We all have our preconceived image of the ideal athletic body. Watching the Olympics this past week, it dawned on me that even athletes, whom we may think of as having uniformly perfectly-shaped bodies, come in all shapes and sizes.
In support of my observation, I noticed that NY Times did a quick piece on the array of sizes that these elite and conditioned sports stars come in. What is fascinating to learn also is that the caloric consumption for a female sinewy marathon runner is very similar to a 335-pound, 6-foot-five inch Shot-Put Olymiad: 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day.
Yes, these are athletes who spend most of their waking hours intensely training and thereby burning off crazy-amounts of calories. But if you take this one step further, you can begin to understand how heredity and inherent metabolic factors may play a crucial role in determing how much someone can eat. And how much someone can or can’t eat affects how he or she looks.
The most refreshing aspect about the Olympics is that all of these athletes’ bodies are beautiful and perfect. The sheer power and ability that each of these glorious bodies possesses so that they can perform their skill with the strength and dexterity which has gotten them this far is inspiring and worthy of much more attention received by any rail-thin model or Hollywood Who’s Who.