Natural and Artificial Exercise

If you are on a ‘diet,’ you have to exercise. But what do they mean by ‘exercise,’ and do you really have to do it?  Here is an example of two men, James and Andrew. They are brothers and work on the family farm together. 

James has a gym membership. On Monday, he drives an hour to the gym, spends an hour lifting 40-pound weights, and drives an hour back.

Andrew stays at the farm on Monday. While James spends 3 hours on his trip to the gym, Andrew spends three hours hauling hay bales off the hay wagon up into the barn loft by hand. 

According to the unwritten ‘rules of exercise,’ James has exercised. Andrew, on the other hand, is just farming.

But here’s the thing— the physical activity Andrew did is exercise, too. And it’s natural exercise. It’s a part of his life. He probably has to move hay bales around a lot. After the whole hay crop is in the barn loft, he may have to haul it down to sell some bales to folks with horses or goats or the like. He may also use some of the bales to feed up beef cattle for sale. Hay-bale lifting is a part of his life.

James, on the other hand, has to take time out of his life to do his artificial exercise in the artificial setting of the gym. He may feel guilty for leaving so much work to Andrew. In a future year when family farm earnings are down, he may have to let his gym membership go, and then where will he be? Of course, if he consumes fruit smoothies at the gym or buys junk food on the way home, he may well lose weight by skipping the gym and sticking to mere farming, like Andrew.

Artificial exercise may be the only kind of exercise that gets praised. But it’s so easy to skip that exercise when life comes along. You have to be pretty selfish to insist on your trip to the gym on the day when your elderly mother needs you to drive her to a doctor’s appointment or the grocery store. 

Natural exercise is exercise that is a part of your life. If you live up two flights of stairs, you have to climb those stairs multiple times daily. If your dog expects to be walked regularly, you have to get out and do it, or your dog will judge you. 

Sometimes in the modern world we go out of our way to get rid of natural exercise. We get a better apartment or house on the ground floor. We put a dog-run in the back yard so he can do his business without making us take the dog for a walk. We live someplace two blocks away from our child’s school— and instead of walking her to school, we drive her every day. And then we bitch that we can’t find time to go to the gym!

You can often incorporate natural exercise into your life by forming new habits. You can grow a garden, and then you will have to do gardening work during the growing season. You can inspect your home from top to bottom, attic to basement, routinely as a housecleaning measure, instead of letting some areas of your home be neglected. You can regularly take your children for walks to the park, and walk the dog even if he lives in a dog-run when not in the house.

Don’t ignore the natural exercise you do. If you aren’t lifting 40 pound weights in a gym, maybe you are lifting 40-pound children. Maybe you are carrying 40 pound sacks of cat food home from the store. If you are worn ragged by all the things you do in a day, probably a part of it is un-counted exercise.

As we grow older, we may make our lives more convenient, and this may mean reducing our natural exercise. We need to keep moving, though, as we get older, so we won’t get weak. Make a point of continuing to do physical chores in your life regularly. Walk to get places. Don’t park in the closest parking space, but further out— to protect your car, but also because that adds a little more walking to your life.

Getting some artificial exercise— I walk with Heavyhands weights— is nice, but not if you are at the same time lessening the amount of natural exercise you are getting. Since natural exercise is likely to be something you won’t quit, you need to cultivate it, appreciate it, and count it the same way you would count hours spent in ‘the gym.'

Questions: What kind of natural exercise do you get? Do you do any artificial exercise? What kinds? Are you satisfied that you are getting enough exercise--- natural and artificial--- to be healthy?

My recommended 'artificial exercise:'