I read once that climbing seven flights of stairs a day was the key to good heart health. For the longest time, I forced myself to climb seven flights of steps every single day, even on the days when I would have preferred to poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick rather than drag my aching knees up one more flight of stairs.
As the years passed and elevators began beckoning to me like a 90% off sale at Macy’s, I slowly cut down on painfully climbing stairs and took to comfortably riding the elevator. I now scale maybe a single flight of stairs a day and don’t miss stair climbing one bit. I especially don’t miss the downward return trip when I often felt like Frankenstein’s monster’s mother, which has never been a sought-after look for any woman.
You can’t look online without seeing posts that read “Three hard core rules to burn belly fat!” or “Take these five supplements before bed and wake up looking 10 years younger!” and “Just 90 seconds every morning to a new you!”
People love to stick numbers to goals, even people who don’t like math. It must be that having a specific number makes a task or a challenge seem more doable, or at least in the realm of possibility.
We’ve all heard that eating an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but who decided on one apple? Wouldn’t eating more apples mean even fewer doctors in your future? Maybe if you ate half a dozen apples every day you’d never have to sign up for Medicare.
When reading those articles and following their advice which, by the way, do absolutely nada to burn belly fat, people seldom question the author’s credentials. If it’s on the internet it must be true, especially if you really really really want it to be true.
Numbers aren’t always aligned with self-improvement. Take the now challenged six-foot-to-stay-safe rule that was waved over everyone’s head during the pandemic like one of those checkered flags at a NASCAR race.
Recently it was reported by reputable sources that the rule wasn’t actually based on any scientific data. Instead, it just sort of emerged in the heat of the moment, which was understandable but rather disappointing since the six-foot rule — also known as the elbow-room-is-a-good-thing rule, especially in check-out lines — was one of the few enjoyable parts of the pandemic.
That’s the problem with the numbers game. The rules are almost always arbitrary and most of them are probably based on things as arcane as the phases of the moon or perhaps the favorite number of the person who came up with the rule in the first place.
Not that there’s anything wrong with having a specific goal; it’s just good to remember that, while it would be very nice if 15 calf pumps a day gave you legs like a supermodel, in reality the number is probably closer to 1,500. An hour.
Whenever an expert, self-proclaimed or the real deal, announces something with a magic number attached to it I’m reminded of the scene in the classic movie “The Manchurian Candidate,” where a buffoonish senator cites exactly how many communists are in the Department of Defense. He confidently says “57,” the number his wife, who (spoiler alert) is the true bad guy — told him to say after seeing a bottle of Heinz 57 ketchup, a number she knew her less-than-brilliant hubby would be able to remember.
It might be wise to remember that scene the next time an article claiming that you, too, can wake up younger, firmer, and thinner just by doing five, 10, or 20 simple things before bed each night. While exercise is always a good thing, it seldom works as quickly as we’d like it to.
And here’s another spoiler alert — nine times out of 10 your motivation is going to evaporate before your belly fat does.