Proulx

An article was forwarded to me today that I couldn't help but comment on: this piece, which examines part of an interview with Annie Proulx, author of "Brokeback Mountain."

The main takeaway: Annie Proulx wishes she had never written "Brokeback."

The whole interview (found here) is actually very fascinating and informative, but the "I wish I'd never written it" comment is so interesting that it really warrants some analysis.

In summary--an incredibly dangerous phrase, I know--Proulx states that "Brokeback" has caused many problems because so many people misunderstood the story. They can't stand that it doesn't have a happy ending, so they rewrote it to have one. In a phrase most elegant: "They can't understand that the story isn't about Jack and Ennis. It's about homophobia; it's about a social situation; it's about a place and a particular mindset and morality."

This remark is really admirable. Proulx is accurately identifying a societal phenomenon wherein people fail to engage with fiction. We as a society have been raised on simple stories, easy fictions, with happy endings galore, which has of course increased our demand for similar stories, but that also makes our fiction bland and samey. Not only does commercial fiction often fail to engage us on a deeper level; we also lose our ability to engage deeper material ourselves.

This is an utterly horrifying reality, of course, and I appreciate the way Proulx has characterized it. But there is still some contention to be had about the whole "I wish I'd never written it" thing.

Mostly I just think Proulx is missing the forest for the trees here. Lots of people fail to critically engage deep fiction, yes, but the problem isn't her story, it's people's inability to critically engage deep fiction. It's like wishing you weren't gay because society is intolerant of gay people. The problem isn't that you're gay. It's that society is a dick to gay people. 

I'm not sure that deep down Proulx truly wishes that she'd never written the story. It strikes me as a very exasperated, spur-of-the-moment thing to say, born not from ill will but from mere exhaustion.

But it does open the doors for some fascinating discussion. Confronting the fact that many people are accustomed to (and in fact seem to demand) easy, laid-back, happy-ending fiction is a scary proposition. It's unarguably a problem that deserves a remedy; books, movies, all the stories we tell, help shape the way we see the world, and I prefer a critical society that leans forward to one that lazily leans back.

At the moment, I'm considering the merits and demerits of what I can only describe as "tricking" people into consuming deeper fiction. Dress it up in the garb of commercial fiction so people will watch/read it, but then--masterfully, carefully--make the story inescapably engaging. I guess I'm of the opinion that there are some stories with which people can't help but engage. It's just not in their nature to seek them out initially.

But there are a lot of other possible solutions out there too.

Thoughts?



(On a final and unrelated note, I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Proulx's writing processes, especially that she write her endings first and then writes toward them. I've heard this advice a few times, and it definitely resonates with me.)

Establishment

Racism is not an action.

It is an establishment.

Recommended reading this week: http://newjimcrow.com/

Ranking the Harry Potters

BOOKS                                                                 MOVIES
Deathly Hallows                                                    Sorcerer's Stone
Goblet of Fire                                                        Prisoner of Azkaban
Order of the Phoenix                                             Chamber of Secrets
Prisoner of Azkaban                                              Half-Blood Prince
Half-Blood Prince                                                 Order of the Phoenix
Sorcerer's Stone                                                     Deathly Hallows 2
Chamber of Secrets                                                Deathly Hallows 1
                                                                               Goblet of Fire


Sorcerer's Stone is a delightful book, and it definitely gets props for starting the whole series off. When you go back to reread it, though, you notice a few clunks. The movie, though, is a masterpiece; it's visually ambitious, completely enthralling, true to the heart of the story, and it actually feels better on the screen than on the page, which shockingly few book-to-film adaptations are able to do.


The Chamber of Secrets movie carried over the same heart and charm from the first movie, which is why I rank it so high on my movie list. Again, it seems to work better on the screen than on the page. This is in small part to the fact that the second book is probably the worst of the books, although none of them can truly be labeled as "bad." It introduces us to the "mudblood" conflict that escalates throughout the entire series, but it also has some frayed edges: why can Percy the Prefect take points from Gryffindor? How exactly did Mrs. Norris come to hang from that torch bracket? And if only wizards can become ghosts, how are there ghost horses int he headless Hunt? Were they Animagi and still in horse form when they died?


Prisoner of Azkaban is where things start to get a little crazy. We got a new director for the film, which caused a lot of changes, but the new aesthetic he brought to this film was engaging and fun, and combined with the interesting Dementor and Time-Turner effects, it's no wonder why so many people like this film best. The book is wonderful too, because it's the one that got parents' attention: this isn't just a kid's series anymore. A pivotal book and pivotal movie.


Goblet of Fire, however, is totally imbalanced. While I think Chamber is one of the best movies but worst books, Goblet is one of the best books, and a terrible, terrible movie. This is where Rowling really hit her stride, where she found her perfect voice and writing style, and she could write as much as she wanted because her audience was so enormous. The book was a masterpiece, and began to tip the series into a new direction, setting us up for a stunning finale. The film, though, was a mess. It's a big book to adapt to the screen, but the corners they cut were done hastily, not with care. Then the final product was Frankensteined back together with ten extra minutes of dragon-attacks-a-school-while-the-teachers-do-nothing-about-it and the whole thing just feels haphazard. The bottom line is that this is the film where you had no clue what was going on plotwise unless you'd read the book, earning it an F.


Order of the Phoenix carries a bit of the same terrible fate as Goblet of Fire, filmwise. It's hard to grasp the backstory on everything unless you read  the books, so the Fudge-goes-mad arc (and thus the inclusion of fiction's best villain, Umbridge) really does come out of nowhere. The film does retain a bit of that "It's like I'm really at Hogwarts" feeling from the first three movies, but significant pieces are still missing or glossed over. The connection to the characters began to wane in this one--the only genuine emotion you felt toward any of them was just anger at Umbridge and not much else, even Sirius. (Plus, that "something worth fighting for" line is just the worst.) The book, however, is easily one of my all-time favorites. A lot of people don't like how much of a jerk Harry became, but this story was integral to my personal growth as a teenager: seeing Harry act like a jerk, identifying so strongly with him, and the level of complexity and emotional depth in this book really helped me evaluate myself and start making a move toward become a more positive and healthy person.


Half-Blood Prince. The big "SPOILER!" book. Don't get me wrong, I love this book--but it does feel a bit like housekeeping. Most of it is just setting up for the Horcrux hunt in book 7, and while the concept of a Horcrux is such a great plot device that it makes me straight-up giddy, the final fight at the end did feel just a tiny bit contrived. As a movie, however, it was quite enjoyable, and the transition into the darker side of the franchise felt smooth and appropriate. This was the first movie that religiously attempted to stay true to the book since Azkaban, which was enormously refreshing.


Ah, Deathly Hallows. One of the best finales to any book series out there. There are a lot of series that stumble on the last installment--even a lot of trilogies can't get it right--but Rowling really delivered here. The epilogue is a bit much, but still, this is easily the best of the seven books. The movie, though, is in two parts. The first is all setup with no climax, and the second is all climax with no setup. Considering that the point of splitting the movie in two was to cover all the events from the book and really get it right, they glided over a lot of necessary information. Like the fourth movie, non-reader audiences were left saying "whaaaaa...?"


This fascinates me--that the difference in the medium can change how much I like a story. There's something very interesting lying at the heart of that, I think. It's really quite intriguing to examine the ways that stories have to change depending on the medium in which they're told.

My favorite example of this is an old Goosebumps book by R.L. Stein, My Best Friend is Invisible, where a kid named Sammy tries to convince his family and friends that he's being followed by an invisible boy named Brent. At the end of the book, Brent does become visible, and everyone is disgusted  that Brent only has one head, two arms, two eyes, and no tendrils or antennae or suction pods on his skin. That's an R.L. Stein twist for you--all the other main characters are aliens.

This is the kind of thing that just can't be pulled off in film, though. Seeing the aliens the whole time would ruin the effect. There is a Goosebumps episode for this book, but the ending was obviously changed around, and it just doesn't really work.

Looking at the Harry Potters, or any book-to-screen adaptation, is always really interesting to me for exactly this reason. When you have a story to tell, which medium is the best one to present it? What are the restrictions of each? Is there something inherent to a specific medium that makes translating it from one to another difficult or impossible? Looking closely at your favorite things to discover why they're your favorites is a really fascinating project, and that process of self-discovery is just one more reason I'm grateful for the Harry Potter series.

On Horror Movies

As it's October, a lot of my friends have been requesting that we have movie nights and watch Horror movies.

Most recently we watched Most recently we've watched Halloween. Before that, Scream. Before that, You're Next, and before that, Insidious.

Which means by now it's become a bit of a running joke that whenever somebody suggests we watch a horror movie, I start to groan.

This is not untrue. I try my best to hold back that impulse, but it's slipped out, probably more often than it should. My friends are awesome and I don't wanna bring things down with a bad attitude. I dislike horror movies, but it should be no big deal.

But that's the thing.

I don't just dislike horror movies.

I loathe them.

Which sounds like a fun blog. So here we go:

Three Reasons Why Horror Movies Are Completely Reprehensible

1) Baby Formula

     Everyone's heard the jokes that 'the first person to die in a horror movie are the ones who have sex' or 'the black guy always dies,' etc. There appear to be a lot of similarities between horror movies.

     Which makes sense. Because every single horror movie is exactly the same.

      The films all follow a very clear formula. Some group of people (often young adults) discover some spooky Macguffin (haunted house, Ouija board, book of the dead) and something started to haunt them, often killing them off in dumbest-to-least-sexually-adventurous order while they slowly dredge up the mystery surrounding the Macguffin, and once they've solved the mystery and possibly defeated whatever was haunting them, there's some twist ending. At one point this was original, but it's been plodded out so many times now that it's vomit-inducing.

     This is why The Cabin in the Woods is one of my favorite films. Though it masquerades as a horror film, it's actually an unabashed attack on the horror film genre. It shows you the horror formula and turns it on its head, forcing you to see how simple and mindless other horror films truly are, and then it one-ups them all with a game-ending third act.

     Formula has a lot of good uses. The Flintstones used the formula of a family sitcom to angle itself towards a unique style of humor. But formula has to be used purposefully, and horror films have been using it as a crutch. There's a significant lack of originality in modern horror films. It's not filmmaking by artists, it's just filmmaking by accountants; slap something on the formula machine to make a quick buck.

     Ultimately, it comes down to this: horror movies are in the suspense business. They're trying to scare you, and a big part of being scared is the feeling of suspense, of dread, of not knowing what's going to happen next. So why do they keep following the same formula over and over again? It's impossible to feel suspense when you already know what's going to happen. 

2) Moral of the Story

     One of the reasons this particular formula has stuck around so long is because it reinforces very particular moral lessons. Promiscuous characters are killed off, and only the responsible, virginal one ever makes it out alive? Better not be sexually adventurous then! A bunch of kids read from the book of the dead and then it haunts them? Curiosity is clearly killing the cat! These lessons particularly resonate with parents trying to get their rebellious teens to behave, so it makes sense that moviemakers, who are all parentally aged, would have a vested interested in producing movies with those kinds of moral warnings.

     The problem is that those morals are bull. Discovering sexuality is a huge part of becoming an adult. Exploring the world around you is how you find your place in it. Making mistakes is an essential aspect of being a human being. But these films make the argument that promiscuity will ruin you, and adventurous behavior could end your life. That's not a moral lesson, that's mental abuse.

     Basically, they're all doing this to you. (For the record, I don't recommend watching that video, because it's graphic and absolutely absurd, but it does illustrate the point.)

     Bottom line: horror movies are interested in force-feeding you very specific values, namely sex-negative and conform-to-social-order values, and those values are absolute garbage.

3) Flavor

     A little cinnamon in a dish really adds a lot of flavor.

     A mouthful of cinnamon makes this happen.

     Horror movies are the latter.

     A good storyteller is out to share a wonderful piece of art with the world. They have an amazing story that makes you think, that will shape the way you view the world. The genre of that story is completely arbitrary to them, completely after-the-fact.

     This is not how horror movies work. Their inception begins with "How can I scare people?" Which means the story become the arbitrary thing. their first priority is to scare you. The second is to tell a story. And that's completely backwards thinking. it completely devalues the entire point of telling a story, of sharing art with the world.

    Imagine we had a "Crying" movie genre. Movies made explicitly to make you cry. Not Dramatic films, mind you. Dramatic films focus on grandiose stories that somehow compel you or move you, and sometimes that might make you cry. But "Crying" movies aren't interested in moving you. They just do a bunch of stuff to evoke the tears.

    This would be ridiculous. But for some reason, when you replace "crying" with "scaring" it's somehow supposed to make more sense.

    This is the functional equivalent of starting a recipe with a pound of cinnamon and then figuring out what to mix it with. It's backwards. You'll get a truly terrible dish that way. Start with the main dish, the core, and add cinnamon here and there, to give it flair. That way it's a delicious dessert that just happens to have cinnamon, and the cinnamon really adds. Good movies can be made that just happen to terrify you, and the fear will really add to the experience of watching it. It'll just be a part of the journey you happen to go on in order to reach a brilliant conclusion. These kinds of movies can totally be made.

      But they aren't.

      (I should mention that there are many Comedies, Action films, Dramas, etc. that are made in this backwards way, but Horror movies are easily the worst offenders, because every single one of them is built this way.)



There's a reason I've been calling them Horror movies, rather than scary movie. To be perfectly honest, I don't think a single one of them is scary. They're formulaic backwards-thinking poorly-constructed tripe. Bottom line: the scariest thing about Horror movies is that people continue to watch them.




(For further interesting criticisms on the tragically disgusting genre known as Horror movies, I recommend the CinemaSins "Dear Hollywood" segment on How to Fix the Horror Movie Genre in 10 Steps. I particularly agree with #10.)

Top Wait

Today I took one of my best friends to a Magic: the Gathering tournament in Seattle: Standard States event (more info on it here).

We were psyched to play, but in the last round, something happened that made a lot of people unhappy.

The tourney had 100+ people and played  seven rounds. After those seven, they'd cut to the top eight players, who would all get big prizes and continue playing for 1st-3rd place, which would get them even bigger prizes. Pretty standard stuff. You play magic, you do well, you get prizes.

But when that final seventh round came, the top table was empty.

The players who were ranked 1st through 8th place didn't play the final round.

Each of them had won 5 rounds and lost 1. And what they all realized was that if they agreed to a draw with their opponent in the final round, they would have 5 wins, 1 draw, and 1 loss. Which would still rank them ahead of everyone else in the tournament who won 5 and lost 2 rounds.

So they didn't play round 7 because if they all drew, they were guaranteed a spot in the top 8, and guaranteed the big prizes. They were locked in, no matter how well anyone else did in the last round, even the guy in 9th place--which happened to be me.

Now I ended up losing round 7, so that's fine. It happens. But my opponent that round was 5 and 2. And my friend had lost his first 2 rounds, but won the other 5. And despite this, ,they still just didn't have a shot at getting Top 8. In round 7, the only people playing were doing it for the sheer pleasure of the game. (There were small prizes for 9th-16th place, so I guess people played for those, too, but they were small small prizes. One person said they were more like consolation prizes than anything.)

The thing that bugs me is this: At a Magic: the Gathering tournament, certain players were incentivized to not play Magic: the Gathering.

It was in their best interest to skip that round and get right into the big prize pool. If I were 8th instead of 9th place I'm sure I'd have done exactly the same thing. Why risk losing the round and potentially dropping out of the Top 8? Just skip!

But that's not Magic. That's not what Magic is about. Or even what sportsmanship is about. Forgive me if this sounds radical, but people who don't play games of Magic shouldn't win Magic tournaments.

But they did. And people were kinda bummed out. They grumbled. In my round 7, my opponent and I played next to an empty Top 8 table that should have been filled with excellent Magic players. As other people sat down for round 7, they all said basically the same thing: "Well, either of us can get Top 8, but good luck, I guess..." Even the judges running the tournament started round 7 by saying, "Well, for those of you who are playing, round 7 is starting now..." I spent the whole day playing excellent matches of my favorite game against truly skilled players, but I (and a whole bunch of other players) ultimately walked away feeling bitter about how the tournament ended up

The question, then, is this: how do you incentivize those players to keep playing? Under these circumstances, what makes it worth taking the risk to play that final round?

This conundrum throws me back to 2012, when Magic switched from the ELO system to the Points system. What they realized was that the ELO system (which rated players on how well they did in tournaments) actively discouraged players from playing Magic. Once a player had a high enough rating, they would stop going to tournaments at all, because if they lost subsequent tournaments, their ELO would drop, and they wouldn't be rated high enough to qualify for the Pro Tour anymore. They switched to the Planeswalker Points system because it gave points instead of ratings--you just needed a certain number of points to qualify instead, and that meant you could play all the tournaments you wanted without risking anything.

On a much, much smaller scale, this Top 8 "let's all draw" thing is incredibly similar. In both instances, the act of playing Magic is against your better interest. Which just feels wrong.

So what's the solution here? Is this a common problem, or just a fluke of numbers? Is it just a necessarily evil in tournament structure, or is there a similar "Planeswalker Points" kind of answer? I'm not sure, myself. It's a tough question to grapple with, but I think it's a valuable one. Because this experience truly did suck for a lot of people. Even the Top 8 players couldn't have been very happy that it was in their best interest to skip the round and wait. They want it to be in their best interest to play the game. That's why they came in the first place! So is there a better way to navigate this circumstance? I'm interested to hear thoughts on this.

Artistic License

I recently saw the movie The Maze Runner, one of the many film adaptations to come out of the avalance of post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction novels aimed at Young Adult audiences that followed in the wake of the success of the Hunger Games franchise. I'd read The Maze Runner already, and while the book honestly didn't do it for me, I knew the movie would be much more entertaining. It wasn't a groundbreaking film, but it was enjoyable enough.

This was the funny thing, though: While watching the movie, I felt that it would be especially enjoyable for the young adult readers who made it popular in the first place. But then I realized that the reason I was enjoying the movie so much was because of the places it chose to deviate from the original story. And this made me think that if I was a teenage fan of the book, and watched the movie, I might be devastated at the things they changed.

This is something I've encountered quite a lot, particularly because of the Harry Potter films. Growing up with those books and watching them come to life on the big screen was a simultaneously delightful and horrifying experience. The first movie was an absolute joy--it felt like I was actually in Hogwarts. My little preteen brain could hardly handle the excitement. But as the series continued, and the books became more complex, the movies started to suffer. Badly. Very, very badly.

At first I attributed this to the fact that the bad movies just didn't follow the books. Everything wrong with the movies was wrong because that wasn't how it happened in the book. This was a simple idea, and it stubbornly lodged itself in my mind for years. And to an extent, it's still true; many of the things that suck about the movies are things that deviate from the source material.

But, to borrow a popular phrase from the vlogbrothers, the truth resists simplicity. Saying "the movies are bad because they deviate from the books" assumes that the books are perfect. And assuming that the source material is perfect is a dangerous way of thinking; it fosters a very troublesome art-consumer relationship, wherein the consumer places the art on a pedestal, as if on display at a museum, to be seen but never truly engaged. And that's troublesome.

And as I said earlier, one of the things I enjoyed most about Maze Runner was the way it didn't stick strictly to the book. Given that the movie is still new, I won't go into spoiler-y level of detail on this. But luckily, there are still tons of other examples of films where I found deviation to actually improve the story:

--In the movie HAIRSPRAY (released seven years ago, so I don't have qualms about spoiling this) the big buildup at the climax of the show is whether Tracy Turnblad or her rival Amber VonTussle will win the Miss Teenage Hairspray Pageant. As it turns out, it's neither: Little Inez, a young black girl, wins instead, and since the rules dictate that the winner will be the lead dancer on the TV show, this forces the show to integrate nonwhite dancers. But in the original Broadway show, Tracy wins, and just announces that the TV show will integrate, because apparently when you win a pageant you get to dictate that kind of thing. It's pure cheese. In fact, it makes you wonder why Inez is even a character, because in the Broadway show, she honestly doesn't do a whole lot. Even if both the movie and show are campy, having Inez win is a surprising, charming, and flat-out better ending.

--The Avengers was a huge hit. It was fun, exciting, and all the buildup Marvel had been doing with the individual hero movies (Iron Man, Captain America, etc.) really ended up paying off. Audiences loved it. I loved it! But it needs to be noted--the Avengers in this movie aren't the original Avengers from the comics. In the original Avengers you have Ant-Man and Wasp and stuff, and there's no Black Widow in sight. And that's the point. This movie wouldn't have benefited from having an Ant-Man. Sticking to the original would have been detrimental, in fact. The moviemakers made the right call here, using the source material as a launch pad to jump off to bigger and better things, rather than letting it drag them down for the sake of tradition.

--And even the Harry potter movies made good calls on shirking events from the books. In the first book, Harry follows Snape into the Forbidden Forest on his broomstick, hides out in a tree, and overhears Snape and Quirrel talking about Fluffy and the trapdoor. In the movie, the same conversation happens, but while Harry is fleeing the library under his Invisibility Cloak, forcing him to hide and making him discover the Mirror of Erised. In the book, it's not Ron, but Neville who joins Draco, Harry, and Hermione for detention in the forest, after they secretly give Norbert to Charlie in the astronomy tower. The movie doesn't waste its time here. It glides over these points so seamlessly that when you reread the first book, you forget that these weird things actually happened. It's much cleaner, and that's a definite improvement.

Even though it may have taken my brain a long time to admit it, deviation isn't always a bad thing. In fact, it can be fantastic. There are moments when artistic license is an overall improvement on the story, and it's amazing.

It's worth noting, too, that artistic license is inevitable. Books and movies and plays and comics are all vastly different mediums, and the stories have to change, at least a little bit, as they transfer from one medium to the other.

The problem is that a lot (and I do mean a lot) of the times a movie changes things from the original material are bad, bad, bad, bad choices. In the fourth Harry Potter movie, we don't get to see the Quidditch World Cup, which is certainly sad, but the World Cup doesn't advance the plot much, so I can make my peace with this decision. But what we do get is a horrible, overlong, absolutely soul-rending sequence where a dragon chases Harry around Hogwarts on his broomstick and the teachers do nothing about it. In Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief nearly every single thing is different from the book, including the final bad guy. While it's nice they took out the weird 'twelve-year-old beats the God of War in a duel' thing, we also get stuck with an appalling plot thread where three kids try to find three magic pearls that can each transport one person out of the underworld, and then go into said underworld to rescue a fourth person and only then realize that they don't have enough freakin' pearls. And M. Night. Shyamalan's The Last Airbender is such a travesty that I can't even name all the problems with the things it changed.

And that's the thing: it's not just that things changed... it's that things changed and got replaced with crap.

(As a quick aside, it's fascinating to me that the director of the Percy Jackson movie and the director of the first two Harry Potter movies are the same guy. The first two Harry Potters are easily the most faithful book-to-film adaptations in the series, but it hardly feels like the people who made the Percy Jackson movie even read the original book.)

When it comes right down to it, changes are done because movies are made for a broader audience. They're not made for the fans of the books, they're made for everyone. Moviemakers are aware that they can't make the movie too complicated because the viewers who have never read the book would get confused. The problem is just when they dumb it down too much and eliminate the things that made fans become fans in the first place. Then the audience thinks the movie is dumb, and that the books are probably dumb too, and the original fans are stuck begging everyone else to please please please read the books because the story is actually really good, we promise, just give it a shot, but of course the non-fans already saw the movie, so why bother with the book, and everyone goes home unhappy.

If I was a teen now, and I had fallen in love with the Maze Runner books, I'm honestly not sure how I'd feel about the things they changed. Maybe I'd cling to the books and cry foul, or maybe I'd be able to see things more objectively and notice how things were improved. The movie adaptation of my favorite musical, Into the Woods, is coming out soon, and I'll be the first to admit that I've probably put that show on a pedestal. It's tough to be objective about things you love, and I have to remind myself that there's no value in blindly accepting originals as untouchable, unchangeable perfection. Moviemakers need to be careful about the things they change. They need to take the time to truly scrutinize the source material, and if they need to alter it, those choices have to be deliberate, artistic, and justifiable. But fans need to be careful too. Writers are frequently told to 'murder their darlings.' No matter how much they love something, sometimes it has to be cut for the sake of the story. The story is what matters. Which means that fans have to truly engage with the things they love so much, just as much as moviemakers. Sometimes we have to be okay with watching our darlings get murdered.

Tricking Your Body

Your body doesn't know anything.

This concept took me a little while to learn, but it's perfectly true. Your brain is fully aware that you're sitting at a computer reading a blog, but your body has no idea. All it knows is that you're sitting down and that it's comfortable and that you're wearing clothes. Hopefully.

This concept, that your body has no idea what's going on around it, has probably been the most important lesson for me in terms of fitness. Because it teaches you how your body thinks. And it lets you trick it.

Let's take the example of excess body fat. This is by far the most frequent fitness complaint. People like trim waistlines, so extra fat, especially around the stomach, can really distress people. But here's something to keep in mind, that can help ease that distress: when your body has excess fat, it's being nice to you. 

Even though you know where your next meal is coming from, your body doesn't have a clue. It doesn't know you have food stored somewhere. It thinks the last time you ate could actually be the last time you eat. So it has its own storage system. If you eat a lot of food, and your body doesn't need to use all the energy from that food right away, it's gonna hold onto that extra energy for you. Just in case. If the zombie apocalypse happens and food becomes scarce, it's got some energy stored up you can use.

That's really the key to all this: your body isn't trying to be a supermodel, it's trying to stay alive. Any meal could be your last. It only wants to use energy if it absolutely has to, because holding onto those extra calories might help you if you start to starve. It's not gonna burn away that extra energy unless you make it.

That's how you can trick your body when you work out. You have to realize that your body doesn't know you're in a gym. If you start lifting weights, it has no idea what you're lifting. All it knows is "OH S*** THIS IS REALLY HEAVY GOTTA LIFT GOTTA LIFT GOTTA LIFT!" If you go running, it doesn't know the difference between running on a treadmill and running away from a saber-toothed tiger. It just knows it's running, and lets your brain handle all that complicated "why" stuff.

Your body also doesn't know that all of this Working Out stuff is otional. It thinks its lifting a heavy weight because it has to to stay alive. If it doesn't lift the Heavy Thing, the Heavy Thing will fall on you, and that will be incredibly, incredibly painful. And your body really doesn't want that. Because your body likes being a body. It likes being alive. It likes Not Being In Pain. 

So you keep lifting the Heavy Thing. You go higher and higher weights. But eventually your muscles get tired. They can't lift the Heavy Thing anymore. Which signals DANGER DANGER DANGER in your body. Your body's like "WTF MUSCLES, YOU HAVE ONE JOB." But they clearly can't go on lifting the Heavy Thing. Which is a big problem for your body. It doesn't like that. Because it's worried now. What if you had had to lift a Heavier Thing? Or an Even Heavier Thing? It would have failed. The Even Heavier Thing would have fallen on you. It could have injured you. And that goes against the Not Being In Pain rule, which is just absolutely unacceptable. So your body tells your muscles to grow. To get bigger. Because it got lucky this time with the Heavy Thing. But next time it could be a Heavier thing, and your body wants to be ready. 

(This is also true for running. Your body thinks its running away from a Fast Thing, but what if next time it's an Even faster Thing? It's gotta get stronger to stay alive!)

This is how your body thinks. It hasn't got a clue what's really going on, so take advantage of it. Trick your body into thinking that it has to get stronger and faster, because if it doesn't, the Heavy Thing might fall on you. If it doesn't, the saber-toothed tiger will catch up to you and eat you. it's not easy, but damn, it's a lot of fun.