When we think of ‘Fitness’ we often have this imagery of individuals with toned bodies moving to the beat of heart thumping music doing burpees, push ups, pull ups and what not. Even if our bodies are presently deconditioned we feel the lure of that fitness we see. That imagery that feels so appealing & gratifying.
Demystifying the Imagery & finding some real drivers:
That 'Imagery' is just advertising - advertising to get you to the gym. And if you did fall for that & hit the gym, then 🙌 to the advertiser.
I am not interested in the advertiser, I am interested in you. So let's talk about you.
For a moment remove all of that imagery from your head and sit with yourself. Ask yourself, what your goals are for your own 'health & fitness'. May be some things come up like weight loss or building stamina or feeling stronger in the body etc.
Dig deeper to understand your own mindset & emotions around the goal. It's not usually just weight loss. Perhaps you seek body confidence, ability to fit into clothes of your choice, societal acceptance perhaps, or maybe you want to lose weight for more functional reasons like achieving hormonal balance, maybe you want to build strength so you are seen as someone who is strong & can independently take care of self, or maybe you just want to look good as you age (there is no right or wrong. If you feel it, you feel it. Just accept your current mindset and needs that you feel if fulfilled will make you happy). And for each of us these emotional needs will be different depending on our life stage. 10 years back if someone asked me this question, I would say, I just want to move in ways that feel enjoyable and make me forget about my worries. Today, I care about a lot more than enjoyment. My training is purposeful with clear goals and a willingness to do what needs to be done to achieve them, irrespective of whether the process is enjoyable or not. But I wasn't here 10 years back and maybe you are not here at this moment. Which is totally ok. But not knowing where you are & what you seek is not ok. So dig deeper into your motivations and emotional needs behind the goal. The more clarity you have, the better would be your choice of actions to take & the drive to achieve what you seek. So don't just stop at weight loss or getting stronger or building endurance.
Dig deeper.
Now that you have a goal and the emotional reasons behind it, let's face some life truths. And I bring this up because I see a lot of my clients going through this and suffering.
A. You need to honor your life:
Look into your lifestyle and see if you have the necessary time to devote to your goals. If you have young kids, is there someone who can take care of them when you train? Be sure about your availability.
I have seen many clients enroll for classes in enthusiasm, only to be constantly troubled by their young kids or continually getting disturbed with official calls. The reason why this happens is because they haven't honored their existing lifestyle to see if exercise even fits into their routine.
If a formal exercise program is not working for you at the moment, you can always start with 10-15 minutes of walking & stay consistent with it.
Bottom line: Honor your life. And choose action steps accordingly.
B. Life happens:
Even if you have been fairly clear about your availability to train and are committed, it is likely that you will face unforeseen situations like work or household issues taking precedence.
When this happens some people not just throw exercise out of the window but also the awareness of how they eat, sleep or deal with stress. It's like if they couldn't make it to class for a workout, they have failed. Nothing else is to work. To top this there are feelings of guilt. And they begin to realize the elusiveness of that imagery of a toned body doing 50 burpees.
Whether you want to hear it or not, regression and progression are going to be a continuous part of your ‘health & fitness’ journey. Sooner you learn to embrace it the better.
And just because you couldn't nail one aspect of your ‘health and fitness' journey due to whatever reasons (injury or poor health or work) does not mean it's all over. Drop the imagery and get real.
What’s more important is having ‘health consciousness', knowing how your actions contribute to your health, fitness and overall well being. And to do what you can to care for yourself when things get rough.
The Snare of our Society:
Our Society makes us feel like nothing is enough. We are told to do A, B, C, D, E, F, G to see results. A alone is not enough. And may be that is true. But this do A, B, C, D, E, F, G disregards the fact that we are human and some days we are going to fall short.
Even on days when there is no real emergency, we may just not be up for meeting every action step to see results. And that is reality.
So what do we do? Beat ourselves up and go to bed unsatisfied feeling like failures not making progress? Isn't that what we end up doing?
I am not saying that we should become callous in the way we approach our goals or take things casually.
No.
What I am saying is in our obsession with results we should not make our journey hard by forcing ourselves to do that which does not make us feel good (for the sake of results) or beat ourselves up for regressing. Neither of which serves us.
A Challenge:
I challenge you to losen your hold on the end results and instead begin the process of falling in love with taking care of yourself.
Start to see beyond these images of perfection that the world keeps showing you and asking you to strive towards. Challenge them and question their relevance in your life. Do this so you can find a path for yourself that doesn't make you feel less.
We deserve to go to bed feeling good about ourselves. And anything we do for our health and well being, even if is 10 minute breathwork to calm our nerves, CAN be enough.
A little game for the month of March:
As we approach a new month, I invite you to join me in being playful about this process of self care.
Intention behind the game : The idea is to kick-start the process of falling in love with taking care of ourselves.
May be you already have a ‘health & fitness' routine going or may be you don't. Doesn't matter. Join in if you like.
I am sharing with you a list of daily self care goals that I could think of. I have divided it into 4 categories : Nutrition & Hydration, Sleep & Rest, Exercise & Activity , & Stress Management for ease of ideation. You can create your own list or use this one. Feel free to add some of your own ideas under each quadrant. Take a print out and paste it where you can see. You can also get your family members to play along with you. Each day pick one goal from any of the 4 categories. Choose any goal of your choice.
Just do it and end of each day go to bed satisfied knowing you did something intentionally for your well being.
Play around with the goals. Some days do more and some days just 1. You can even repeat the same goal for subsequent days if that feels good. Just have fun with it. It is possible that over time you will fall in love with the process of taking care of yourself. You might also begin to recognise the many things you actually get right during the day instead of the habitual mental pattern of focusing on that which you didn’t.
So, would you be joining me in playing this game?
Happy that you are able to come with interesting topic and discussion pointers W-W. Able to resonate with each line, as i too started few tasks and trying to keep them going for last 30+ days; expecting to continue the momentum.
Good advice on customising our health and nutrition plan as per our lifestyle and day to day routine. Thanks for the suggestions on daily self care goals sounds fun 👍