bender, the kind of drinking many people indulge in every weekend. There are saner voices. I recall mildly remarking to the nurse when being assessed by a new doctor in the Cotswolds that “maybe I drink too much”. Her cheerful reply was that “most people do around here” and she splendidly recommended several local pubs! It is true that alcohol merits careful handling and is best used as a lubrication rather than a motive fuel. As an austere, reserved Scotsman, I know my ice melts after a drink or three and I do not need to see some specialist’s horror photographs of pickled livers to know that there are limits.
Like many of my vintage, the esteemed medical profession makes heroic efforts to keep us alive. I swallow a daily dose of 5 pills to avoid strokes, heart attacks, clogged arteries, high blood pressure and gout and have been doing so for about 15 years. I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed today but I am not sure this is because of, or despite, this cocktail of pills. The truth is that doctors are only at the foothills of understanding how the body works and the pharma industry is very young. They do their best, but you only need to glance at the many health scare pages of the Daily Mail, to see how uncertain our remedies are and how divided the specialists.
Patient readers may well recommend that I go on a diet. Please do not bother. No subject is more a hornets’ nest of quackery than diets from Atkins diets to cabbage diets to banana diets. Rather like Climate Change and the Millennium Bug, diets are a hotbed of false science, profiteering and posturing “experts”. I hear the bees buzzing in my bonnet, so I will stop. Just as the Polar icecaps will not melt, we will not eat ourselves into an early grave or much improve our lives by doing 50 press-ups and over-stretching our pelvic muscles. Fatties of the World, unite!
SMD
16.10.11
Copyright Sidney Donald 2011
Kinsley Amis would have approved: ‘No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare.'
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