Within a single square mile of the South Beach area of San Francisco, there are over two dozens health and fitness centers, each with high-tech equipment that shine and pivot and plug into walls. They are the result of tribal America’s effort to fight overweight and obesity and to attain the ultimate nirvana that is the culture’s ideal look: a normal healthy body weight.
In tribal America there are well over 30,000 health clubs, bearing nearly 46 million members who pay over $19 billion per year, mostly in the effort to attain… a healthy normal body.
Where I come from, we just eat vegetables that grows out of the grown, fruits that fall from the trees, and meats that we kill. And then we move around a lot, mostly to hunt and to gather and sometimes to play. That’s it, really. The only dumbbell my people have ever heard about was Clumsy Dekoo who can’t even catch a DoDo Bird.
Other than the occasional fatal infection from accidents and attacks by saber tooth tigers, which unfortunately lowers the average life-span statistics of my time, we actually lived long and healthy lives free of the modern diseases for which people take all kinds of medication and visit hospitals.
I believe that the health club industry is in the business of compensation. We use its services to compensate for our own unwillingness to move naturally and eat better. I’m not saying we’re moving less (in fact, our $19-billion annual spending on the fitness industry reveals that plenty of us are moving plenty). I’m saying that we’re utterly nuts to pay this outrageous sum of money for a membership we believe is a prerequisite to good health, general fitness, and a healthy body weight.
My primal family and friends back home didn’t have gym memberships, yet they were not fat nor did they suffer metabolic diseases. They moved around normally, hunting and gathering and lifting and sometimes playing; and they ate things that came directly from Mother Earth.
