why do you exercise: for health or body image?

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let your motivation [to improve your diet] be the following eventualities-

*likelihood of deteriorated vital signs in a few short years from now-
*likely impotence
*likely marked reduction in sharpness of cognition/memory
*likely marked reduction in youthful appearance beyond normal aging

Interesting choice of words.

My diet is excellent actually I'm not just motivated to exercise.
My vital signs are good (low in bad cholesterol and good blood pressure, BMI 18.9, Body fat 22) and I'm practically asexual so impotence doesn't matter.(I'm also female)

But the reduction in sharpness of cognition/memory and youthful appearance concern me. Especially my youthful appearance.
I'm confident I don't look my age but yeah if I exercised regularly I'd look even younger!!

I was talking about what could sneak up on you [like it did on me] if you get complacent [IOW you keep on not exercising] in your effortless youth. when it does sneak up on you it will be a world-rocker.

I'm just an athlete. I'm perfectly content with my body the way it is.

Eh, a little bit of both, really. For fun and health.

I gotta say its hard to answer. So I do it to feel fit, and have more breath and more muscles in the first place. But the "side-effect" that comes with it, is also not that unimportant. So if it goes for clothing, make-up and hairstyle, I am not very much in externals, because I only feel them as fake. While I do like to have a good figure, that is not faked. But I think not anyone would agree with me on that, so I like to do some sports, and I dont care to have zero fat because it gives a more female look above the muscles, so in the end its a good 38-40, and I think that will be too much for some model-geeks. ^^ But I feel healthy and good that way and I appreciate far more being able to carry my campingstuff around myself, instead of being two sizes more skinny and only able to carry my own little rucksack at festivals. ^^

[quote="Schneekugel"]I gotta say its hard to answer. So I do it to feel fit, and have more breath and more muscles in the first place. But the "side-effect" that comes with it, is also not that unimportant. So if it goes for clothing, make-up and hairstyle, I am not very much in externals, because I only feel them as fake. While I do like to have a good figure, that is not faked. But I think not anyone would agree with me on that, so I like to do some sports, and I dont care to have zero fat because it gives a more female look above the muscles, so in the end its a good 38-40, and I think that will be too much for some model-geeks. ^^ But I feel healthy and good that way and I appreciate far more being able to carry my campingstuff around myself, instead of being two sizes more skinny and only able to carry my own little rucksack at festivals. ^^[/quote

So far I've not really lost strength when losing weight. I went up from 180 to 195 in a lame attempt at "bulking" and gaining muscle mass, now I'm down to 176 and my lifts in the gym have either stayed the same or gone up. I think a bigger issue with work capacity is just caloric intake. IE, if you're skinny and restricting calories and having to carry a rucksack, then it's an issue. Losing muscle mass would make you lose work capacity, too, though.

Lower bodyweight for me is needed for power to weight ratio. Power to weight can be increased two ways. Either increase power or decrease weight. If you get diminished returns from one then go work on the other and go back and forth, that's my strategy.

Both. Health reasons would be more important to me, though.

You misunderstood me. I did not want to say, that if I loose weight, I would loose muscles. I was skinnier, until I decided to gain weight. But when I was that skinny, I simply tended to look like a slim sporty guy, specially from behind. XD

To give you an idea what I mean , so I had not that much muscles as the woman, but specially because of me driving bicycle very often and living in a very "hilly" area, which forces you to drive uphill, and advantages specially the upper leg muscles, bellymuscles and shoulder muscles when standing on the bike and pumping down the pedals with force, the hip/waist ratio or the body/shoulder ratio was similar. Additional I work on construction sites, so I normally wear very neutral clothing, normally simply sneakers, jeans and an metal-group hoodie and a cap, so from behind I simply looked like a slim, sporty guy. ^^

I dont care for how much my muscles can pull, and if my sexual organs grows longer if my power to weight ratio does change anyway, I dont go into fitness studios and I am definitely not into muscle building, I think thats senseless to train muscles in a way you dont need it, only for optics, because if you need muscles because of doing certain stuff, they come from alone.

I simply like to go biking in nature. ^^ I simply need to work to earn money, and I simply like to transform the house my grandaunt inherited me from a ruin to a nice home, and that simply needs physical work and carrying stuff. So I dont care for any weight to power ratios, I simply care to be able to carry two 10 liter buckets with screed up my stairs, and I care to be able to carry the standard 40 kg bag of building material into my car and further at my place or at one of our construction sites, if our workers told me they need a small amount additional material for work, when sending the company truck simply is a waste of money, if I tend to visit the construction site anyway.

But if I wanted to have a skinny female silhouette, I needed to avoid doing all of that, because then you get again the hip/waist and body/shoulder ratio problems. So if I want to have a female silhouette I rather need to loose muscles on purpose, not accidently because of loosing weight without a good diet, or I can add some curves.

Both. Plus I just enjoy being active. I can't think of a time in my life when I've not been playing some kind of sport. From a young age I was brought up around boxing and taught how to and then as I got older more and more entered and I just love the feeling of running, jumping etc. It actually baffles me as to why some people hate to exercise. The physical feeling it brings leads to a better mental feeling so I just don't get how anyone could hate that.

some folks [such as myself] exercise but due to the way we're [less than perfectly] constructed, it is a major ordeal in terms of discomfort [hyperventilating, overheating, profuse sweating, fatigue, dizziness due to idiopathic orthostatic hypotension, et al]. not all of us are "the beautiful people" [IOW prime physical specimens].

at first it was just body image. but then after i got into good shape i felt really good. so now it is both.

I mainly work out for health and well being. I like having more energy and the more relaxed, and less stressed out feeling that exercise can give. Also I have had doctors tell me that I need to do regular at least moderate exercise and stretching to help some of my medical problems. For me running and walking are great stress relievers. Martials arts training can help keep fat in check, and improve my balance and agility a whole lot.

Personally I think physical training can make me look better somewhat mainly because I don't think the general stereotype body shapes matter to myself. But some people would probably disagree with my opinion mainly because I burn fat unevenly and my arms, neck, chest, and lower legs get sinewy and veiny before my middle changes much at all. It probably looks weird. Also I am a female that tends to get ripped muscles somewhat easily from training and bulk up some blocky muscle mass. Lots of people seem to think muscle bulk is ugly on women. I actually think having the muscle is neato but some people seem to get disgusted by it. I don't work out to impress anyone with looks. It is more for my health and feeling good and out of enthusiasm.

I do it cuz of the look. I could care less about eating healthy or being healthy. There's only one problem; every time I work out, in feel like I should have done more. Like I didn't push hard enough. When I'm not working out I feel like I should be! Like I'm gonna lose all of the results I worked for if I don't workout! Sometimes I fiend to workout!! When I look at myself in the mirror... I think its not good enough and I feel outta shape!! That I need to work harder.

[img][800:768]http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag6/Anthony_Guevara/me_body01_zps9b2a73ed.jpg[/img]

All three really. Thanks to OP for bringing up this threat because there's a lot of confusion between body image and health that marketers try to play to and its important to know the distinction