Telos Journal Edition Three October 2013 | Page 10

Tao of Exercise
Timeless Advice for Sustainable Fitness
Diet

and fitness are irremovably connected in activity. The manifestations of our

burned energy—our thoughts and actions—are made possible and specially defined
by our food and our particular aims.1 Our dietary discourse leads to and concerns our
ensembles of daily movements because eating is physiologically associated to craving,
appetite, and digestion, which are triggered by time and our eating events.
Our genetic heritages, and all our fears related, become in important ways dissociated
from us when we willfully choose and construct ourselves as active and creative
individuals who are in control of choices within our range of effectuation. We simply
cannot understand what we have merely been told or have not found indisputably
true, but we can at all times act so to maximize our unique expressions of self.
Lao Tzu explains in the Tao Teh Ching that the way of the sage, the undivided master of
individualism and self-possession, is the way of understanding the negative and positive
forces of inner and outer natures. Within our context, this means gaining an
understanding of how we personally store and burn energy, both in and out of our
bodies. The advice below thus does not contain a prescription for dietary supplements
or fitness regiments but will nevertheless classically help you implement an enduring
understanding of your body in your changing environments.
The propositions about eating and exercise below are therefore underlying expressions
not specific to yogis, swimmers, trekkers or any other athletic denomination. They are
simply meant for the refreshing self, the active you who wakes up everyday and
regularly examines life through personal insight, perception, experience, understanding,
and, of course, the lifestyle of your movements.

Proposition Five: Broaden the horizon of your sensations, one
experience at a time.
Spontaneously select a diverse multicolored range of global foods and food groups.
Remember that eating heirlooms that flow with the seasons reflects a more diverse and
nutrition-rich diet than eating many different food items that have traveled thousands
of miles that are raised on monoculture farms.

We should consider that calories themselves, not the word, come from specific and specifically
effectuating ingredients. The calories from a banana will affect your movements or work-out
differently than the calories of a cheeseburger.
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