Inspiring or inspired

[wshaffer]

I went for a run this morning, and had an interesting conversation with a Santa Clara city employee who does maintenance around Mission City Memorial Park:

Him: You've really trimmed down since you've started coming here.
Me: Er, thanks.
Him: Are you dieting as well as exercising?
Me: Well, I try to eat healthily.*
Him: I'm doing Weight Watchers and riding my bike to work every day. You're my inspiration.

I never thought that I would see the day where I'd be anybody else's fitness inspiration. I'm a bit flummoxed. Pleased, though. It made the rest of my run a lot easier.

* I never quite know what to say when people ask me if I'm on a diet. I don't think of the way I eat as a diet, and weight-loss isn't my primary motivation for choosing the foods I do. On the other hand, many of the things I do routinely (such as being careful of portion sizes for high calorie foods, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, and recording what I eat in a food diary) would be recognized as dieting by many people. The distinction is important to me, but I'm not sure if it's important to anyone else.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I find the distinction important but difficult to discuss with people. That is, I find it simultaneously easier to feed people and easier to worry less about people if they've made it clear that they have a particular lifestyle and set of attitudes regarding food that takes into account their health in multiple facets of life than if they are doing intended-to-be-temporary culinary things for the purpose of losing weight specifically. You can't really sit a friend down and go, "So which are you?" But knowing is still good.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I make that distinction, too. "Diet" in the anthropological sense means what you habitually eat, but in practice people use it for short-term changes, and that isn't what I'm trying to do. I'm after better habits, not a temporary regimen.

[amoken.livejournal.com]

Yay!