#22 - Why Health & Fitness Is So Damn Hard
You wake up rolling over to grab your phone in the morning. The light blinds you like a 2:00 p.m. sunshine felt at dusk. As you are rubbing your eyes to take the stars out you navigate to Instagram. Opening right up to 3 posts about politics that just make you mad you keep scrolling… you’re cousin shares photos of her vacation… you see your last photo got 10 likes overnight… then you see a reel about breakfast being a negative start to your day and you should be intermittent fasting every morning.
“Well ok… no breakfast for me I guess”
You are pretty annoyed since you are heading to work a little hungry but that’s okay because the usual 20 minute car ride turns into 40 thanks to construction traffic… “so great”. You make your way into the day and now it’s lunch time. You head to the cafeteria where burgers, fried chicken, pizza, and pasta make up 85% of the choices. You could pick a very boring salad that comes with a side of way too much ranch dressing. You could pick the salmon with stir fry vegetable rice… but it’s $15… not including the water.
You disappoint yourself by picking the pizza.
You get to the car and head to the gym after work. You found a workout by your favorite fitness influencer to follow along to today so you are ready to work hard. You go in and kick butt… or at least you think you did… you didn’t record any of your workout… you don’t know how much weight you normally do…but you were sweating your butt off so that’s good right?
You go home sore… too sore.
Dinner time at home has arrived and what do you know? You don’t have any meat thawed out in the fridge so your dinner of choice becomes frozen chicken nuggets and the pint of ice cream that’s been staring a hole through your head for 5 days.
You go to bed… very down on yourself.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of moments everyday that you can fixate on if you choose to do so.
These moments do add up, for better or for worse; they count. There are the obvious things sure, like what you choose to eat and drink. If you dig a little deeper though, these moments (and many others) are much more about the noise bouncing around in your head than it is about your desire to do good.
If you are reading this then there is a good chance that you are a person who desires to live a healthier and stronger life (I can help with that click here). You don’t want to binge on ice cream after restricting yourself all day.
So you want to be better… but you have a hell of a time focusing in on executing a single plan.
STOP
Stop
This is where we put our work in.
I’ve spent enough time around people who have succeeded and failed at improving their health to know that it really truly does come down to a person’s commitment TO THEMSELVES.
The commitment to executing on the choices they make.
The commitment to accepting that things won’t always be easy.
The commitment to knowing it won’t always be fun.
The commitment to trading short term pain for long term gain.
Why is health & fitness so damn hard?
The truth is that the distractions that have insidiously creeped into every little nook and cranny of our lives have created this insurmountable wall standing in the way of what should be a simple approach to health.
Train hard. Eat your fruits and vegetables. Get more sleep. Avoid alcohol and drugs almost entirely if you can. Have a meaningful social life. All of these things I just said… do you really need me to tell you that? I don’t think you do.
We all know the macro level stuff on how to improve… it’s the micro that kills us everytime.
We want to exercise but we are busy playing video games. We want to cook but we went to bed late and forgot to put the meat in the fridge to thaw out. We want to stretch but we don’t want the discomfort.
There becomes this deluge of tasks we think we need to accomplish to make a 1% difference. If this is the equation laid out before you then sure this will all be very very very difficult.
But…
What if you chose to simply do one thing.
Just one thing.
Do the one thing until you get really, really, really freaking good at it.
Then move to the next thing.
Oh you’re in a rush you want results faster?
Too bad.
Seriously… too bad. You have lost the right to want things quickly.
You want success at your goals… do what you KNOW will get the job done.
That means not falling prey to the shiny objects that distract you.
I went off a bit there huh?
Well sometimes I get fired up writing this stuff because I know damn well the struggles that is getting stronger, losing weight, and wanting to love and respect myself.
So let’s all do ourselves a favor ok… pick the one thing… then do it.
