Transcript of The Powerful Ways Culture Shapes Us & Why We Struggle With Fitness-SYSK Choice

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Today on Something You Should Know, is a baby more likely to look like it's mommy or daddy? Then, understanding culture, what it is, how it changes. It's important. Why?

Because culture is the most influential force on human behavior. Full stop. What we wear, what we buy, how we style our hair, what we drive, who we marry, if we marry, what we eat. All these things are byproducts of our cultural subscription.

Also, is it ever too late to really change the direction of your life? And there is a fitness and exercise craze in America, but not for everyone.

I think that we are in this really peculiar moment where everybody agrees exercise is good for you and even talks about it like it's this moral act. But relatively few Americans even do the recommended minimum amount of exercise per day or per week.

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Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Caruthers. Hi, and welcome to something you should know. If you've ever had a baby, or know someone who's had a baby, or seen a brand new baby, you know that one of the first things people start talking about is whether or not the baby looks like its mother or its father. Well, chances are a newborn baby will probably look more like its daddy than its mommy at birth. Although this theory has been challenged for decades, many evolutionary experts believe human infants will resemble their fathers a bit more at birth, and this is nature's way of helping to put any male doubts to rest. Since we already know who the mother is, male humans are more likely to accept, protect, and bond with a child who resembles them. To put the theory to the test, participants were asked to match photographs of a newborn baby to photographs of their parents. Fifty 100% of the time, the match was correct when it was baby and dad. The match rate was much lower when it was mother and child.

And that is something you should know. Think about the word culture. We use the word a lot. I use it a lot. But try to define that word, it's a little tricky. You know what it means, and you know that culture is a big thing. Culture influences a lot of what we do, and we all in turn influence the culture. So what makes a culture and why is it important for us to discuss? Well, joining me to explain that is Marcus Collins. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He's a recipient of Advertising Ages 40 Under 40 Award and an Inductee into the American Advertising Federation's Advertising Hall of Achievement. And he's author of a book called For the Culture, The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be. Hi, Marcus. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Thanks so much for having me, Mike. I'm excited to be here.

So what is culture? How do you define it? What does it mean? We sure throw the word around a lot, but I'm not sure it's necessarily easy to define.

You know what? And you'd be right. Culture is a hard word to define because it's omnipresent. It's everywhere. It's in everything that we do. It's like explaining water to a fish. It's pretty difficult. And even the early scholars thought so as well. So you wouldn't be alone in feeling that way. When I think about culture, I think about it through a Durkheimian view. Emil Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of the sociology, talked about culture as the system of values, norms, and symbols that demarcate who people are and what the expectations and conventions are of those people. This system informs how we see the world, which ultimately governs how we show up in the world, how we behave, how we talk, what we wear, what we do. All these things are byproducts of our cultural subscription, the expectations and conventions of people like us. One may refer it as the program for everyday living. It guides what people like us ought to do.

We, the people, are the ones who guide the culture. But it's such a big thing. Why is this important to talk about?

Because culture is the most influential force on human behavior, full stop. What we wear, what we buy, how we style our hair, what we drive, what products we use, where we go to school, if we go to school, who we marry, if we marry, where we vacation, what we eat, where we bury the dead, how we bury the dead, all these things are byproducts of our cultural subscription. So if we understand the governing operating system of humanity, that is culture, then we'll have a better understanding of what people are likely to do. And if you are in the business of getting people to move, that is, you have a vested interest in getting people to adopt behavior, culture is your biggest cheat code ever.

Give me an example of somebody who uses that or has used that cheat code well to really put a face on what you're saying.

The first thing that comes to mind for me, I think of a brand like Nike. Nike believes that every human body is an athlete. If you have a body, you are an athlete. Nike talks to athletes like an athlete. And they're like... One person puts this way, Phil Knight, we talk about Nike as When you're running in the cold early mornings and it's dark outside and it's wet and you're by yourself and you're tired, Nike is the person under the street lamp saying, Keep going, Mike. That's what Nike signifies. That's what it is. And because of what Nike believes, it's able to talk to people who see the world similarly in these very nuanced, subtle ways, these cultural ways. They speak to the artifacts that are meaningful, the behaviors that are normative, the language that they use. And Nike isn't just a sneaker company. It's consecrated. It's like a totem status, if you will, because these brands that see the world the way we see the world, we use them as a way to express our identity. And Nike isn't just a sneaker brand. It's a receipt of people's identity, which I think is extremely powerful as seen in the financial success that the brand has had over the years.

So besides brand, brands like Nike, what drives culture change? What makes us eat what we eat and sit the way we sit and walk the way we walk? What is it, other than brand influence, what are the things that really move the needle?

That's the beautiful part that it's not really the brands, it's us. That brands, cultural creators, politicians, leaders, public figures, they say things, they do things that create exogenous shocks to the system, things we didn't expect, things that sit outside of our normal day to day. When it happens, we in our communities, our friends, our families, our teammates, fraternity brothers, sorority sisters, congregates, our coworkers, We see this thing happen outside of ourselves. And then we, as a community, collectively discuss it. And we say, what does this mean? And is this acceptable? Meaning, culture, a lot of ways, is a meaning-making system. It's a way by which We see the world and translate it. So we develop and evolve our cultural characteristics through the discourse that we take on when things happen around us. We go, Wasn't that crazy, Mike? You go, I know, right? That is crazy. Or I may see something go, I can't believe that happened. And you go, Wait a minute, Marcus, why not? And as we discuss, we collectively make meaning, and we collectively shape, evolve, and mold our cultural characteristics. The Will Smith, Chris Rock slap. We all go, whoa, what was that?

An exogenous shock to the system. That's not what's supposed to happen, but it happens. And then what do we do as a society? We discuss it. We talk about, is this acceptable behavior for something like the Oscars? Or is he just protecting his wife like he's supposed to do? Or is this a situation where Will Smith needs to learn how to take a joke? These ideologies, these beliefs, they are being discussed, they are being interrogated. They are being negotiated among people like us. And then we collectively decide without a drum major, without a memo, without any authority that this is what something like people like us do. We as a society, as a community, as groups of people, we behave accordingly.

It seems, though, that what gets adopted into the culture is not always a democratic decision. It does seem that a lot of times, for example, political activists and groups will push things into the culture. Because they are so loud and because they create a fuss, the rest of us think it's just not worth the fight, and in the culture it comes.

That's true. That sometimes we say, You know what? It's not even worth pushing against it. I'll just fall in line. We see this a lot in companies and organizations where we may feel like, I don't have agency to make change, and I don't necessarily agree with it, but this is what we do, so I'm going to fall in line. And the challenge is that while people may stick around and do work and stay, even though they disagree with the cultural characteristics that have taken shape in the organization, they begin instead to retreat. They remove their engagement. They become less invested. Why? Because this place is no longer a receipt of my identity. Now, it's just a transactional It's just a job. And the same thing goes when we think about brands that are aligned with their identity and those who are not. People say, I'm a Nike guy. I don't wear Adidas, for instance. But when there is no affiliation, there's no association to my identity in that way. It's just a pair of sneakers. It's just a job that pays me to work here from 9: 00 to 5: 00. My relationship with it is transactional.

And culture, when there is congruence between what we believe and what the brand, the entity, the organization, the institution believes, we then invest ourselves in it where this brand, this institution, this organization becomes a receipt of who I am, which is much, much more powerful than having a transaction It's an actual relationship only.

Here's a question. It has become part of modern-day culture. Everybody over the age of 10, it seems, has a cell phone, a smartphone. You walk down the street and everybody's got their face buried in the smartphone. That's just become part of the culture. I can't imagine there are too many people who think, Yeah, we really need more of this. We need to be looking at our phones even more. Generally, I think people think it's overdone. We do it too much. We're all too stressed out because of it. But nobody stops. Nobody says, Well, what are we going to do to fix it? They just shrug their shoulders and go, Yeah, it sucks, But that's what we're going to do. We're all going to bury our face and our phones, and life goes on.

Well, this is where you get counterculture or subcultures that people who say, No, I'm not for this. What they do is they say, I'm going to reject this and pick up new behaviors, a new normal. And we see this now. There are small groups of people who are saying, I'm giving up my smartphone and going back to flip phones. In some cases, it seemed like they're being irreverent. But really what they're doing is demonstrating an ideology, a belief system, and saying, to your point, that these mobile devices, they have become too all-encompassing, too pervasive, and now I feel like I'm serving it versus it serving me. Therefore, I want to take more agency and change my device. Now, we look at those people and go, Oh, man, you're crazy. What are you doing? But here's the interesting part, that everything that is now normal, everything that is now massively adopted, all started with the fringe group of people that looked crazy, that was willing to look crazy in the early stages, just for a moment, to start to create momentum where this idea, this product adoption begins to propagate within the community. Everything that is now cool was once crazy.

20 years ago, if you were into comic books, people said you were a dork. Now, the majority of movies that we watch across the globe all come from comics. 20 years ago, if you were into gaming, you were a failure to launch. Now, gaming is a multibillion dollar industry. So these changes happen because someone or someone's are willing to say, No, thank you. And they push against it. And what happens is someone hears it and go, You're right. This is not a good idea. Why am I doing this? And then they adopt the behavior. This is essentially how smartphones became a thing. When people started having iPhone-like devices, they'll look at your When you're on Nokia, go, Why would you have that brick? What are you doing? You're playing yourself. You should be upgrading to this new cool thing. And as more people put social pressure on you, telling you to be normal, we then remove one behavior and adopt another, not because of what it is, but because of who we are and what people like me do.

We're talking about culture, what it is, how it works. My guest is Marcus Collins. He's a Clinical Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He's author of a book called For the Culture, The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be.

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Marcus, sometimes, as you say, things get introduced into the culture and they catch on, but other times things don't catch on. What's the difference? Why do some things become adopted into the culture while other things just get kicked to the side of the How does that look?

This is actually right in the center of the research that I do called Social Contagion. It's the idea that that affects behaviors, cognitions, and desires spread from person to person due to peer influence, whether direct or indirect. And things propagate in a population in what we know as the Bell Curve. And the idea is that things start with innovators, then it go to early adopters, and then the majority. And there's a point in time where things start with a very small group of people and more people get into it and it starts to grow, but doesn't necessarily cross the chasm. It doesn't really tip into the major majority, the larger majority, the early majority that is. And as a result, it dies out. And these things are really just about density. They're really about density and complex contagion that as more people do it, more people do it. But it requires a certain threshold that has to be achieved such that it's able to see more people to see it, more people to touch it, and the ability or the likelihood of people to adopt it to grow. It's hard to say what will happen, almost impossible to predict, but we know the mechanisms that drive it.

So as marketers, leaders, entrepreneurs, politicians, activists, while we can't predict what will happen, we can, however, increase the likelihood of these things becoming adopted by leveraging what we know of human behavior and the impact that culture has on our collective behavior.

How much of culture changes? I guess what I mean by that is what people eat for breakfast today probably isn't much different than what they ate for breakfast 30 40, 40, 50 years ago. It's eggs and bread and toast and bacon and cereal. It doesn't change a lot, but some things do. How much of it?

That's true. Culture has always evolved evolving. Here, we eat an egg-based diet for breakfast, but in Saudi, they eat dates. Or if you're in China, you have a noodle-like option for breakfast. There are cultural characteristics that are specific in each unique region, each unique environment. Now, how often does that change? Well, some things don't change very often, and some things do. For instance, 10 years ago, We started introducing avocado toast to our diet for breakfast. It became a thing. Why did it become a thing? Because people started doing it. What they say nothing draws a crowd like a crowd.

Why is all of this worth talking about? I mean, it is to you because it's your research, but to the average person, why is this important to shine a light on?

Because whether you're a marketer or not, we are all in the business of getting people adopt behavior. Whether you're a manager trying to get your employees to adopt a certain policy, a certain way of working, whether you are an entrepreneur trying to get people to buy into your idea, investors to buy into your idea, whether you're a politician trying to drum up the vote. Even if you're a parent trying to get your kids to eat pees, which I'm often battling with my two kids, we are all in the business of getting people to adopt behavior. We try to get people to to move. And there's no force more influential than culture to do that very thing. So if you have a vested interest in getting people to adopt behavior, to buy, to watch, to sample, to download, to subscribe, to share, to vote, to pray, whatever your thing is, recycle, to compost, zero waste consumption, whatever it may be. If you're trying to get people to adopt behavior, the better we understand culture, the more likely your opportunity to do that very thing becomes.

Because Because when you understand culture, you do it differently than someone who doesn't understand culture, how?

Oh, because you know what makes these people tick. As marketers, in particular, we typically talk about the value propositions of the product. My razor's sharper, my battery lasts longer, my car goes faster, and that people buy because they want a sharper razor. That makes sense. Intuitively, that makes all the sense in the world. That is the conventional wisdom. But what we know of humanity, the underlying physics of humanity, is that we're governed by something far greater than value propositions. In fact, we will buy a product that is inferior to another product because of what that inferior product says about us. You compare Beats by Dre's Sonic quality to that of Bows' Sonic quality. Bows is a better product. It sounds better, demonstratively, empirically. It performs better. Yet, Beats by Dre owned 46 % of the headphones market. How is that? Why Why is that? Because Beats by Dre were more than just headphones. They were receipts of my identity. They were artifacts. They were accessories that people wore. They're like jewelry that people wore with their outfits because of what they say about us. We have to challenge our conventional wisdoms of why people do what they do.

The better we understand that, the more likely we are to get them to do that very thing.

But it seems that if it were that simple, not that that was that simple, but if you could predict, well, then People wouldn't launch products and fail. They would predict. They would know. I think Beats by Dre took off in a way even they were surprised. It was a phenomenon. I don't think anyone looked at that and said, Yeah, we planned this all along.

Of course. And again, this isn't about predictions, it's about increasing the likelihood of behavior. What is predictable is that once people within the community begin to act a certain way, then people in the community will begin to continue to act a certain way. So we're right. There's no crystal ball that we can pull out and say, Oh, I'm going to do this, and this is going to happen. But we can certainly increase the likelihood of a particular behavioral adoption. So Beats by Dre knew that, yes, though their headphones probably weren't as good as Bo's, that if they tap into the community, they tap into the hip hop culture of consumption, then these things won't just be headphones, they will be cool. And they use those words cool, but what they really meant is to be culturally relevant. They're relevant for a particular group of people. So it's not easy because intimacy is hard, especially when I'm a business leader and I have to make my numbers at the end of the quarter. That's a hard thing to do to say, no, I'm going to invest in understanding these people when it's so much more efficient for us to just put people in boxes as opposed to know who they are at a cultural level.

We'll say, this Gen Z works this way. Millenials are this way. And so that's the case. Let's target them with these messages or this products. But those things don't describe who people truly are. Just take my demographics. I'm 44 years old today. And I'm African-American. I'm from Detroit, went to public schools my entire life. If a marketer saw that on a target brief, an assignment brief, they'll say, oh, he must go to these places, do these things, and act like this, because those Those are the things that people like him do. And they make those assumptions, those biases, based upon the frames that they have, the cultural frames that they have about what people who look like me or places where I'm from might do. And while I am 44 years old, I am black, I am from Detroit, and I did grow up in public schools my entire life, that doesn't give rise to the fact that I grew up playing jazz as a kid, or that I swam competitively. And those things shape how I see the world. They shape my beliefs, the artifacts I dawn, the behaviors that I know, and the language that I use.

And if markers don't understand me at that level, then they're constantly talking to me like a label as opposed to who I truly am. And getting close to people takes time.

Well, I think everybody listening, myself included, now has a better understanding of what culture specifically is and how it works. I've been speaking with Marcus Collins. He is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. The name of his book is For the Culture, the Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to be. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for coming on and talking about this, Marcus.

My absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me, Mike.

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It's a little odd to think that we, as a culture, are more obsessed with fitness than ever before. Yet overall, we're more unhealthy and out of shape than ever before. Why is that? In fact, despite being bombarded by messages and opportunities to exercise, only 20% of Americans do that on a regular basis. Only 30% of high school students get at least an hour of exercise every day. Here we are. We know exercise is good for us. We're surrounded by images and messages to do it, yet most of us don't. Natalia Dr. Zelle is someone who's really looked into this phenomenon, and she's here to discuss exercise, what it means to be fit, and how people who don't exercise much can get motivated to do it. Natalia is an historian of contemporary American politics and Culture. She is a fitness instructor and author of the book, Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession. Hi, Natalia. Welcome to something you should know.

Hi. I'm so glad to be here.

So What's your take on this? Why is it that we, as a culture, are so obsessed with fitness? Hear about it all the time, and yet a lot of people don't bother to do it? It reminds me of people who watch cooking shows but don't really cook. It's interesting, but it somehow doesn't motivate people.

Yeah. Well, I think that we are in this really peculiar moment where everybody agrees exercise is good for you and even talks about it like it's this moral act that people participate in. But relatively few Americans even do the recommended minimum amount of exercise per day or per week. And it's a long explanation of how we got here. But the short answer version of that is that even as we have embraced exercise as a positive good and as a virtuous act, we've pretty much come to offer it only as a private commodity. So there's this crazy paradox where we're cutting funding for FizzEd, for public recreation and fitness that would truly make it accessible while talking a big game about how good exercise is for you and having a private industry that has expanded exponentially.

Are we exercising a lot less than we used to, or is it just that we're not really exercising as much as we think we are?

That's a good question. So I would say that affluent people are exercising a lot more more than people of their social class used to. I mean, in the beginning of the 20th century, to look like you had a bigger body, to be leisured, was to be affluent and to show that you were wealthy. Now, to show that you're wealthy, you're doing an Ironman and wearing $100 leggings. And so I think that for more wealthy people, we are exercising more. There's no question. But on the whole, this country has become more sedentary.

And the reason is, besides the funding and the more talk, less action, is there some underlying reason? People just don't like to exercise. They just like to talk about exercise. What is the motivation or demotivation here?

Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think that the big story here is that most aspects of American life have become more sedentary over time. So if you think that as we have transformed to an economy, which is primarily a service economy, and people are working at desks and in technological jobs, the so-called knowledge economy, that has created much more sedentariness. And then even people who are doing much more manual labor, it's not like they're doing manual labor that is necessarily good for them in the way that a workout is. If you think of someone working in an Amazon warehouse, that's very physical, but they're getting repetitive use injuries and all the rest. So I think that the nature of work has become more sedentary, but also the nature of entertainment and leisure activities has also become more sedentary over the past 100 years or so. Think of big evolutions like the television, the car, labor-saving devices, like washing machines, all of these these things have meant that a degree of physical exertion has been removed from everyday life. And so I think that that is all super important. Yeah, I would say that that's a lot of it.

Yet even though people, There are many, many people, probably everybody just about, that has at some point in their life said, I'm really going to commit to this. I'm going to buy the exercise bike, or I'm going to join the gym, or I'm going to do something. And yet so many many of them don't stick to it. It makes you wonder why. It makes you wonder, is it just not natural to artificially exercise, that human movement is the way to go But to specifically get up in the morning and say, I'm going to exercise, seems to fail so often.

It's such an important point. It's absolutely true. People who study the data around New Year's resolutions show that something like two or three weeks into January, most people who've made the most popular New Year's resolution, which is to exercise more, have basically given up on it. Why is that? Well, I think that you're right, that what people call purpose of exercise, like taking time out of your day to work out rather than, say, walking to work, that that is not a natural act. It's hard. It involves taking time for yourself. I think that that's part of it. But I also think that we have an unfortunately narrow definition of what exercise is worth it. And we tend to think like, no pain, no game. If it's not brutal and painful, it's probably not worth doing. Or if you're not going to do 60 minutes of cardio, it's not even worth taking that walk. And I think that that's a real problem. And something that... I'm a historian who wrote about this. I'm also a fitness instructor and a huge enthusiast around exercise. And I think one thing that I I really try to emphasize is that no opportunity is too small for movement, and also that all of those little exercise snacks, if you will, actually add up.

And I think that that is really important to realize as is the fact that the exercise program you're going to stick with is the one that you find some enjoyment in. And I think too often we think like, Oh, if I'm not drenched in sweat and hating every minute of it, it's somehow not worth it. That's Totally not true.

The concept that you have to enjoy it, it's got to be something that you enjoy is seemingly, I don't know, it seems a little misleading to me in the sense that I exercise quite a bit. I go to a gym pretty much every day. I don't enjoy it. I don't enjoy necessarily going. I enjoy leaving. I feel so good when I leave, but I don't necessarily enjoy the exertion and the the pain of lifting heavy weights or running till I'm out of breath. But it's the leaving. It's the, Wow, that was great. I feel great for having done it. That's my enjoyment. But that's not what most people think of as you have to enjoy it.

Well, I think we've got to change that conversation, and I think you're absolutely right. Everybody talks a big game about self-care today, but there isn't a very nuanced conversation. That self-care doesn't necessarily mean the thing that you love in the moment. I love eating an ice cream Sunday, but I don't necessarily always like the way it makes me feel after. Much like you, I don't love going on a long training run for a marathon, but my God, after the exhilaration of how I feel at having done something challenging, that is meaningful. And so I think that's something that we really, really need to emphasize, that sometimes the feeling good and the liking it is about the feeling that you have at the end. But then I also think, to maybe push back on your point a little bit, that there are movement activities that are worth it for the promotion of your overall health that are enjoyable in the moment. I mean, telling a friend who you are going to meet to go to a movie or for coffee, Hey, let's actually go for a walk together. That's actually a nice, gentle experience that actually has some health outcomes to it.

Similarly for me, the way that I motivate to exercise when I'm like, There's no way I'm going to make myself go and sprint on the treadmill or do a much more challenging workout where I have to focus on that outcome feeling is that I sign up, and by the way, prepay for a cardio dance class, because to me, that's just pure fun. I feel like I'm in a nightclub or something. And then, of course, also prepaying for it means I'm actually going to show up. But to me, there's a place for that hard workout, which I think everybody probably should be pushing themselves physically. There's a place for that where you to focus on the outcome. Then there's also a place for saying, Today, I'm going to do something that is more fun and not as much of a heavy lift, no pun intended, to get started on.

There have been in recent decades, these movements. There was a time when nobody talked about aerobics, and then aerobics became a thing. Then Olivia Newton-John's Physical Song came out, and everybody was supposedly exercising. There have been these moments in time. Have they really moved the needle much, or are they just pop culturey moments in time?

I think they are both pop culturey moments in time, and they move the needle. I mean, the moment that you're pointing to, the 1980s and this aerobics boom, that was a really important moment. It stands out as being almost like purely esthetics or pop culture, because we think of Olivia Newton-John and the leotards and the leg warmers. And yes, that was absolutely part of it. But if we drill down to actually what was happening historically, it's actually very important. So the first thing is, you mentioned the word aerobics. And aerobics is a word you use to describe what we often think of today as like women's dance, cardio, exercise. But actually, aerobics was the name of this really important book that came out in 1968 that changed what we think of as exercise in a huge way that we've never turned back from. So Kenneth Cooper was his military doctor, and basically, he introduced what he called aerobics, which was the idea of cardio, and that was life-changing. The fact that exercise was not just calisthenics or weight lifting, but that it was this activity that you would do through jogging or swimming or cycling, and that that was good for your heart, that it could even save your life, and that men, women, and children should do that, that totally changed the game.

And then I should say there's a technology story there, too, which is that VHS spread this move went far and wide. The big gyms and studios were in New York and Los Angeles and on the Coast. But it was when VHS really took off, and it exploded in the early 1980s, that Jane Fonda's tape became a best seller. Then very quickly, there were imitators making all kinds of workout videos that really spread that.

Why is it, do you think or do you know that people will buy very expensive They will buy expensive fitness equipment. They will buy memberships at gyms with all the best intentions. At the moment, they really want to make a commitment and a change to do this. But so often people fail. Does everybody have an individual story of why they fail, or is there a sense of why everybody fails?

Two things. One, our culture holds up fitness as this moral pursuit, right? So that exercise is something really important, and it's good, and it's actually okay to spend a lot of money on that because it's in pursuit of health, which is a noble thing to spend money on, as opposed to, Hey, I bought this very expensive watch, or I'm going on this crazy vacation or this fancy handbag. All of that feels a little bit indulgent, where spending money on exercise feels like you're investing in something important, something that is for your health. And then I think, why don't people follow through on it? Well, I think that a lot of people are enticed to spend so much money because we hold up, as I said, fitness as this very positive, virtuous act, and they want to believe they're that virtuous person, even if it's not something they can make room for in their life. Because it's hard. Like you said, sprinting until you're out of breath is hard. And I also think a lot of programs tend to market themselves. I don't want to say dishonestly, but like any marketing program, they tend to be selling, Oh, you're going to look like this in 10 days, or it's so fun, or it's so easy, or you're going to look like this person on the cover.

And that quite often is not really what people get when they sign up for it. But I understand the fantasy and why people keep doing it.

Yeah. Well, I've always thought that the reason people bail is because they don't see the result. It takes too long and it's too much effort. When you don't see results for doing what you do, it's really hard to stick with it. When you don't look like the model on the cover, you don't even look close to that, you don't look that different than when you started, well, then why am I doing this?

Well, I think that that is correct for some people, for sure. But another narrative that I find very common with people who actually who do stick with exercise is that they sign up for something because they think they want to lose weight or they think they have this very narrow idea of these physical results that they want to achieve. And then they don't always, quite often, they don't achieve those particular physical results, but they end up getting outcomes that are very positive in other ways. So the results that they see are they make a new friend group at the gym. They feel like their mental health is better. They do lose weight. They don't have the six-pack But their jeans fit a little bit better. They don't have back pain when they're picking up boxes or whatever. And I think that that is so, so common in the industry. People sign up with these very narrow, usually weight loss or physical transformation goals. And the ones that stick around, stick around because they got something more out of it. But I think it would be a fantasy to say that we should let go of selling the idea that exercise helps with physical transformation, because I do think that's important to a lot people.

But I do think that we should expand our definition of what that physical transformation looks like, because for a lot of people, it's the alleviation of pain. It's being more flexible. It is losing weight, but not necessarily to look like a supermodel, but to have your own body composition shift in a way that may not even be totally visible, but that reflects a more healthy body composition. And so I think all of that needs to be part of our conversation. Unfortunately, none of that fits into one Instagram post or the very quickfire way that we are market in fitness.

Well, since you've looked at this, is there a path? Is there a formula that is more likely to work for people? If you answer these questions, if you follow this, you're more likely to find something you'll stick with it. Or is it just a Try and fail, trial and error.

I think trial and error is definitely important because the nice thing about the fitness industry being so mature is there's so many options out there, whether they're digital or in-person or whatnot. So I think trying a lot of things is important. But I also think that you've got to be really, really honest with yourself about what you are going to do and what you're prepared to do. If you are not a morning person, don't tell yourself you're going to wake up every morning at 5: 00 5: 00 AM and go running because it will never happen. Why not? If you have your sister who you would love to catch up with, how about you make an appointment to meet her or to get on the phone with her and you say at that time, I'm going to walk around the track for the hour that we spend together. I'm going to do that twice a week. That's something that you're going to do. And then I think there's also knowing what motivates you. I think that there are all these couch to 5K programs that start with very small increments of run walking and get you to compete in a 5K race.

If you're just starting out, that is pretty manageable, as scary as it can seem to think you'd be running a race. And then I cannot overestimate the sense of accomplishment that comes from training for something, for a race, even a 5K, which is a relatively small thing, and crossing that finish line and knowing that you did that. I think that that can be shifting the results part of it to an accomplishment, rather an accomplishment like a an event rather than, oh, I have to lose this many pounds or my body has to look a particular way. I think that's super important. I would also encourage that unless you are engaging in a full nutrition plan, you don't make weight loss your primary goal because that saying, abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym, is not wrong. You can't really lose weight through only exercise. And I'm not that doctor to give that advice, but I think that it's not good for people to associate success or failure of a workout program, primarily through weight loss, because you really need bigger lifestyle changes than just exercise to achieve that.

But it is interesting how many people believe that exercise, running and walking, going to the gym, all that, is the key to weight loss when it isn't.

We've been fed that, though. That's what you're told all the time, diet and exercise, diet and exercise. It's true that diet and exercise are so important important for health, but they're not equally powerful in terms of weight loss at all.

Yeah, and I do remember talking to a doctor on this podcast who said that exercise is very good at keeping weight off, but not so much getting weight off.

Yeah. Well, as they say, exercise is part of a healthy lifestyle. So yeah, I think that that's true. And I think that that is in part because they say that consistent exercise helps with food cravings. It also creates structure in your day. It tends to help with sleep, and people who sleep better and longer tend to have healthier diets. So it really is a virtuous cycle. I mean, like I say, I'm not that doctor. I'm a historian, but of course, I read quite a bit of the research on all of these things. And one of the things that I found really interesting and compelling is that a bunch of doctors who were usually very restrained in the way that they're talking about their research, they say, We don't usually say things like this, but if there was a so-called magic bullet or silver bullet around health, it probably would be consistent exercise. That consistent exercise just has all kinds of positive health outcomes, mental, social, physical, that that's really something that they just recommend across the board.

Well, it does seem that it is such a universal desire to have the benefits of exercise, that people talk about it all the time. It's, I think, important to have this conversation to help understand why people don't and what can motivate people to do it. I appreciate your time. I've been talking with Natalia Petrazzella. She is a historian of contemporary American politics and culture, and she is author of the book, Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming on today, Natalia.

Thank you so much. Have a good day.

Back in In 1966, 350 students signed up for a psychological survey on personal development and happiness, and then researchers followed them for years. The results of the study are fascinating and encouraging. It turns out that people can and do make big changes in life at any age. We do have a belief in our culture that you really need to set your course in life when you're young. But many participants in this survey made drastic life changes for the better long after they became adults. In fact, many people who were considered slackers in their youth really caught up to their peers in later life, both socially and professionally. The point is, it is never too late to take a different path to a more fulfilling life unless you think it's too late. And that is something you should know. One of the great things about the audience for this podcast, People Like You, is how generous people are leaving ratings and reviews on Apple podcast. I mean, we have thousands and thousands of ratings and reviews on Apple podcast, Spotify, all the platforms that allow ratings and reviews. People have been very generous, and I would certainly encourage you to add your voice to the chorus and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

I'm Mike Her Brothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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