For the case of fitness and good health
In this essay, I try to qualify fitness and good health, make an attempt at dissolving solipsistic reasoning, and finally aim to make the case that all human beings should take care of their bodies via objective standards.
What is “fitness” and what is “good health”? Surely there are structures associated with these terms but they cannot be all social constructs, can they?
To answer these questions let us set the following ground rules and provide arguments as follows:
Let “fitness” equate to the good use of one’s body, allowing an individual to properly fulfill virtue equal to their being without worry of excessive physical limitations (arête).
Let “good health” equate to proper harmony of all the body’s parts and functions so as to allow an organism to continue persisting in a state pleasant to it e.g. without dis-ease.
Though detractors may argue that “fitness” is subjective and that “good health” is something termed more by an individual than by some set standard, I cannot help but disagree. The typical argument for these sorts goes as follows: “because I, person X, have different needs than another individual, person Y, our ideas of what “fitness” and “good health” should not be fixed but constantly evolving. It would be reductive to others to just simply apply a standard definition to what is and is not “good health” and “fitness” without caring about individual circumstance. Therefore, we cannot set any kind of definition on what “fitness” is and what “good health” consists of being. E.g. everyone has different bodies.”
My response is that this contention against my argument is far too vague. Also, by creating a catch-all that aforementioned definitions are “sliding” e.g. solipsistic we meaningfully reduce these terms to have no meaning at all. In this case, the contention writer suggests that language should not be used to communicate anything (Wittgenstein and Kripke have words to say on this, however that is out of the scope of this essay). Often a “you know what I’m talking about” is used as a kind of anchor back to "reality”. However, this attempt at anchoring into reality disqualifies the original contention entirely. The anchor contains the implicit assumption that there is an “objective” reality (so the author by trying to support his argument just disproves it) that we all “abide” by. Through a collective intuition (to assume all person’s have collective intuition is unfounded) we understand that it is within this purposefully omitted objective reality that we are granted some lee-way in redefining our terms.
Firstly, arguments cannot be based off intuitions because we cannot meaningfully qualify the intuitions of others relative to ourselves. Though 99 may understand, it may be lost to one: and so is the job of philosophy to clarify in simple terms. Secondly, the argument has proven itself to be invalid because in an attempt to gain its footing it has shown to contradict itself. The contention is either just false or could be better formed to reflect the actual views of the writer. Lastly, we cannot reject language through solipsism. This just leads to irreducible skepticism that is unproductive.
That being said, I should accept that “health” is a spectrum: that being there is no clear binary beginning on where being “healthy” begins and being “unhealthy” leaves and vice versa. One does not just “enter” good health like a light-switch (arguments can be made about entering unhealthiness as in the case of a tragedy, but this argument by me is acknowledged. I hope to explore the consequences of this in a later essay). There is almost an “ease into” and “ease out of” in most cases that most people can understand. With that, it is quite clear that human beings can understand healthiness and unhealthiness in the form of extremes. Take the example of a man who has resistance trained for 3 years consistently. Applying every little bit to maximize his training and his diet to produce exceptional gains not just in muscular development but in neural drive (the body’s ability to produce force is not just on the amount of muscle it has but on how well it is on recruiting muscles). Let us not forget the positive increases in bone density, greater strength, better mood (through the production of endorphins) and required diet in order to sustain such a lifestyle to name a few. In all cases, unless under the influence of performance enhancing drugs (e.g. exogenous steroids) this successful weightlifter can be seen as more fit, capable and healthy than say a person dying slowly from a muscle wasting disease e.g. muscular dystrophy.
I do agree that different people have different needs, however my definition of “fitness” and “good health” doesn’t cite specific abilities but simply states states of physical being. Good health is “ [the] proper harmony of all the body’s parts and functions so as to allow an organism to continue persisting in a state pleasant to it e.g. without dis-ease.” and fitness is “the good use of one’s body, allowing an individual to properly fulfill virtue equal to their being without worry of excessive physical limitations (arête).” However, we must acknowledge that these two terms cannot possibly be “floating” and un-substantive; if they were we would even lack the ability for any kind of argument in agreement with me or against me.
Good health and fitness are not social constructs. Social constructs can be made of them and from them, but they themselves are not that of any kind. I would argue that we enjoy using my aforementioned definitions for these two words as a bedrock upon which to create images and narratives on what we would like to think are “health”/”fitness”. An image can be conjured of a pyramid, with the base being what we have worked out so far to be health and fitness and everything above that being more and more removed just by risk of distance. It isn’t an unreasonable ask to ask what exists further up the pyramid.
Of course, what exists on top of every pyramid is going to be dependent on the culture. We are going to assume that anything above my two definitions is going to be construct: and if it is not a construct a proof will be given that it is not. We are assuming my two definitions are substantive because of my arguments and my addressing of a contention at the start of the essay.
On great example, of a social construct is a focus on leanness. What we are targeting here is obsessive compulsive desire to become a certain way. This example is not targeting individuals who want to lose body fat or to look good.
What is wrong with obsessive compulsive desire? I don’t see anything wrong with it. What is important is what this desire is obsessing about. This is the case in some individuals that an obsession with a certain body image can manifest in a severe eating disorder e.g. diagnosed anorexia. This is bad for all of us: those of whom do diet seriously and have either healed their body image issues, or have done it without issues, both do not do well with individuals being injured (sometimes their own fault, sometimes not) due to whatever social structures exist. It is not only not a good look, but throws a wrench in the entire idea.
Given that, the idea that a we cannot accurately calculate any kind of body markers is false. Our ideas, however, should be based off facts and an evidence based approach to doing things: not fashion our beauty standards (indeed if a standard were to exist it ought to be derived from an evidence base and not vice versa).
A man’s athletic body fat percentage lies at 16.2 +/- 4.1; for women it is somewhere between 24.3 +/- 4.5; n=174 and n=70, respectively (PMID: 37695262). Accurate bodily measurements aren’t done by the body-mass-index (BMI) but through fat-free-mass-index (FFMI). The BMI calculation is used in populations because it is accurate of a high number of people. FFMI calculations are used in samples because FFMI calculations require a high barrier of entry. FFMI is calculated using expensive technology (e.g. DEXA scans) and cannot prudently be applied to a whole population of individuals. In fact, scientists use data from the FFMI to superimpose upon the BMI. FFMI sample sizes are large enough to give great confidence to apply to an entire population. This is why some athletes are classified as “overweight” upon the BMI but registered as “superior” in the FFMI. The FFMI does account for body-fat percentage whereas the BMI does not (it is just a fixed average for men and women which hurts your ability to read yourself the farther an outlier you become) (PMCID: PMC8920809). The FFMI is superior and should be used alongside BMI to create a fuller image to measure bodily health; used by scientists and the like. The contention that the BMI is therefore not true, or that people cannot use weight as a indicator of health is then false. BMI measures an entire population: an individual, however, should do all they can to measure their FFMI as well. The FFMI is a personalized snapshot of one’s body composition and provides much more information about one’s health than BMI alone could ever be able (PMID: 12831945).
There is an unhealthy obsession with both leanness and obesity. Interestingly, FFMI is a better predictor of future cardiovascular disease (assuming over what is healthy) than BMI; whilst BMI is a better indicator of current risk according to study,
”We make two major conclusions from these analyses:
Our data support that BMI is a stronger predictor of CVD mortality compared with accurate measures of adiposity, such as BF% and FMI. This suggests that the simple and inexpensive measure of BMI can be as clinically important measure or even more than total adiposity measures assessed by accurate, complex and expensive methods. Another major conclusion of this study is that FMI is a more informative measure of future CVD prognosis than is BF%. This has direct implications for clinical settings.
Considering a very high BMI as an indicator of an excess of body weight (normalized by height) and FMI as an indicator of an excess of BF (equally normalized by height), the results presented in this study suggest that an excess of body weight is a stronger predictor of CVD mortality than is an excess BF. In addition, our results support that an excess of FFM, and specially FFMI, is also associated with a higher risk of CVD mortality (as much as an excess of BF), which could explain why BMI (the mathematical sum of FMI + FFMI) can be a stronger predictor of CVD mortality than fat mass alone.”
(PMCID: PMC4821662)