A friend of mine has recently gone from being a very healthy guy to deciding he wants to be the healthiest man ever. Suddenly his calendar is filled with triathlons and, when not actually participating in triathlons, he is staying in shape for triathlons, because it’s not like you wake up one morning, grab a few Krispy Kremes for breakfast, and decide, “I feel like traveling a ridiculously long distance as fast as possible today without using my car.” I recently took a trip with him to Chicago to visit a mutual friend and, our first morning there, he popped in his daily workout DVD and then spent the next hour and 15 minutes exercising (the highlight: when the workout commanded him to do pullups he began scrambling around the apartment searching for structures to support his weight, while I noted that our hosts probably wouldn’t appreciate him ripping their shelves from the wall in his desperate attempt to ensure he maxed his workout benefits by ripping off 15 before his body started to cool down).

On the flip side, I have friends who are overweight. Actually, not overweight: fat. When I say fat, I don’t mean, “Your body is not as aesthetically appealing as it might be.” I mean, “Oh my lord when you got in the Range Rover suddenly we sank six inches.” They inspire not contempt (at least from me), but genuine concern, to the point where you’re hanging out and they say, “So what do you feel like doing tonight?” and you immediately reply, “How about riding the Elliptical for a few hours, then getting some tofu? Yay!”

I feel like most of America is starting to fall into these two extremes. People have abs or they have a gut; at some point, the mere belly shall be lost entirely. And the thing is, I don’t think there’s a reason for either end of the spectrum. Unless you’re planning to get lost in the wilderness for a month or two, being overloaded with body fat seems of limited value. (Even then, I’m not sure the message your bloated frame sends is “Nature, I am ready for your challenges” so much as, “Hey, faster creatures, guess who’s edible? This guy!”)

Yet my friend who’s in great shape is…a writer. Yeah. This is a job that calls upon a person to be fit enough to type, rise up from one’s chair to get something to eat and use the bathroom (often on the same trip), and, if you’re working from home, masturbate until the boredom passes. I also write and never did I say, “Man, thanks to my ability to swim six miles before riding a bike, I think that piece was mostly spelled correctly.” Do I find going for a walk or doing something else physical is a good way to jumpstart the brain? Yes, but at the same time I doubt an editor would have any sympathy if I told them, “I was about to get the article in ahead of the deadline…when suddenly I felt an overwhelming need to lift heavy things. So I did. The end.”

Related to this, there was once was a time of trade-offs. Women who had larger breasts tended to be a bit heavier, because that’s how the human body works. Guys could go for big boobs or they could seek out stick figures, but they couldn’t have both. Surgery and ridiculously specific workouts have changed all this, to the point that the little girl who will grow up to be an exact anatomical match for Barbie has probably already been born (and shall receive her first liposuction any moment now). And thus we lost the time when men — and, more importantly, women themselves — had more reasonable standards for feminine beauty, with the result that people could blow off spin class to have a Grand Slam at Denny’s without having to book extra appointments with both their trainer and their therapist (for the guilt).

(There isn’t an exact analogue to this for men, except to note that at one point it was understood if a woman wanted her guy to have ridiculously well-defined abs she would just have to understand and accept that her boyfriend was secretly gay, with the result that going to bed with a man for the first time and discovering a complete lack of definition was demoralizing yet comforting all at once. Thanks for ruining it, Ryan Gosling.)

Extremes seem to be catching on throughout the culture, particularly financially. On the one hand, there are people working 90 hour weeks as investment bankers hating every minute of it but pressing on because “While making ten million dollars left me feeling oddly empty inside…I’m pretty certain that eleven million will do the trick.” On the other, folks are deciding, “You know what? Gainful employment’s overrated; I’ll be in my parent’s basement for the next 50 years if you need me.”

There must be a middle somewhere in this.

To close, please google the name “D’Angelo.” You will discover a number of photos of the R&B star D’Angelo, who is now 37.

In some of them, from early in his career, he is shirtless and in such ridiculous shape that his stomach seems to have invented new muscles that did not exist previously.

In other, later pics, he looks like 300 pounds of goo stuffed into a bag meant to hold 150 pounds max.

I like to think that D’Angelo has found a balance between these: there’s many a night he’d rather have a nice meal than do crunches, but at the same time he’s able to see his feet. May we all be able to take this route and remember to eat a little less, not freak out as much when we can’t get to the gym, work hard but remember to leave the office occasionally, refuse to settle while keeping open minds, and remember that, no matter what shape D’Angelo’s in, the song “Brown Sugar” sounds the same damn way.

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