He’s interviewing here Lauren Fleshman who was an elite distance runner
For me, food started out as enjoyable and energizing and part of culture and connection and I didn’t think about it beyond that. Later, it became a tool for changing my body into something deemed better than the body I had, and that’s when rules came in, assigning moral value to different kinds of foods, calories were obsessively counted, and I got further and further away from connection to my own hunger and full cues and intuitive cravings.
To me, a major theme of my last book was that sometimes things that cause short-term boosts can undermine long-term development. But — human intuition being what it is — it’s hard to internalize the idea of a short/long-term tradeoff.
That’s interesting because what looks like elite performance is not healthy. Or rather what we imagine health to be is the elite performance variety. But there are so many quality of life tradeoffs that are being made when someone wants to be elite in that way.
That reminds me of Post Athlete life almost always reverts to mean
It’s similar because I remember when I was an athlete, I felt like I was just going to perform and be healthy forever and ever. But of course that’s not true. It’s so hard to imagine in the moment that it isn’t going to last forever, even though you know that conceptually.
It’s different because I was never as elite as Lauren Fleshman. Because I didn’t make all the sacrficies. Maybe intuitively I already knew what the tradeoffs were and didn’t want to go there.
It’s important because if someone wants to be healthy today, there’s way more that goes into that than just being elite. And the sooner you can dispel that idea the better
Read more at: “The love from success is always temporary.”
Go one level up : Performance MOC You may also be interested in: Mental Health is going Mainstream