A Wild Way To Become More Active

Have you ever watched a giant, grey squirrel eat a chicken strip and chase it with a French fry?  Well, I don't mean to make you jealous, but I have... and it was the darnedest thing I've ever seen.  My wife and I were on the deck outside of a grill in Yosemite Valley, and I must admit that it was an afternoon to remember.  Cuteness abounded as its little nose wiggled away as it chewed on the enormous chunk of chicken.  Yet for all the cuteness, I felt a bit of a disappointed feeling in my stomach.  There's something kind of wrong as you watch a creature go against what it was born to be.  That squirrel should be bouncing around in trees and eating acorns, not dragging its haunches across the deck while scavenging from the grill.

I'm sure that for that squirrel, when the peak tourism season comes to an end, it is a real bugger getting back up into that tree and having to go back to being a real squirrel.  I have a feeling that to be a wild animal, it's a lot less stressful to just stay one than to toggle back and forth like that.

Just in case you don't know where I'm going with this, I shall now translate the above metaphor.  I've found that when it comes to staying wild, it's been a lot easier for me to just learn to be wild all of the time.  I think we all know several people who have tried to start exercising and quit within a few months or less.  Indeed, back during my days at college I used to do a fair amount of toggling myself.  Eventually, as I ran further and further, and climbed harder and harder.  I began learning that to run further and climb harder, I had to eat things that made my tummy feel better and muscles feel springier.  I also learned that to keep doing fun things without hurting myself, I had to keep at it even at times when I wasn't feeling it.  Before long, my wild side was feeding off of itself.  Eating better made me feel better which made me want to get out and play and then playing made me want to go home and eat better so I could play better the next day... whew!  The cycle continued (except for the occasional breakdown like those three s'mores I "found in the forest" at last weekend... oops).

If you want to be a lightweight, strong, and just generally lean machine, then you need to eat like you're wild and move like the animal you want to be.  Personally, I want to be a land endurance animal who can also scale cliffs.  So I try to eat food that's reminiscent of what is in the wild, and I spend a lot of time on mountain-like terrain so my body adapts to it as if it's my natural habitat.  It's a lot easier to come home from an exhausting day teaching and go for a run or get in some climbing if I am a wild animal who teaches math, rather than a domesticated teacher who sometimes goes into the woods.  The more the outside feels like my home, the more I go to it.

Almost everyone wants the lean body of the wild animal that they were made to be (yes ladies, you can still be wild and shave your legs).  The difficulty is that many people identify themselves as domesticated creatures who belong in houses and think that "sweet" and "fat-alicious" are the only flavors that their tongues are capable of tasting.  In my experience, remembering that my body is no different in its makeup than any other wild animal in the world is a fun reminder that successful trail running and climbing really come back to letting my inner wild animal in me be free.  It's been a process of several years, one that is still not complete, but I am learning that the more real food I eat and the more I spend time moving, the easier it is to keep moving.

Remember, don't immediately throw yourself into the wild and come whimpering back home.  Take it easy, find stuff to love about it and remember that, just like a grizzly bear, your body was originally made to be wild.  Try to enjoy an apple instead of a snickers bar.  Try having one more active night a week.  If the occasional chicken strip falls into your path, go ahead and eat it.  Just don't be like that squirrel and permanently hang out at the Yosemite Grill eating French fries and being pitied by tourists.