On May 2, 1964, the Giants played the defending World Champion Dodgers at Chavez Ravine. In the 9th inning, Dodgers pitcher Joe Moeller had a 4-2 lead and looked to get the complete game victory.
Willie McCovey led off the inning with a walk. Up next was the new Giants left fielder... Duke Snider.
Yup... The Duke of Flatbush actually finished his career as a Giant. The whole "Willie, Mickey and the Duke" trio once had two of them as teammates.
Snider was not a member of the Dodgers when they won in 1963. The Mets, hoping that his presence on the team would boost the box office. After a year of calling the Polo Grounds his home and wearing the N-Y logo on his hat, he was sold off to the Giants in 1964.
So up he stepped in 1964 and hit a line drive home run into the Dodger Stadium seats and tied the game up.
A lot of people have written to me wondering why I haven’t written more recently about the Red Sox. We are on the eve of what could be a great season. It seems like everyone and their moose are picking my boys to win the Division and many others see them winning the pennant and even the World Series.
I am super excited about the season, but I also know the danger of sky high expectations and I am guarded.
No this isn’t fatalistic Red Sox fan being pessimistic. Those days ended for me in 2004 and 2007. But this is a movie watcher with his guard up. I have been to too many films that I felt were going to be awesome to only to be let down.
I can’t help but think that this Red Sox season could be like one of those films. A film that I kept watching the trailer over and over and getting myself pumped up, only to have wildly varying end results.
So which movie that I was overly excited for will the 2011 Red Sox mirror?
Will they mirror Superman Returns?
The Excitement… Bryan Singer had done a great job with the X Men movies but I never cared about Marvel comics growing up. But I did love Superman and Superman II. He was going to put love and care into a new Superman movie, complete with the John Williams music, a Christopher Reeve dead ringer in the lead and Marlon Brando’s voice as Jor-El. The trailer was awesome. Hellllllo Childhood!
Did it meet expectations? Nope. Right from the start I felt like something was wrong. Even the opening Whoooooshing credit sequence with the original score didn’t work. And the film was super dull, super lame and had so many plot holes I wish I could spin the Earth backwards and make it never happen.
The 2011 Red Sox equivalent – If the Red Sox stumble out of the gate in the first game, never get back on track, be completely boring by June, crawl to the ending and find out they somehow had a 5 year old son, then it will be the Superman Returns of baseball seasons.
Will they mirror Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace?
The Excitement… Are you kidding me? Star Wars was coming back! Lightsabers! Obi Wan Kenobi! We were promised cool young Jedi in action for more than 20 years. Even if it sucked it would be awesome. My brother and I paid full admission to Meet Joe Black just to see the trailer.
Did it meet expectations? Man I wanted it to. Man I squinted my eyes, ignored the problems and kept thinking “Oh boy. This is going to get awesome ANY MINUTE NOW!” And every once in a while something cool would happen. But there was a lot of Jar Jar… and the little kid… and a story that made no sense… and after some serious denial there was no other conclusion. It sucked.
The 2011 Red Sox equivalent… The Red Sox play just above .500 but lose a lot of close games and all the fans think “Any minute now this team is going to take off.” And despite a no hitter that is undeniably cool, the team just stumbles towards a confusing and unsatisfying ending. And super prospect Anthony Ranaudo is brought up from the farm and says “Yousa think our pennant chance is gonna DIE!”
Will they mirror The Royal Tennenbaums?
The Excitement… The makers of Rushmore were making a great ensemble piece. Bill Murray was back but this looked like it was going to be Gene Hackman’s film to carry. The trailer that mixed Simon and Garfunkel the Ramones was fabulous. No doubt a classic movie was about to be unveiled.
Did it meet expectations? Frustratingly no. Gene Hackman was terrific as was Anjelica Huston. In fact the film wasn’t bad, just agonizingly uneven. Plus the quirky style and attention to detail that made Rushmore so great felt forced here.
The 2011 Red Sox equivalent… They get an MVP performance from Kevin Youkilis and a Cy Young performance from Jon Lester, but the season is filled with too many dull stretches and losing streaks. Plus they play too many songs by Nico on the Fenway Park P.A. system.
Will they mirror The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring?
The Excitement… A major studio handed the reigns to an expensive franchise to a looney like Peter Jackson? I was never a Tolkien fan growing up, but the clips of the film looked amazing and the pre release buzz was so great that I actually read the damn book before I saw it. After being burned on the Star Wars Prequels, maybe Jackson would get it right.
Did it meet expectations? Well it was good. Parts of it damn good. And Ian McKellen was awesome and it is always nice to see Liv Tyler. But did it have to be that LONG? How many conferences did we have to have with elves, and hobbits and dwarves and Viggo Mortensen? Frodo has the Ring. They need to throw it into a volcano. Let’s get moving!
The 2011 Red Sox equivalent… The team wins the Division, but each games lasts 4 hours because of fouled off pitches, bullpen changes and arguing with the umps. The season has an unsatisfying ending but we are assured in two years it will all come to a conclusion. Sox fans wonder why they have to wait that long. Meanwhile Dustin Pedroia plays the season with no shoes and big furry feet.
Will they mirror Batman?
The Excitement… All throughout the 1980s, my brother and I were dying to see a live action Batman film that was dark and sinister like the comics. And while Michael Keaton seemed like an odd choice to play the role, the preview made us both jump out of our skins. We dutifully bought the Batman t-shirts like everyone else.
Did it meet expectations? The amazing opening credit sequence with Danny Elfman’s hair raising score led to the “What are you?” “I’m Batman!” confrontation on the roof. How could it get better than that? It didn’t. There were individual moments that were terrific and Jack was on his game. But what was the plot? And why did they have to climb up the Cathedral? The look was cool then but didn’t hold up over time.
The 2011 Red Sox equivalent… They start off with a 15 game winning streak and look unbeatable. And the stars play amazingly well. Then the team cools off, plays without focus and Francona makes a series of bizarre choices at the end of the year that hamstring the team’s playoff chances but he keeps making them over and over. And Vicki Vale is brought into the Red Sox clubhouse for no reason.
Will they mirror Inception?
The Excitement… In a summer filled with duds (Jonah Hex? The A-Team? The Sorcerer’s Apprentice?) Christopher Nolan looked like he was coming to the rescue. The previews were awesome. The cast top notch and the effects looked staggering. And early reviews said it was smart and thrilling. How could it go wrong?
Did it meet expectations? The film was so confusing that this College Humor short easily pointed out the plot holes and jolts in logic. The film would have been better if it were a comedy where the confusing parts could be laughed away. But how boring were these people’s dreams? If Leo didn’t jump into them with his own anxieties, they’d be just dreaming of being in a hotel lobby!
The 2011 Red Sox equivalent… The Red Sox look good on the field and do lots of flashy highlights. But they make so many strange decisions throughout the season that you wonder if Terry Francona had lost his mind. Why is David Ortiz leading off? Why is Lester taken out after three innings? Why are they pinch running for Youkilis in the 4th? And why is Francona spinning that damn top before each pitching change?
Will they mirror The Godfather Part III?
The Excitement… The Godfather! Part 3! I mean what more do you need? The first two films were two of the greatest movies of all time. There were rumors of a third one for a decade and a half. Now Coppola was going back to the Corleone family and he was going to re establish himself as the maestro of American movies. We saw it on Christmas Day, ready to be wowed.
Did it meet expectations? Not even close. Andy Garcia is great. But it wasn’t The Godfather! Replacing Robert Duvall with George Hamilton? Was Richard Dawson not available? And yeah, Winona Ryder had a breakdown, but was there no other actress available other than Sofia? Plus Anthony Corleone’s character was being built up since the first movie as important. But in this movie he is reduced to singing an opera? Also Al Pacino was no longer silent Michael Corleone but doing a full screaming Tony Montana with his greatest role.
The 2011 Red Sox equivalent… The team goes on some nice winning streaks, but some key players go down to injury and are replaced with inferior talent. The end of the season drags out and Francona inexplicably brings his own daughter out of the bullpen. Tim Wakefield is talked out of retiring and grumbles “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
Will they mirror No Country For Old Men?
The Excitement… After a few subpar efforts from the Coen Brothers (Intolerable Cruelty? The Ladykillers?) they looked like they were back in form. The trailer was nothing short of heart attack inducing and the reviews could be described as orgasmic.
Did it meet expectations? I think so. I mean 98% of the movie was one of the best movies I have ever seen in my life. It was lean, tense, dark, sickly humorous and yet terrifying. Josh Brolin was underrated in his emotionally muted performance. Javier Bardem was one of the scariest characters I ever saw. And of course Tommy Lee Jones as expected brought his A Game. But then the ending was oddly anti climactic. I didn’t mind that I never saw the final confrontation. The Coens are masters at off screen violence. But it just kept going… and going… and long after I stopped caring Tommy Lee Jones was having breakfast. And it ended and I thought “Um… that was great… but….”
The 2011 Red Sox equivalent… They come out of the gate strong and never look back. They take the Division and it isn’t even close. They get a Cy Young performance out of Jon Lester and the rest of the rotation is terrific. They get MVP caliber performances from Pedroia, Crawford, Youkilis and Gonzalez. In the playoffs they stampede past the A’s in the Division Series and Minnesota in the ALCS before facing the Phillies in a thrilling World Series. And in the bottom of the 9th of Game 7 of the World Series, the Red Sox win when Brad Lidge commits a balk. And replays show that it wasn’t a balk. So there is a celebration and the Red Sox are champs, but the ending just doesn’t feel right.
Will they mirror The Dark Knight?
The Excitement… It sounded like the Batman film my brother and I were waiting for our whole lives was finally coming out. After the inconsistent Tim Burton films and the vomit worthy Joel Schumacher movies and Christopher Nolan’s fine if flawed Batman Begins, this one looked like it got it right. No more origin story. No more trips to Asia. Now it was Batman in Gotham City, working with Jim Gordon and fighting the Joker and Two Face. And if the rumors were true, Heath Ledger would make us all forget Jack Nicholson. The trailers looked cool and I let my guard down and allowed myself to get excited.
Did it meet expectations? You bet. The story was intense. The acting solid. And the actions scenes were exciting and not all computer generated cartoon scenes. And every scene with The Joker was funny and terrifying with an edge that even Jack couldn’t match. And the ending confrontation with Two Face had me legitimately wondering how the whole movie would turn out. How many summer blockbusters can you say THAT about? OK the Cell Phone subplot was unnecessary, but who cares? It rocked.
The 2011 Red Sox equivalent… The Red Sox win a see saw battle with the Yankees for the Division and Carl Crawford is so great that you forget the crazy performance of Manny Ramirez. They get through the playoffs without playing any team that the Red Sox fans truly care about. No Yankees, no Rays, no Angels. Maybe they beat the White Sox and the Rangers. Then in the World Series against the Rockies it is tight and anyone’s series. But they pull it out and celebrate a World Championship. When Adrian Gonzalez looks muted in his celebration, he is corned by Jonathan Papelbon who asks him “Why so serious?”
Will they mirror GoodFellas?
The Excitement… After sharing laughs with Jerry Lewis, getting lost in SoHo with Griffin Dunne, playing pool with Paul Newman, making short films with Woody Allen and Francis Coppola and tempting Jesus Christ, Martin Scorsese was going back to his violent roots. He was back working with DeNiro, reunited him with Joe Pesci and brought in Ray Liotta fresh off of Something Wild and Field of Dreams. The preview looked terrific, shockingly even better than the trailer for The Godfather Part III. My guard was down and I was ready to be blown away by the master.
Did it meet expectations? No. It shattered them. Of all the films listed here, it was the only one that I saw with sky high expectations and walked away thinking “Man, it was even better than I could have possibly imagined.” There isn’t a single character in that film that isn’t memorable and quotable. Tiny moments became pop culture signatures. The film was as funny as any comedy I ever saw, as powerful as any drama and as tense as any thriller. The Copa scene and the Layla montage would have been enough. But it just kept getting better right to the end where Ray Liotta breaks the fourth wall. It is such a great movie that I could watch it WHILE I am watching it.
The 2011 Red Sox equivalent… The Red Sox win 105 games and do so with style and substance. At one point the Yankees look they are ready to make a big run. But Jon Lester just looks at them, takes a bad ass puff of his cigarette with Sunshine of Your Love blasting and takes care of them with a couple of devastating games. The final month and playoffs are frantic and jumping all over the place and not quite as fun as the first half but much more exciting. They make it all the way to the World Series. Despite some paranoia from everyone, they pull it out. Kevin Youkilis is told by Lester that he won the World Series MVP. Youk asks “Where is the trophy?” Lester points down an empty hallway. “Right there. On the corner… it’s over there.” Youk walks down the hall but senses something is wrong…
So the season begins tomorrow… and let’s hope there is a lot more Henry Hill than Superman.
As for the Yankees? Let’s hope they get their f*cking shinebox!
I expect your ALL to refer to your team that way all season. It doesn't matter how many times you say "Giants" in a sentence... you need to call them by their full name.
"The Defending World Champion San Francisco Giants are playing today. Batting lead off for the Defending World Champion San Francisco Giants will be Andres Torres. Then Freddy Sanchez, the secondbaseman for the Defending World Champion San Francisco Giants..." etc etc.
You never know when you will be able to use that title again. And until they are eliminated, savor it... fans of the Defending World Champion San Francisco Giants.
Look at this card from the short lived Senior Professional Baseball Association. Former Pirates second baseman Dave Cash was trying to prolong his career.
Yeah I know it is early. It isn't even April. So with 161 games left to play, why is this game between Cincinnati and Milwaukee so important?
It is true that there is a lot of time to make up this one game deficit. But these two teams could be two of biggest contenders for the National League Central crown. And guess what? If these two teams go down to the wire, every game in September will be precious.
And if Milwaukee loses the division by a game, I am sure a game where they hit homers with the first two at bats of the season and had a 3 run lead in the 9th to the Reds then coughed it up will be a sore spot.
The games count as much now as they do late in the season.
You had better get your act together, Brewers. The Reds magic number is down to 161!
Tommy John has such a pleasant sounding name. And he had a long durable career. But wow, hearing his name is you are a pitcher must be liking hearing the reaper knock on your door.
Now Tommy John's specter looms over Adam Wainwright and also the entire fate of the St. Louis Cardinals.
Wainwright's season might be done with. And with the Reds and Brewers looking strong for 2011, the Cardinals hopes to win the Division might be sliced along with Wainwright's elbow.
That would mean the Cardinals' best hope (the 1-2 punch of Wainwright and Carpenter in the rotation) would scrapped.
And with Carpenter at the end of his contract (he has an option and a buyout for 2012), he might be the best available pitcher at the trade deadline. No doubt the Yankees will be willing to pay with top prospects after losing out on Cliff Lee last year. The Red Sox would get into the mix if Beckett, Dice-K or Lackey flop. Maybe the Phillies want FIVE aces.
Either way they will get a key piece for 2012 and beyond.
But what about that beyond? In case you haven't heard, Albert Pujols' contract is up at the end of the year, and all indications are showing he is going to be a free agent.
If the Cardinals have a flop season and wind up dealing Carpenter, would Pujols want to stick around for the rebuilding? Or would he want to reinvent himself and create a new challenge elsewhere. There will be some crazy owner who will shell out $25-$30 million a year for Pujols. He knows it. You know it.
And would you turn that down to rebuild?
Wainwright needs his elbow reconstructed. When he won his 20th game last September 24th, little did any of us know that it could have been his last with Albert Pujols as a teammate.
One foregone conclusion about tonight's Oscars is that Christian Bale is going to win the Best Supporting Actor award for his performance in The Fighter.
He's terrific in the film and he does everything you'd expect in an Oscar performance.
He is electric when he is on screen, stealing the spotlight from the star (the underrated performance by Mark Wahlberg.)
He does an accent. (A flawless Mass-Hole voice!) He plays an addict. (Always Oscar bait.) He does a physical transformantion. (He looks like he should play The Riddler, not Batman.)
All of the stats are there for him.
While I would not be upset if Bale wins (as I said before, he IS marvelous in the film) I would argue that the award should go to Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech. Seeing that this is Sully Baseball and not Sully Oscars, I will make my case with a baseball analogy.
Rush, who already has an Oscar on his mantle for Shine, brought the quality of The King's Speech up merely by his presence. Without his performance as Lionel Logue, that movie is just a made for TV movie with compressed history and a lot of people saying expositional dialogue.
But Rush turns what could have been a big pile of nothing (a spoiled man stutters... I hope he doesn't!) into a funny, engaging drama.
It's kind of like the season that Kirk Gibson had with the 1988 Dodgers. Or Terry Pendleton's season for Atlanta in 1991. Both players joined a team that looked rudderless and a mess the year before. They both brought a sense of professionalism to the clubhouse.
The entire team raised the level of their game. Improbably the Dodgers won it all with Gibson getting big hit after big hit (including the greatest home run in World Series history.)
Pendleton's Braves went from last to first and took Game 7 of the World Series to extra innings. (If Lonne Smith hadn't falled for a decoy play, Pendleton would have driven in the go ahead run.
Both players won the MVP even though they didn't have the flashiest stats. Darryl Strawberry or Kevin McReynolds put up gaudier numbers than Gibson in 1988. And Barry Bonds on paper looked like the winner over Pendleton in 1991.
And both players had lots of help from their teammates. Orel Hershiser had one of the great pitching seasons of all time in '88. And Tom Glevine was the 1991 Cy Young winner.
But the Award looked justified because of the clear influence those two players had on their entire team.
Kind of like Geoffrey Rush. Of course he had help. There were great performances by Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce and Michael Gambon among others. And the techincal qualities of the film were fine, if not spectacular.
But the film has become an unlikely box office hit and will probably win the big prize. And I think that Rush, like Gibson and Pendleton, raised the quality in ways that is greater than the stats.
Cristian Bale is like Strawberry, McReynolds and Bonds. He has the stats and I understand why he'll probably get the award. But Rush? He's got the intangibles.
He gets his uniform dirty. And if he wins the Oscar, lots of people will say "I can't believe what I just saw."
The USA Today 2011 Baseball Complete MLB Preview is available at fine bookstores and probably some not so fine ones as well.
If you turn to page 30, there is an article called "NO GIANT STREAK."
Guess who wrote it?
No guess!
Yup, yours truly has an article in the magazine.
Essentially I wrote about why I don't think the Giants are going to repeat as champs. (Sorry dad.)
I like to think that baseball fans across the country are reading an article that I wrote while sitting on the john.
I can think of no bigger honor for my writing as this blog is hard to bring into the bathroom.
So pick up a copy and help me out with another little potential obsession.
That's me holding up my copy with the cover for Southern California.
The cover highlights the Dodgers and Angels, 2 teams that went 80-82. And oh yeah, there are pictures of the 97 loss Arizona Diamondbacks and the rebuilding Padres.
Clearly this is the Southern California cover.
So do me a favor, dear friends of Sully Baseball:
Buy a copy of the magazine. I don't get a penny of residuals, so I am not doing this to send my kids to Cal Tech.
I want to see what the different regional covers are.
Send me a picture of you with the regional cover and I'll post it on the blog.
And if you have a blog, I'll link the blog.
So let's see how many different covers I can post before opening day!
I could very easily write a second blog called “Sully Oscars” but I’m spending a wee too much time writing THIS blog to do a second one.
But I do want my predictions in writing and out there for all my readers to see.
I like the 10 picture nomination change. It gives the Oscars a better cross section of the movies of the year.
This is an interesting Oscar year. A lot of years you have heard people whining that there aren’t enough mainstream hits being nominated (blame the studios for not making enough Oscar worthy films.) But this year with films like Black Swan, The Fighter, True Grit and The King’s Speech, you see a lot of Oscar bait have become big money makers even before the Awards are handed out.
Mix them up with some mainstream hits like Inception and Toy Story 3 and indie fare like The Kids are Alright and Winter’s Bone and you have a pretty interesting line up.
(And of course there is the obligatory “Man who cuts his damn arm off” movie in 127 Hours.)
All that being said, Toy Story 3 is still the best movie of the year… but who is counting?
Here are my predictions. These are not the films I think SHOULD win but what I predict WILL win.
Let’s see how I do:
BEST PICTURE - The King's Speech BEST DIRECTOR - Tom Hooper - The King's Speech BEST ACTOR - Colin Firth - The King's Speech BEST ACTRESS - Natalie Portman - Black Swan BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - Christian Bale - The Fighter BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS - Helena Bonham Carter - The King's Speech BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY - David Seidler - The King's Speech BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY - Aaron Sorkin - The Social Network BEST ANIMATED FEATURE - Toy Story 3 BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM - Biutiful
BEST ART DIRECTION - The King's Speech BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY - True Grit BEST COSTUME DESIGN -The King's Speech BEST EDITING - The Social Network BEST MAKE UP - The Wolfman BEST MUSIC SCORE - The Social Network BEST ORIGINAL SONG - "We Belong Together" - Toy Story 3 BEST SOUND - Inception BEST SOUND EFFECTS EDITING - Inception BEST VISUAL EFFECTS - Inception
And yup, I make the Documentary and the Short Film predictions as well.
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE - Inside Job BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT - Killing in the Name BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM - The Gruffalo BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM - Wish 143
I know a lot of people think the awards will be split between The Social Network and The King's Speech, but I think the praise for The Social Network peaked. And I think The King's Speech will rampage for 7 Oscars and even have the upsets in the Director and Supporting Actress category. (Helena Bonham Carter has been an incredibly respected actress for a long time without a golden boy on her mantle. I think she'll get one over Melissa Leo, who was awesome in The Fighter.)
And I think the brilliant Roger Deakins will win Best Cinematography. You may not notice that award or know his name... but he was responsible for the photography in The Shawshank Redemption, Kundun, A Beautiful Mind and Revolutionary Road... all amazingly well shot movies.
And oh yeah, he has shot every Coen Brothers film since Barton Fink.
That would include Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, No Country for Old Men and this year's True Grit.
You are hard pressed to find a better body of work than that!
Either way, I am going to enjoy the Oscars. I always do. And as I do every year, enjoy my AMC Oscar segments.
The perfect body. We dream about it, we do crazy things in pursuit of it (Cabbage diet anyone?) and, despite all of the hard work, we rarely achieve it. Witness this conversation I overhead at the gym between two women:
(As a tall, thin and glistening woman walked by) "Oh, look at her. She's so skinny. She probably hasn't eaten since Clinton was president." "You know she's had work done — nobody could look that perfect without some help." "Listen to you talk! I would kill for your thighs." "Oh, please — look at these flabby things! And you're one to talk, Ms. Perfect Abs." "Perfect? Maybe perfectly awful."
These women looked amazing but, like many of us, they were so focused on their imperfections, they weren't seeing what I was seeing. And it's not just women who are hard on themselves. Men have their own issues too, as illustrated by this conversation between my husband and one of his buddies:
"Dude, I'm getting fat." "Dude." (Shrugging) "Let's go get a beer."
Whether you're a man or a woman, chances are you don't have the perfect body. Chances are even greater that you've done things to get the perfect body, such as leg lifts, crunches, squats, lunges, hours on the treadmill, hundreds of salads, thousands of glasses of water — all the while hoping that you'll finally get rid of those love handles or those chunky thighs.
What you've probably figured out is that all the exercise and dieting in the world may not be enough to achieve that perfection so many of us desire; we're still a product of our genes. The question then becomes, "How much can we really change and what do we do if we can't get that perfect body?"
How Much Can You Change Your Body?
We all approach our bodies differently. Some people scrutinize every detail to see what they have or haven't achieved. Others studiously avoid looking at themselves unless they absolutely have to. We see people at the gym or on the street and think, "Why can't I look like that?"
One reason is that many aspects of your body are determined by factors beyond your control, and that starts with your body type.
What's Your Body Type?
While we don't know the exact role genes play in what we can accomplish with our bodies, we do know that they determine basic body type. These body types have been broken down into three different categories:
* Endomorph - This body type tends to have a higher body fat, big bones and a slower metabolism. For that reason, it may be difficult to lose weight. * Mesomorph - With this body type, a person is more muscular and may have an easier time losing fat and gaining muscle. * Ectomorph - People with this body type tend to be lean and may even have trouble gaining weight due to a faster metabolism.
Most of us fall somewhere in between these different body types, which means that some of us will lose weight easily and quickly while others won't. There are also different body shapes: An apple shape is larger in the upper body, a pear shape is larger in the hips and thighs, an hourglass has a proportional upper and lower body with a smaller waist and an athletic shape is often thin without many curves. Depending on which shape you have, you'll likely have areas where you store excess fat, making those areas the toughest to change.
While we may think that the right combination of exercise and diet will give us the ideal body, we may be limited by our inherited body type.
So what does that mean for you? The truth is, no one can tell what you can or can't change about your body. You can lose or gain fat by burning more or less calories, and you can change the amount of muscle you have by lifting weights. You can control the calories you put in your body and the calories you expend with exercise and activity, but what you can't do is choose where you lose that fat or gain that muscle.
So what if you do everything right and you still have stubborn areas of fat you can't seem to get rid of? One option is, of course, plastic surgery, but I have a better idea: Instead of trying to change what may be out of reach, what if you changed your body image? What if you could forget about getting the perfect body and work on getting your perfect body? It all starts with learning to accept your body and working on some new goals for yourself.
Accepting Your Body
The idea of accepting your body just the way it is may seem completely foreign to you. In fact, it feels like the world around us is set on keeping us unhappy with our bodies. We constantly see ads, commercials and infomercials for diets, pills and gadgets to help us reshape every inch of our bodies. There are magazines with headlines promising solutions for everything from flabby abs to dimpled thighs. If you didn't know better, you'd think getting the perfect body is something we should all be working on day and night.
In addition, we may balk at the idea of body acceptance. If we accept our bodies, won't we become complacent? If we embrace our imperfections, won't we lose our motivation to exercise or eat right?
Actually, the opposite is true. Some studies have shown that a healthy body acceptance actually encourages us to exercise and eat right. The reason? People who are comfortable with their bodies emphasize function over appearance, so they eat more intuitively, eating foods that make them feel good when they're hungry. Meanwhile, people who diet because of body dissatisfaction are more likely to fail.
There are a number of ways to work on body acceptance, including learning how to be more aware of of your body. Exercise is also a great way to build confidence, get more connected and appreciate how strong you are. Learning how to shift your focus from the perfect body to a healthy body may mean setting new exercise goals. That's your first step toward body acceptance.
