lines burned into my head ever since i watched fight club a few years back.
and really, nobody could've phrased it better than tyler durgen himself.

go watch the movie...and youll understand.
im not one to literally live by movies..but applying what he said sticks with me for some reason.
i've been training...weight lifting/other 'aesthetic' forms of activity since the ripe age of 17..and i used to frequent the nearest community ymca for the last 5 years - till that all ended last summer.

now...
let's just forget im a kinesiologist major for one second. let's forget that i've read the literature...and let's forget that all of this health and fitness stuff, which might be rubbish to you, is really what my whole life revolves around. let's forget all of that for one moment..and let's just consider that im (err was) an ordinary teen at the age of 17 simply working out.

now...let's forward to the year 2004...im now 22 years old. same stuff...forget all of the above. i have seen changes in the frequency of "gym-rats" and "the hardcore" and "the tourists"...believe me. itd be false on my part to say that i haven't seen growth in both teen girls and boys (ie adolescents). and although i believe that all of this working out is good..and beneficial, i do believe it's all for the wrong reasons.

ok...now forget what i just told you to forget.

now...remember and recognize that i have dedicated the last 4 years of my young precious life to health and fitness - both through study, participation and informing.
let's recognize that yes, i have put in the endless hours of reading several different sources; from your local drugstore magazines to your medical journals, scientific dissertations, surveys & studies, nutrition labels, fad-diet books, text books and lab manuals. let's recognize all of this.
further, let's recognize the fact that i dont like to fuck around when it comes to this area...it's not all that i got, but i do take it very seriously and it's what i plan on dedicating my life's work to for the next 60 years or so (God-willing), so you know damn well i aint one to spit some shit that i read from musclemag or rumour overheard at some nearby gym. yes, id like to believe what i have to say has some real cred.

with that said, i felt it was important to present to you, what i feel and what i've researched to be the honest truth about why the majority of the population stays fit.
being that summer's just around the corner, and being that more and more people ('the tourists'), most likely including you, will be frequenting gyms and adhereing to their daily workout rituals & diets just to have the 'desired' look within a month, well...i just had to make an attempt in trying to make those of you reading this attach some sort of meaning to your workouts other than 'looking good'. we all should workout to feel good and functionally be healthy.

i cannot..i repeat, cannot stress the word 'function' enough (do it for your heart - the most important muscle of all). hence, please workout to feel good INSIDE rather than primarily trying to look like 'the shit'.
believe me, if you do this, your workouts and bouts of physical activity will have more meaning to you in the future and not simply be just some 'summer-only' past-time.
it's important to me that you all make this a life-long thing..but enough of this sappy corny, fitness-preachy blasphemy....

...read on tourists...read on.

so without further ado, divided into several parts for your reading pleasure (and also cause i dont know how to convert anything into PDF format) an all rights reserved winter term paper entitled:

Ideologies of the Body:
Media's Dictation of the Physical Form
- Jason de los Reyes


.......[continued: stage upward]