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For those of you that read these blogs but have never been to Macclesfield (why, why would you do this?), there is a big hill next to the town known at ‘The Cat and Fiddle’.
Between here and Buxton, it climbs 1,200 feet in just a few miles.
So, at this time of year, it’s often covered in snow.
The weather, moving eastwards, passes over Macc, gets pushed up and covers The Cat and Buxton in a layer of the white stuff.
As my two oldest sons spend half their week with their mum on the other side of The Cat and Fiddle (and go to school there), I have to traverse it regularly.
As The Cat is sometimes closed, and parts of Buxton can be impassable, I’ll pop on the Buxton Weather Watch and Derbyshire County Council pages on Facebook to try and figure out a route through.
Invariably there are loads of comments along the lines of “2 inches of snow and the country grinds to a halt”.
And “Norway manages with 10x as much snow.”
Why Norway Deals With Snow Better than the UK
There’s an obvious answer as to why this is.
Norwegians spend several times as much on dealing with snow as the UK.
If we wanted similar levels of preparedness, it would cost.
Either redirecting money from elsewhere.
Or increasing taxes.
And their snow situation is fairly predictble.
We have more “variable winters”.
It’s not a fair comparison at all really.
A fairer comparison is with other countries with similar spend and similarly variable winters.
Belgium for example.
Unfair Fitness Comparisons
Us humans are very quick to make unfair comparisons. Including unfair fitness comparisons.
23-year-old FitPro guys who live with their mum comparing how how easy they find it to keep in shape with the weight loss journey of a 50-year-old women going through the menopause with 3 kids and a stressful job (for example).
Making their clients feel bad for struggling to do what they’ve always found easy.
Not a fair comparison.
But, like the UK could tweak what they do, having studied countries like Belgium (probably not Belgium)…………
We can all tweak what we do from studying how those we view to be like us have done it.
Improve Fitness by Learning from Others
It’s part of the reason we encourage interaction between members – in person and in the Facebook group.
If you are the said ’50-year-old women going through the menopause with 3 kids and a stressful job,’ then finding out how another ’50-year-old women going through the menopause with 3 kids and a stressful job’ overcame her exercise challenges, improved her eating habits and so on……….
Is waaaaaayyyyyyy more powerful than us saying what could be, essentially, exactly the same thing.
It’s that group journey.
The collective momentum of a group of like-minded people pulling each other along.
So, like it doesn’t make any sense for us to compare the UK’s snow response to that of Norway et al…………
It doesn’t make sense for you to compare your journey to someone whose life is very different to yours.
But……..
Like the UK can learn from Belgium and friends (still not Belgium)……….
We can learn from the experiences of others like us.
RISE Macclesfield Facebook Group
If you’re a member already, there’s plenty of them to be found in the Facebook group – ask away. There’ll be no unfair fitness comparisons. Promise.
If you’re not a member and you like the sound of that collective journey and support (and not just being made to feel bad because someone who was school football captain 5 years ago is in ‘better’ shape than you), then you have 8 days till the next intake. Find out all you need to know about RISE Macclesfield, and the personal training weight-loss journey you could be about to embark on at our no-pressure briefing meeting.
Much love,
Jon ‘Primarily cussing Belgium as Belgian friend reads these’ Hall and Matt ‘Tintin’ Nicholson
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RISE Macclesfield – myrise.co.uk
Serious transformations. Fun times!
Enter your details at myrise.co.uk for more information about what we do.
Or check out our monthly find-out-more meeting if you want to learn more about our free ’20lbs weight loss in 8 weeks’ and ‘Beach Body’ challenges –>myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting
