Finishing the dry, sweaty last mile of a half marathon is a huge accomplishment and a reason to celebrate. On the last leg of the 13.1-mile ride, I’m often treated to a celebratory beer, with people cheering and holding up signs, encouraging runners to put it down before they reach the finish.
Trust me, I love to celebrate after a long race like that, but I literally couldn’t drink a beer after two hours of racing.
More importantly, why is American culture so obsessed with the overlap between drinking and exercise? and can it be harmful? I think so. And I think it’s time we reconsidered the value we place on these two intertwined entities.
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Alcohol abuse
Last month, The New York Times published an alarming opinion column about the drastic increase in alcohol consumption by women that occurred during the pandemic. However, it was noted that this alcohol abuse was preceded by the lockdown: from 2001 to 2002 and from 2012 to 2013, there were almost 60% increase in women’s high-risk alcohol use and a nearly 85% increase in alcohol use disorder. These numbers are extraordinary and should not be ignored. Such an increase in alcohol consumption affects many facets of life, from parenting to health care to the economy.
To make matters worse, marketing teams have jumped at the chance to present alcohol as a reward or a tool to relax, especially for women. Take a look at the trend #WineMom popular tags or accounts like @mommywinetime. Do you want to buy a shirt that says, “Life is what happens between coffee and wine”? No problem.
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Marketing tactics that normalize drinking to cope with problems extend (pun intended) to the fitness world as well.
run with alcohol
If you do a quick internet search on exercise and drinking, you’ll find dozens of sports t-shirts”run rose repeat,” “will run for wine” or “weights and beer.” Check Instagram hashtags like #willrunforbeer either #wine workout and you’ll see tons of photos of smiling, sweaty jocks drinking glasses of a cold alcoholic beverage while lifting weights or running.
Looking back, scientists have known for at least the last 20 years that people who exercise also tend to drink more often:
►A 2001 study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that moderate drinkers were about twice as likely to exercise as their non-drinking peers.
►In 2015, one study found that days when people exercised the mostthey also tended to drink more afterwards.
►In a more recent study that looked at nearly 40,000 American adults, fit women and men were almost twice as likely to be moderate or heavy drinkers.
For some time now, it seems that exercise and alcohol have gone hand in hand.
Higher rates of alcohol consumption
Finally, there is the social aspect. And hey, I get it. It can be so much fun to celebrate with cycling friends with margaritas after a ride or with teammates after a volleyball win.
However, America takes drinking and exercise a long way. Americans are known to have a lot higher rates of alcohol use compared to other countries. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 6 American adults drunkenness drink, with 25% doing so at least weekly.
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In fact, since 1999, the The number of alcohol-related deaths in the United States has doubled.which makes alcohol one of the main drivers of decreased life expectancy.
Toxic Training Culture
On the exercise side of things, we know that America has become fascinated with extreme fitnessand fitness culture in general. Back in the 1950s, my dad said that no one thought about “exercising” or going to a gym. You played sports, ran with your friends, and were active in other ways. Even in the 1980s, Jane Fonda painted exercise as fun and it could be done with colorful leggings.
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Now, however, the fitness industry has grown to an estimated $97 billion industry. More and more every day elite gyms emerge, fueling endless boot camp-style classes and high-intensity interval training that promise to push our bodies to their extreme limits.
Oh! So we know America has problems with alcohol and exercise, and now there’s a huge overlap between them: a toxic culture that continues to grow.
I think it’s time we took a hard look at this situation. In a society that values both drinking (in excess) and exercise (also in excess), is it certain that we have now combined them? This means increasing the damage to our body from excess alcohol, the damage to our body from extreme fitness, and the competition that is exhausting. How long do we want to continue paying $40 for 100-degree hot yoga, obsessing over achieving an idyllic fit body and running races where we have to drink a beer every mile?
Maybe some people want to go for it. But I ask that we at least reconsider whether this is going in a safe direction.
I hope that at some point we can approach both drinking and exercise as something in moderation, something enjoyable, something that adds a bit of satisfaction to our lives. It’s not something I have to wear on my jersey, proclaiming I’ll only run if there’s pink in it.
Annika Olson, deputy director for policy research at the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin, is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project. Follow her on Twitter: @annika_olson7
