[DR. CRISTINA CASTAGNINI] Behind The Bite podcast is part of a network of podcasts that are good for the world. Check out podcasts like the Full of Shift podcast, After the First Marriage podcast and Eating Recovery Academy over at practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to Behind The Bite podcast. This podcast is about the real-life struggles women face with food, body image and weight. We're here to help you inspire and create better healthier lives. Welcome. Well, hello everyone. Exercise, we all know that word and we probably all think of a number of things when we hear that word. I've had a handful of previous episodes discussing exercise, but I have never focused on discussing with anyone if exercise has always been thought of in the way we think about it in our culture and society today. Like how common is it for someone to say something like, if you want to be healthy, then just exercise X number of minutes, X number of days per week, or I really need to get in the gym and get my work at it or my doctor told me I need to exercise more and eat less. Now if we heard any of those things, I don't think any of us would think that that sounds unusual or strange. I've often asked on previous podcasts like when did exercise and food get tied together? Like were these things always so commonly heard in our daily conversations or was there ever a time when exercise was just not considered and thought of how it is today? So I got to thinking basically how did we get here and why so lucky for you? Our guest today is an extremely intelligent, dynamic historian who knows the answers to all of this and more. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is a historian of contemporary American politics and culture. She is the author of FIT NATION: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession. She's the co-producer and host of the acclaimed podcast, Welcome to Your Fantasy and the co-host of Past Present Podcast. She is a columnist at the Observer and a frequent media guest, expert, public speaker and contributor to outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and The Atlantic. She is an associate professor at the history, of history at the New York School and co-founder of the Wellness Education Program Health Class 2.0. Her work has been supported by the Spencer, Whiting, Rockefeller and Mellon Foundations. And I said she's intelligent. She holds a BA from Columbia and a Ph.D. from Stanford and currently she lives with her husband and two children in New York City. All right, well Natalia, I am so excited to have you on. Welcome to the show. [NATALIA MEHLMAN PETRZELA] I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me. [DR. CRISTINA] So Fit Nation, it obviously caught my attention when I was looking on social media and we were touching base just very briefly before we hit record. The book's not about eating disorders and but I really wanted to have you on because obviously, exercise is a topic that I know many of my listeners, if not all of them, can relate to in terms of if they are struggling with an eating disorder probably. Most people have that as part of it and I think it's a big topic just in general. You're so much about exercise and I constantly get asked like, how much are you supposed to do or there's just so many questions out there all the time. I'm sure you're well aware of that. But could I just ask you like how did you get the idea to just write this book? [NATALIA] Yeah, so I'm a historian and so my job is to ask the question of how did we get here and then to spend my time researching how we got here. The way that I settled on fitness as the topic that I wanted to look at is that I've been a scholar for a long time, but I've also been a gym rat for a long time. Those two aspects of my life were actually pretty separated because like you have your work and this life of the mind and then there is this life of the body and I always saw those separate. That being said we never really take off like our critical thinking cap, our scholarly hat so I'd be at the gym this place that I actually love and has brought me so much joy and passion and community and all these great things and I realize like there's a lot going on here and it's really complicated and some of it is really positive. Some of it is really not so positive, but the truth is that everywhere you go in like 21st century America like exercise is there, like often just pressure to exercise the idea to look like you're going to exercise, to spend money on exercise and so I wanted to figure out how we got there. So that's how this project really started. [DR. CRISTINA] That is actually really fantastic. After I looked at, or more about your book, I actually got to thinking about that too. Like we didn't always have gyms, we didn't always have this fitness craze. So I'm curious, what did you start finding when you delved into it a little bit? [NATALIA] Yeah, so the overarching story that I basically tell in this book is that actually this notion that I should work out, which is something that almost every American feels in one way or another, like ugh, I got to go to the gym or I should work out more. That's a sort of sense of guilt that even though most Americans don't get the recommended daily minimum of exercise, most people feel they should work out. That sense is relatively recent. So what I do in this book is I go back to a time when working out was weird, when it was strange if you wanted to spend time working on your body. I start in 1893 at the World's Fair where I have these strong men and then strong women who are like posing on stage and they're like freaks of nature. Like there are people going like, "Can I touch your muscles? Like, oh my god, you lift weights?" They are really interesting to me because there's so much part of a time when like exercise was a spectacle you'd look at, but most people never felt they should participate in it. But they're like these early promoters who start to promote the idea that like, oh, exercise is not only good for your health, it shows you're a virtuous person, it shows you're disciplined, et cetera. So I go from there all the way to today in the pandemic and the Peloton when exercise is everywhere and a big part of that like how did that happen? There are a lot of things that I explained, but a big thing is that exercise goes from being thought of as something that's like very narrowly physical. Like this is just about your body to being seen as something that's part of your overall wellbeing and your even your overall like moral and spiritual worth. So early on when it's so physical it's looked down on like, oh you're like narcissistic if you care about your body that much or you're taking time away from more cerebral pursuits, like what's wrong with you? Today we tend to associate people who spend a lot of time exercising with people who care about mental health and emotional health and their bodies and all of that. So yeah, that's the trajectory. The other big trajectory is that there's this really screwed up irony where we are a nation obsessed with exercise. We have an industry that's like over 3$0 billion just the gym and health club industry and most Americans actually don't exercise and could probably benefit from exercising from having more exercise in their life. So I talk about like the decline of public investment in exercise and fitness as this industry has boomed. [DR. CRISTINA] That's really interesting. I think there is this idea out there that everybody else is exercising or everybody is doing this and to your point of this shame and guilt, like what's wrong with me that I'm not, why am I not motivated? Why can't I do it like everyone else? [NATALIA] Yeah, and I think the power actually of that X set of expectations can be really damaging. Then this actually gets right to the heart of like eating disorders and what you cover on this podcast where, I've been talking lately about an essay that I just loved by this woman Emmy Feld and she had engaged in different kinds of self-harm over the course of her life, but she got really, really into exercise when she was in college. Like she's like running 10 miles and going rowing and yoga, like too much. She was really hurting her body and she talked about the fact that like very few people, it took people a long time to identify that as a problem because for most people they're like, oh you're working out, that's so good. They didn't see it like the way that we treat drug abuse or cutting yourself or any of those things, but it actually was another form of self-harm. It's just our culture celebrates exercise so much that it can be harder to detect when it goes into the sort of dark side of this obsession. [DR. CRISTINA] Yeah, and I've shared openly on this podcast. I was one of those people that went to the other side that was actually part of my eating disorder part of purging. People think of purging as just self-induced vomiting, but part of purging in an eating disorder is over exercising compensating for what you're eating by burning these calories. I don't know if in your research you found where food and exercise started to get tied together because I've always wondered when did that happen? [NATALIA] So yeah, that's a great question, early on in that era that I begin in the, I'm simplifying a little bit, but for the most part the ideal body was not a body that looked like it was restricting food or building muscle and being, working on itself in that way. Actually, at that point it to be attractive was to look like you had access to caloric food and to leisure because most people were working with their bodies, doing manual labor and they couldn't afford to eat a lot of food. So if you looked like you were hanging around eating like chocolate and steak, like wow, you must be successful. It is so different from today where we tend to associate bigger bodies in our culture and I think very unfairly with being undisciplined, being lazy, being poor like that. So that is a big shift that has happened. When food and exercise start getting tied together, I mean it's interesting because once industrialization happens you start to see a lot of encouragement and so I should say once industrialization happens, there's a lot more access to food. So at that moment you start to see like especially in the women's pages of newspapers and magazines, women are being encouraged to reduce or restrict and almost all of that is around food and calories. Like eat less don't be a glutton very and very, very moral language, but you don't yet usually see exercise promoted largely because women are considered to be too frail to exercise rigorously. So they'll talk about like going for a brisk walk and taking in the fresh air. But certainly the idea that women should run or lift weights but do anything strenuous is seen as totally inappropriate both for the reason that it could build muscle but also it could make you infertile but also it's supposed to build unladylike tendencies like being competitive and individualistic. So like all of that is in there. By the time you get to like the 1950s you start to see gentle exercise and then not so gentle exercise being promoted for women too and food and exercise management being part of what's seen as living a healthy life. [DR. CRISTINA] Interesting. Because I mean who hasn't heard, oh exercise more, eat less? Like they're one in the same and yeah, I've always wondered like who was the demon that did this? [NATALIA] Well, I think one thing that's really important that's a big change is that in 1968 there's this book which is published called Aerobics by this doctor named Kenneth Cooper. It's not aerobics like Jane Fonda aerobics. That's confusing. It's aerobics like cardio. Before that basically exercise was defined as weightlifting and calisthenics. He really changes the game and says actually to be healthy and first he's considering men and like heart disease, which was a big problem. If you want to be healthy you have got to do things that get your heart rate up, swimming, biking, running. Now that exercise is also like a lot sort of more accessible than going to like a big weight rack or having to go to a gym or doing like military calisthenics and it's also associated with weight loss. So that's a really big turning point with women who had long been told you should be thin now it's like, oh well there's this actually good for you exercise, which also makes you thin. You should do that too. So I think that that's where you really start to see those coming together. It's ironic because it's perpetuating this same idea which you've been around for a long time, which is that like women should be thin and exercise is okay as long as it's for beauty. But then at the same time you have the feminist movement happening and they're like not that into saying you should do anything for beauty. They want to reject that but they're like women can run and they can get out of breath and they can build muscle and they shouldn't be afraid to go jogging in the street. So that actually also ends up supporting women's exercise. I spend a lot of time in the book talking about women in exercise because I find that double-edged sword so interesting. Like on the one hand women are encouraged to exercise a lot because oh it makes you slim and beautiful and all women should want that but then on the other hand there's this I think really empowering celebration of women's strength and ability to take time for themselves to work on their bodies and all the rest. It's, the messaging today still is really confusing around that, what is a pressure and what is a privilege? [DR. CRISTINA] That must have been really interesting time. Back then I'm imagining, I mean when did the introduction of gyms and places to actually go exercise get introduced? Because you're talking about oh go for a walk, go on a run. But when did all that muddy the waters? [NATALIA] So you start having like early, what I would call like early fitness environments in like the 1920s. For men those are pitch towards office workers and the idea is like, oh well, you are the best men. You work with your head, you're not working with your bodies like picking up boxes, but you're getting these "desk diseases," like you're having a punch, your shoulders are sloping, like you need to do something about that. So there are gymnasiums that are set up for men in that period and you might have weights there, you might have like Indian clubs which were these British and Indian like swinging, they look like bowling pins that people did exercise with. But it was a really hard sell to men because gyms were considered to be really sleazy. It was considered that you were looking to have sex with men if you went to a gym because what normal guy cares what his body looks like, wants to spend time working on his body and wants to do it with all these other sweaty dudes? Like there must be something wrong with you. That was sort of the idea. For women at that time, calling them gyms might be a stretch, but what you did have was connected to beauty salons. You had these things called reducing spas or slenderizing spas and those were like body workplaces where you might do really gentle exercise, but for the most part they were these machines that would like shake your body. So you'd like wrap these belts around your butt or your thighs or you'd sit on almost like a pummel horse or you might lie in like a bed and they would like shake your body. The idea was that like, that shaking would rid you of cellulite and would burn calories, et cetera. It was really interesting looking at the ads for those that like all of them really emphasize that you don't need to do any work. They're like relax and luxurious comfort, no sweating required. That's like the early days but then you start having really commercial gyms, and there are a few in like the 30's and 40's, but like not very many. Like I always use the example Jack who became this big fitness influencer in 1936. He opens a gym in Oakland, California not far from where you are and he has to get a blacksmith to make equipment because there's no gym equipment out there. Like nobody understands what this place is for. But then I would say like the big era in like gyms that start to be a little bit like what we would see today in the late 50's. There's a guy named Vic Tanny and he has what, his goal, he comes from Muscle Beach, he's a bodybuilder, he's like, I want to get rid of the idea that gyms are these like sweaty dank places that men hang out in and pump iron. These are going to be luxurious palaces of health. So they have like tropical fish tanks and tanning beds and they all advertise their carpets, which I think is disgusting but it's supposed to be like fancy and luxurious. And he has ladies days there and so he's really sort of the architect of the quasi modern health club. [DR. CRISTINA] Okay, so there's a shift there. It sounds like still though, it's the gyms are more geared toward looking a certain way and about the body not so much about being tied to the, I guess, diet industry per se yet. [NATALIA] Yes and no. I mean the diet industry as you probably know, is pretty intense in that period. They're all kinds of like reducing gums and cigarette ads are unapologetically talking about how the fact that they kill your appetite. I mean they're ads that show that you can send away for tape worms and you eat tape worms in, yeah, exactly, in order, it's disgusting. I'm sorry, I should have a, I hope your whole podcast is a trigger warning honestly, but yeah, like there is just unapologetic marketing of diet restriction, calorie restriction, doing it chemically with all kinds of diet pills. Like this is just a part of the mid-century culture. So I try as a historian not to be like, oh this is good, this is bad, but there is something about the emergence of the fitness industry that I think in some ways just amplifies all that. Now it's like another thing you have to do to be thin or to be pretty or to be attractive. You have to work out now too. But on the other hand, some of the diet industry stuff around food and calorie restriction is so brutal and I think disempowering that I'm like wow, I actually think it's an improvement that now women are expected to go to the gym. Obviously, that can turn really dark and be an example of the same disordered behavior, but in some ways, at least to me it seems like there's going to be a little more room there to find a like empowering experience through working on your body than just like through pure food restriction. [DR. CRISTINA] Wow. I'm actually curious too, like did any part of your book go into exercise just purely for physical health reasons, like illness, disease? [NATALIA] Oh, like rehabilitation, yeah, a little bit. I mean I try, it's really hard when you write a book like this, like fitness can mean so many things to see like how you bound it. So I tried really hard to set it off from like sport. Then the other thing is to set it off from like straight up like medical rehabilitation because that's different. But of course, all these boundaries are porous and so there is a lot of stuff in there. Like I don't think that many people know that Joseph Pilates who invented Pilates, that he started in a prisoner of war hospital where he like jerry rigged these hospital beds with these strings and pulleys and, sorry, yes, springs and pulleys and came up with a system that apparently was the prototype for the Pilates Cadillac. I don't know if this is true or not, but this has been repeated many times, apparently the patients in the hospital, this is around World War I who used his system, like none of them got influenza, which killed like millions of people. I don't know if that's really true, but this idea that you'd have like body work in a hospital for medical rehab is important. The other, I mean there it comes up in a whole bunch of places, but the other area that it comes up in that I found interesting too, is in the 1980s, which is definitely a moment when there's like a big fitness boom in this country and you have that. You do have Jane Fond that and Richard Simmons and all this. I came across quite a bit of evidence that people working in say congregant nursing homes, hospitals, that they would actually use these, they would actually, sorry my son called, that they would actually use these fitness videos and stuff with their patients even if they couldn't do everything to make them feel that they were connected to the broader culture and to see their rehabilitation not just as like something for sick people who were deficient in some way, but this could be fun and this connects you to what you heard about on a talk show and all of that. So I think that that is important too. Another piece I'd say that, about that is that like a lot of the, what I'm charting in this book is that like the number of people or the sort of people who are expected to exercise in America, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. First it's only weirdos, then it's like young people then it's the young and the beautiful people. Then it's not just women who want to be thin but it's also men. Then it's older people who like no one thought they would go to the gym. Then it's disabled people who nobody would think that they would want to go to a mainstream gym. So I think that's interesting too, to look at the way, especially around disability, that people who are presumed like, oh why would you even want to go to a gym are saying like, no, I want fitness to be part of my life too. I want to like be part of this. This is part of our culture and part of like seeing myself not just as someone who is under the medical care of experts but who can take control each day of some aspect of my own physical health. I think that that's a really powerful part of this story as well. [DR. CRISTINA] Well, and I'm curious if you were to say start writing your book from right now how would you describe the state of, I guess our nation and how we view exercise right now? [NATALIA] Well, I think the good thing is that no matter what your political background or your ideology or how much you disagree on, I don't know who should be president or what kids should learn in schools, like pretty much everyone agrees exercise is good for you. Like we have a consensus on that. There are very few people who say like, exercise is bad, you're going to get a heart attack if you go jogging, your uterus is going to fall out. Those are all things that were dominant popular opinion or even scientific opinion over the course of time that I write about. So we're in that moment where we all agree on that. Unfortunately, we do not agree enough to make this a policy priority. Like I think that right now we agree exercise is good for you but we shame people who don't do it, which is most of Americans by the way. We make all kinds of assumptions about people's moral value based on whether they exercise or even worse whether they look like they exercise or not. I mean to me that is like the worst part of, I mean all of it's bad but that's the worst part of it. Completely right that like people make all sorts of assumptions if they see somebody in a larger body or looking out of place at a gym or whatnot, like oh that person must be lazy, they must be undisciplined, they clearly don't care about health, when the truth of the matter is first you might be completely wrong. I talk about some people in my book who are self-described fat fitness influencers and they talk about the fact that like these are people who've run, like done triathlons and ultramarathons and like people thinking, who think that they're being like nice like come over and they're like good for you getting started just because they are not like a size four and they're like, are you freaking kidding me? Just because I look like this, you like presume something about my fitness level? But I think that, one of the things that we often ignore in this really individualistic way of judging people and talking about fitness is it is so much easier to exercise if you have housing near where you work and childcare and access to technology and can buy a gym membership and you go outside and you're not presumed to be committing a crime if you're running or a mark for sexual assault if you're running in the morning. Like all of these things shape our ability to work out and I think unfortunately like we all agree exercise is good for you, but we are not like set up to have a complex conversation about actually ensuring that all people can exercise on their own terms. I think that that's, I'm hoping we get there, like you asked if I write my book today, but I love also thinking about like okay in like 20, 30 years, what will we look back on about today and think how crazy? And I hope we look at this moment when only I think 20% of Americans get the recommended minimum amount and we're like, that's like when people smoked in classrooms or children didn't wear seat belts. Like how crazy we allowed that to happen as a society. So I'm hoping this book can be part of like getting us toward that. [DR. CRISTINA] And I can imagine people listening, because I remember my eating disorder itself going, oh what's the minimum? Like what do I need to do? I think there is a tendency for people who have eating disorders to take the minimum and like overdo it to my point and like think exercise is only one thing which is like hardcore, it only counts if I do like X number of minutes and get this sweaty. I think exercise is not just this hardcore like I have to do it every day for X number of minutes and it has to be this laborious thing that's so overwhelming and exhausting. [NATALIA] Yeah, no I think that's right Of course everyone needs different advice. Most Americans probably do need the advice that like hey, even a little bit is worth it and if you get up and go for a walk or you do a few sets of squats in between your zoom calls, that counts. You don't need to do that 60-minute sweat drenched workout to do it. Like this is enough. I think on the maybe flip side when we see people who are over exercising, which can, is totally a thing. Also I think there's a moment for self-reflection of like, well what are you chasing with that feeling? What is that feeling for you? What is that feeling in your own life? Then also how does something which we tend to think of as a healthy behavior, when does that become unhealthy? And I think it's really hard to figure that out. I also like, I mean you probably have much more complex thoughts on this, but when I hear some of this talk about like we'll listen to your body and intuitive eating and intuitive exercise and all that, that's great in a lot of ways. We should all be in tuned in with our body, but I don't, I think about this stuff all the time and there's so much messaging out there. I don't really know what my body really needs. So I think being honest about how hard this stuff is is like a first step in figuring out the perfect thing for each of us as individuals because there is not a one-size-fits-all answer here at all. [DR. CRISTINA] Yeah and I love that you said that just like fitting in little moments here and there because I think there is this idea of it has to be this very programmed point like fitting in time at the gym. It has to be this, I'm doing this activity and then I'm like a runner or I'm doing this whatever, lifting weights and that it's not really counting if I'm not doing it consistently or if I don't, I'm like, if I'm not sore the next day, it didn't count. Not knowing, to your point too, of knowing when your body's saying I need a day off or I need to stretch, I need to rest. I mean rest days are really important and I don't think that's talked about enough either. [NATALIA] Totally. I do think in the industry now, like, I mean I'm in New York so it's a sort of like cutting edge with some of this stuff, there is a lot more talk about stretch and rehabilitation and I think that that's really positive and also the sort of like mindfulness dimensions of exercise. And I think that overt conversation is really good because I know definitely like, and this accounts for some of my experience too, I hear again and again, especially from women, like I started exercising to lose weight but then I discovered all this stuff that I didn't even know could come from exercise, community peace, emotional wellbeing, like all of these different things. I do think it's flexibility, that stuff and I think that like it is good that the industry I think is speaking a little bit more overtly about that stuff rather than pedaling this weight loss messaging, which for so many years and still is so much of like the most amplified part of that discourse. I'm a fitness instructor too, but there's so much more through exercise that we can accomplish and why not amplify that a little bit? [DR. CRISTINA] I would love if there's more focus and discussion about like, hey if you take on some exercise it can help prevent osteoporosis when you're older or it can help you with preventing you being stiff or just it can help with feeling calmer or less stress or just the positive aspects that have nothing to do with the external body itself but the long-term gains and like the mental health and wellbeing. [NATALIA] Yeah, and I think functional fitness, the sort of movement of the last 20 years or so has been good at that. Like, and also in focusing on what you want to do with your body. Why are you going to the gym? Maybe it's because you want to lift up your grandkids. Maybe it's because you want to go hiking and really fully enjoy life. And one of the interesting dimensions of the way fitness culture has changed in the last like 30, 40 years, 30 years I would say maybe just 20, no, like probably 30 is like what people call like the graying of the gym demographic, like people over 55 are more and more active. I think that that's wonderful in a lot of ways because it's pushing us, like most people in that age group are not there primarily to have like ripped abs for spring break even though I've seen some like very ripped abs on 60 year olds, but that's not like the main reason a lot of folks are there. So I think that that has sort of expanded how we talk about exercise and I think that that's a really good thing at all ages. [DR. CRISTINA] So I'm just curious have you been getting any feedback from the book or is it out yet, so if anyone listening is going, oh this sounds really interesting, like want to know more about maybe the book or how I can get it, I want to read it. [NATALIA] So the book Fit Nation is out everywhere right now. You can get it on Amazon or wherever you buy books. It's out on Kindle and also in the regular book. I just found out like an hour before getting on this podcast that the audio book will be out April 25th and there's actually, I'm going to post like by the end of today, so probably before this episode comes out, a code to pre-order and it's a little bit less expensive. I think it's like $24 or something. I'll post that on my social media, which is at Natalia Petrzela everywhere. [DR. CRISTINA] Fantastic. Thank you so much. Is there any I know you just said your social media, is there any other way people can find you or get a hold of you? [NATALIA] Yeah, I'm on nataliapetrzela.com. I try to update that as much as possible and yeah, I'm around so I would love to hear from folks. This book started out actually, I was going to do food and fitness, which obviously would've had a lot more eating disorder content in there. There is still quite a bit of stuff but the literature I think on food is so much more evolved than the literature on fitness that I narrowed it. But I'd love to hear what your listeners think, like opportunities for future research, what they're working on, because I think this is such an important angle. [DR. CRISTINA] Oh, absolutely. Like I said, it just sparked my interest right away. So thank you. [NATALIA] Thank you [DR. CRISTINA] So excited that you were on and shared all this information. Thank you so much. [NATALIA] Thank you so much. I really appreciate the conversation. [DR. CRISTINA] This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.