“You know what the difference between you and me is? I make this look good.”

- Agent J, Men In Black

Lowering cholesterol. Having fewer aches and pains. Preventing diabetes. Living longer.  Feeling good  in general. Bench-pressing a server rack. Not getting winded taking the Deep Crow for a walk.

All are admirable reasons for starting, resuming, or continuing a fitness program and all-around healthier lifestyle.

Looking better doesn’t suck, either.

There’s no shame in having a little vanity in your motivational repertoire.  Or, hell, a lot of it. I know folks who have Polaroids (or .JPGs) of what they used to look like taped to their monitor for inspiration, either as something to get back to, or evolve from.  My own — an unflattering vacation snapshot taken a couple years ago — is leaning against my cablemodem.

So, yeah, on the whole, we’re doing this stuff to get healthy, lose weight (or tone up), and look good. Adjust ratio to taste.

That said, it should come as no surprise that weight, fitness, and appearance, while forming a general constellation of reasons folks choose to do healthier things, aren’t always in alignment.  There’s a very real, and not exactly healthy, decoupling of body image and fitness, as illustrated in a recent poll (PDF) by the AP and iVillage.  Surveyors asked a thousand women questions about their self-perception on things like weight, healthfulness, and body satisfaction, as well as diet and health.  How big is the gap? Roughly half of the respondents were dissatisfied with their weight (including a quarter of those in the “healthy” BMI range), but only about a third with their physical well-being.

Chief of psychiatry at New York’s Lennox Hill Hospital, Dr. Molly Poag, suggests that athletes are much better role models than, well, models are.  “There’s an undervaluing of physical fitness and an overvaluing of absolute weight and appearance for women in our culture.” AP’s Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard asks, “Are we worried just about appearance, or about whether our size signals a health problem? There’s a big disconnect between body image and true physical condition.”

“I’m really upset that you’ve left out all the helpful and informative articles on women’s health! You know, how to lose 20 pounds before your wedding so you can be healthy, how to melt belly fat fast so you can be healthy, how to get rid of the cellulite on your thighs so you can be healthy, and how to tone up your beach-ready bikini bod so you can be healthy.” - A very snarky friend, elsewhere online

While this sort of thing — looking good to attract or keep a partner — is certainly far more prevalent for women than men, it’s not completely absent for the XY chromosome set. The pressure to do so is, for better or worse, something we’re pretty much immersed in.

Appearance-fixated society is appearance-fixated.

“For every one man who wants to be as strong as Sandow, I’ll show you a hundred who want to look like him.”

– Alan Calvert

I’ve also got this picture on my PC’s desktop as what I’m shooting for in an as-yet-untaken “after” photograph. I’ll be the first one to come right out and say that I’m vain and shallow; a lot of my impetus for busting my butt at the gym is aesthetics-driven. Look good and feel better; that’s pretty much a win-win recipe right there.

Being strong rocks for its own sake, don’t get me wrong. Just being more physically capable is great.

Getting checked out for the first time in fifteen years? Ding!

Move over, J. I’m gonna make this look good, too.

Related posts:

1. Words of +WIS: All right, Brain, I don’t like you, and you don’t like me
2. Words of +WIS: “You’re the disease. I’m the cure.”
3. Words of +WIS: Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless.