The Physical Imitation of Christ

Regular exercise dropped 66 percent during and after the pandemic, and obesity has exploded. Why? And do we reverse this?

The least reliable way to predict human behavior is to ask people what they would do. Example: A 2019 study¹ determined what people said they would do with more time:

1. Spend time with family (44%)

2. Travel (43%)

3. Exercise (33%)

4. Spend time with friends (30%)

5. Pursue hobbies (29%)

Note the date: 2019. The year that ended with news of a respiratory virus in China. In other words, this study, which asked people what they would do with more time, was published so close to the pandemic as to seem planned. The researchers could have done a Part 2, looking at what people actually did with more time.

They didn’t. So I did.

At least, I looked at one answer: exercise.

Not to belabor the point, but a few months before the world locked itself into dysmorphia, one in three adults in the United States intended to exercise if they had more time. Then, they got more time. More time than they ever imagined they’d have.

Except for those in “essential occupations,” like bartenders, brewers, and marijuana shopkeepers, everyone’s calendar looked for over a year like the one someone gave for Christmas the first time you flipped through its pages seconds after ripping off the cellophane shrink-wrap. (So satisfying when it splits diagonally down the middle and slips off in one static-laden piece!)

Did they exercise?

Of course not. They watched videos of cute nurses dancing in empty hospitals, became aficionados of DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, and a whole host of two-words-with-no-spacing apps. They roughly doubled their alcohol consumption, gave up visiting with family and friends forever, and, most important for our purposes, THEY GAVE UP EXERCISING ALTOGETHER.

Look at the step-change in exercise spending from 2019—the year 33% of Americans said they’d exercise more given free time—to 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

That dive in exercise from 2019 to 2020 represents a 33% decrease in exercise when people had unlimited time on their hands to do anything they wanted. What’s worse, that represents a 66 percent decrease in exercise compared to self-reported expectations.

The above was a long of way saying you will never have time to exercise, even if you have nothing else to do for a year.

How, then, is it possible that, according to Statista, 45.4 percent (that’s almost half for those of you who voted for Biden) found time before Covid for exercise? Even after Covid, 33 percent remain committed to fitness and exercise?

It’s simple: those who believe they have a duty to take care of their bodies, to train for tail risks (about which more shortly), to make themselves more resilient and robust to shocks exercise. Those who believe someone else will handle things do not. In other words, exercise is a proxy for, what behavioral psychologists call, “locus of control.”

Locus of control is a worldview people adopt that evaluates what they control vs. what others control. Successful people across domains—meaning they have strong family and personal relations, perform well at hobbies and sports, and have reasonably good careers—have accurate sense of locus of control. These people who seem to “have it all together” understand what is in their control and what is not in their control. They don’t try to steal control over that which they do not have control, and they do not delegate or offload that which is in their control.

This locus of control is an ancient principle. It was the heart of Stoicism as stated most clearly in Epictetus’s Handbook which deserves this extended quote:

What are things under your total control?

What you believe, what you desire or hate, and what you are attracted to or avoid. You have complete control over these, so they are free, not subject to restraint or hindrance. They concern you because they are under your control.

What are things not under your total control?

Your body, property, reputation, status, and the like. Because they are not under your total control, they are weak, slavish, subject to restraint, and in the power of others. They do not concern you because they are outside your control. If you think you can control things over which you have no control, then you will be hindered and disturbed. You will start complaining and become a fault-finding person. But if you deal with only those things under your control, no one can force you to do anything you don’t want to do; no one can stop you. You will have no enemy, and no harm will come to you.

If you want these substantial rewards in life, you should be prepared to put in the effort. This means you may have to give up some things entirely and postpone others for now. If you attempt to get both what is under your control and what is not, you may end up getting neither. Therefore, you need to distinguish the two very clearly.²

People with a healthy sense of locus of control understand what is in their control and what is not. These people exercise and eat well no matter what. They exercise in the way they can. They take stairs instead of the elevator. They walk alongside airport people movers instead of resting on top of them. They take an open parking spot instead of clogging up a lane waiting for the shopper parked in the first slot outside the door to return to their car and leave. If disabled in some way, they use the parts of their bodies they can. I have a dear cousin who was born with spina bifida and confined to a wheelchair. I’ve seen him playing hockey in an NHL arena twice because he has a healthy locus of control. He did not wait for more time to whip his crippled body into shape: he just did it.

“But, Bill,” you’re thinking, “Epictetus says our bodies are not in our control. Aren’t you arguing with Epictetus?”

No! Epictetus was a cripple. As a young slave, his master broke his leg on a whim, leaving him club-footed for life. Yet he exercised as best he could and ate right his whole life. He could not control his body, meaning, he could not un-club his foot. But he could exercise. As he said, you have complete control over what you’re attracted to and what you avoid. So, he attracted himself to exercise and avoided sloth and gluttony.

Now, let’s get back to the pre-Covid research and post-Covid reality. How do we explain the 66 percentage-point difference between what people predicted they do with more time (vis-a-vis exercise) and what they have done with more time?

Two factors.

First, people miscalculated what they are attracted to and what they seek to avoid. People say they’re attracted to looking good, feeling good, promoting health, and avoiding disease. They are most likely simply parroting what society tells them they should seek and avoid. In reality, they are attracted to laziness and carbohydrates and avoid physical effort. We know this by looking at them and observing them. Fat people with more than two constant pharmaceutical prescriptions almost certainly seek food and leisure while avoiding work and exercise. (Hiring managers take note.) In other words, one reason that exercise and fitness declined during and after the lockdown is that people lied about what they’re attracted to and what they avoid.

Second, Covid policy and information from experts was carefully calibrated to shift locus of control from self to others. We were told that there was nothing we could do but comply with experts. And not just any experts, but the small group of experts who were actually responsible for unleashing the menace in the first place. Of those who expected themselves to exercise more given more time, almost half succumbed to the media, government, and healthcare mantra to give up their agency and autonomy and do whatever you are told. The whole of the Covid official response could be summed up in the lyrics of a Frank Zappa song from the 1970s:

You will obey me while I need you

Canning the garbage that I feed you

Don’t go for help; no one will heed you

Your mind is totally controlled

It has been stuffed into my mold

And you will do as you are told

Until the rights to you are sold

In truth, the reason for the disconnect between pre-Covid predictions and post-Covid reality is a combination of these two factors. We are all bad at predicting what we will do given a hypothetical. We all tend to shade our answers to please the audience. And we all tend to give undue deference to authorities, as behavioral psychologist Robert Cialdini discovered and explained with his Six Principles of Persuasion, the second-most powerful which is the principle of authority. To simply call the obese fat and lazy, then, is unfair and mean even though it’s true. The only way to get obese in 2024 is to eat more bad food than you’re willing to work off.

But everything I’ve written to this point is irrelevant. Here’s what matters:

1. You control what you’re attracted to and what you avoid.

2. You will face a shock at some point in your life.

3. If you are trained in exercise and eat well, you will be more resilient to shocks than if you are obese and untrained and filled with artificial chemicals.

And, most importantly:

4. God assigned to you the stewardship of a human body, and you have a duty to return it in good shape for the trials, tribulations, and time it has endured.

While depictions of Christ’s Passion are the artist’s impression, no one has ever portrayed Jesus as fat and weak. At the time of his death, he was 33 years old—the age most researchers say is the human peak of strength, stamina, and resiliency. If the artists are accurate, then, Jesus practiced responsible stewardship of His body for 33 years when, at its physical peak, He returned it to Our Father in the best condition He could. Yes, it was scarred, dehydrated, bled out, punctured, and dead. That was the point. But that abuse came from others’ hands, not Jesus’. Thus, what Epictetus advised was exemplified by Christ: He could not control His body, but He could, and did, control what He was attracted to and what He avoided. His perfect attractions meant His physical body was perfect when He turned it over to the men who destroyed it on its way to the Father in heaven. And we are assured by Scripture that the Father was well pleased.

If you can’t find a reason to exercise and eat well, do it in imitation of Christ. Return the body God gave you in the best condition you can, given the life God lent you.

With that as your attraction, you will find the time, energy, and means. And, if that’s still not enough, take a minute to pray, but not for time. God has given you all the time you need, and more time will not lead to more exercise, according to science.

1. “What Would You Do With More Time?” survey by the Workforce Institute at Kronos Incorporated and Future Workplace

2. Chakrapani, Chuck. The Good Life Handbook: Epictetus' Stoic Classic Enchiridion (p. 69). The Stoic Gym Publications. Kindle Edition.