Where are you now?
‘Health and Fitness’, a short collection of words that are fully capable of conjuring up deeply personal feelings and viewpoints on what exactly it means to be healthy and fit. Often these personal feelings and viewpoints can bring up painful emotions and memories from your own experiences, you might say the good the bad and the ugly.
Although health and fitness are something that many of us as adults and indeed children have all struggled with at some point, it’s also something that we seem to be more than willing to chastise and torment each other over. One of the big issues with our ever-growing consumption of the various media sources, television, publications, social media mean that we are constantly subject to perverse idealistic body images and consequently we label anyone who varies more than is socially acceptable from these images as pariahs.
As those who are chastised seek to fight back against this labelling, two bitter sides form and in their midst lies a cacophonous sea of misinformation, prejudice, lies and sensationalist publications storms of no benefit to anyone but seemingly the highlights of social media.
The medical world, the doctors the surgeons the experts they tell us that we are amid an epidemic, a crisis of obesity with dire consequences. The United States Centre for Disease Control (CDC) defines obesity as,
“Obesity results from a combination of causes and contributing factors, including individual factors such as behaviour and genetics. Behaviours can include dietary patterns, physical activity, inactivity, medication use, and other exposures. Additional contributing factors in our society include the food and physical activity environment, education and skills, and food marketing and promotion.”
Despite having raised the profile of the issue the medical industry at this time seems incapable of developing a working solution to the crisis. For decades both the medical industry and the governments they serve have failed to come up with a blueprint to help battle the so-called epidemic.
Solutions tend to be recommendations for holistic lifestyle changes that people are struggling to implement, success rates for the low-calorie diets are abysmally low when tracked over a five-year period.
Many point the finger of blame for the obesity crisis at the food industry, citing the ingredients and the processes being used to create the foods that people love. The fast foods, the sugary goods, the processed meals laced with chemical preservatives all fall foul of medical journals and indeed those in the fitness industry. There is a wealth of knowledge out there telling people not to eat these foods, to be more active and to control their intakes. Yet people still don’t adhere to these guidelines, we seem to be unable to stop ourselves.
Taking a high-level view, we see that the medical industry claiming there is a crisis; we have the food industry supposedly fuelling the crisis and either silent or in denial but still selling highly profitable products and then we may add to this the health and fitness industry capitalising on people who find themselves in need of assistance.
Indeed, many make their profits on the insecurities of the public and seeking to exploit these with products built on promises of short-term gains that often will be stated to only require very simplistic inputs from the public, there will invariably be some sort of celebrity endorsement.
Make no mistake health and fitness e.g., gyms, exercise equipment, exercise nutrition etc. are an industry themselves and a highly profitable one at that. There are countless products, programmes, books, and apps that you can buy. Many of these are excellent and will indeed help you however there is a large tranche of the industry that is purely to deprive you of your hard-earned wage on false promises.
It is here where we find ourselves, amid all these noisy environmental factors and drivers that seem bent on preventing us from leading more healthy lifestyles. Indeed, it is here where I found myself several years ago, afloat but ultimately rudderless.
Like many people I was overweight, unhealthy, in a near constant state of ill-health and mentally I was dealing with several difficult life situations. I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders and around my waist. I believed that there was no way for me to slow down the train; I would need a drastic one-stop-shop fix for the issues I faced. There was no way I could simply come back from this without a major intervention.
When I think back, I can clearly remember my thought patterns, their self-destructive impacts, and the pain they caused me. I was shackled to these and anytime I tried to move myself toward improving myself at the first challenge of sign of difficulty I failed and loathed myself for not being able to do what so many others apparently could.
These thought patterns haunted me for far too long and they were detrimental to me making progress. I feel now that the single biggest factor in preventing me achieving a healthier lifestyle was my own mind.
Where are we going?
Health and fitness aren’t an esoteric, special, divine, or privileged place or thing, it’s certainly not a score or a metric, it’s not a physical measurement and it’s not a number on a weighing scale. It’s not a medal you wear on your chest for doing a marathon; it’s not something you parade all over your social media. You’ve no doubt seen this awful trend and you’ve no doubt at some point possibly even been influenced by it.
Health and fitness is not a six pack, it’s not some celebrities rear-end and it’s not how you look in a photo. Don’t confuse the egotistical, societal, and personal need that some people have for gratification, approval, and recognition for their own insecurities for what it means to be healthy and fit.
Health and fitness has nothing to do with how you look or how anyone perceives you look, it has all to do with how you feel, what your body is capable of and your ability to go from day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month and so on without the need for a myriad of pharmaceutical products, visits to a doctor or medical help.
Health and fitness has all to do with your ability to train, nurture and maintain your personal health and wellbeing. This can and will be an individual and personal thing however that’s not an excuse to allow you to be overweight and unhealthy and call it your own personal level of fitness. A critical factor in your own health and wellbeing is being able to objectively review your health and fitness and take the appropriate action. If you are overweight, it is entirely up to you to admit this and seek to remedy the situation.
Many people live lives of denial about their own wellbeing. There is failure to accept that you’re the reason you’re the way they are, failure to take responsibility and failure to actively seek to address the problem over the long term.
By doing so individuals are preventing themselves from getting what they want. It’s the easiest thing in the world to apportion blame to something else. It buys you time before you must mentally and emotionally deal with your own issues at which point you reappoint the blame and repeat the cycle.
Harsh Truths
I was certainly afflicted by the blame game mind set. It couldn’t possibly be my own fault and I used it as a crutch to support all my bad habits for too long. There is no polite or friendly way of stating it, but you need to get over yourself and face the fact that no matter what happened in the past, no matter what excuse you’ve been clinging to all this time, you are the commander of your own faith, and you are where you are because of you.
I warn you now that this will sting a bit. That’s OK the pain is going to light a fire, that fires going to burn and grow and it’s going to fuel your progress. When you realise that you’re the commander of your own faith and that it’s all up to you, you realise that you are entirely capable of getting to where you want to be health and fitness wise. You empower yourself. I implore you to do this. This above all else will take you to your goals.
Pain is often necessary for us to tell us that something’s not right; this pain can be misinterpreted as something trying to stop us. For you and in this case, pain is a signal to begin to change.
You’re going to be changing habits and thought patterns that you’ve been reinforcing for years, and like a catapult breaking down fortifications it’s going to take multiple shots and hits to break down those walls.
There is no one-size fits all for health and fitness, it’s a bespoke process that is extremely personal. Look at the huge amount of different material on the ether as regards health and fitness.
If it took you 4 years to get into very bad shape it’s not possible to rectify that in 6 weeks. You must lose the short-term reward mentality. This is a very difficult thing to do. This generation in particular want everything twice as fast or they simply want it now without putting in any effort.
That mentality is not conducive with health and fitness. Whether you want to hear it or not, health and fitness is a long-term thing. It’s never quick and it’s never easy. Sure, there’s now cosmetic surgery and pills for everything you could imagine, but they’re short cuts and half measures.
They don’t address the problem (bad lifestyle) they address the symptoms (physical appearance). If it seems too good to be true, it generally is, time to wake up. If you try and change your lifestyle habits in 6 weeks you are setting yourself up for a painful failure. Too many people set out to do the impossible with neither the expertise nor the planning in terms of health and fitness and by continually failing they drain their willpower and their motivation.
It becomes harder and harder to motivate themselves to try again, instead it’s easy to fall into apathy and stagnate while reminiscing about a time in your life when you used to be fit or that time you did that plan for X number of weeks before you stopped.
So much of overcoming any challenge or goal you set yourself is mental. It’s come time now to end your negative thinking. On the average day you may have upwards of 60,000 thoughts. How many of these are negative? How many of these are you criticising and hurting yourself? You can control those thoughts.
Worse still how many of these negative thoughts are the same thoughts you had the day before and the day before that? Understanding that you’re going to need to start to manage your mind and your thoughts are important at this point. As you read through these articles watch for the re-emergence of negative thoughts e.g., that will never work for me, that’s only for people who have the genetics etc.
Focus on the thought as it arises and ask where it came from in your mind.
Try to mentally reinforce your new objectives. I am capable, I am confident, and I am going to succeed. It’s not going to be easy, but I accept that, and I will do what I must to achieve my goal. Don’t underestimate the power of your thoughts. Remember that used correctly the mind is simply magnificent. Used incorrectly it becomes a terrible burden and you become a slave to your thoughts
Beware of negative people in your life who will look to dampen your enthusiasm and reduce your expectations, often people don’t want to see you succeed at something they could not because their ego cannot take the self-inflicted shame. Some are lucky to have an excellent support group or partner who helps them achieve their goals, for others it’s a lonely journey but a journey you still must take.
It’s not easy and it will be no means happen overnight but again much like physical training you’re going to get better over time, you’re also going to have good and bad days. Give yourself time, work with your mind every day. Be positive in so far as possible and catch negative thoughts before they fester and dispose of them by refusing to entertain them anymore. As soon as your negative thought appears, acknowledge it don’t seek to destroy it or change it, simply state to yourself that it’s just a thought and you are not that thought.
Mentally I have found that exercise works as a sort of exorcism for my own demons especially on the hard days, I have made so much progress in my mind state thanks to exercise and diet changes. I am convinced that my diet was one of the biggest single factors in my mental state when I was overweight. I was pumping my body full of processed, nutrient deficient food and my body was left to pick up the slack.
Invariably my mental state suffered dearly as a result. There has been and continues to be significant research into what is known as the ‘Vegas Nerve’ which is in your digestive system, this has a direct linkage to the brain and considerable evidence is suggesting that this nerves communications with the brain can be directly influenced by your diet and can impact your mood, performance and even your mental state.
Why bother?
Everybody’s training requirements and dietary requirements will be individual but the core basis of nurturing your body is omnipresent in health and fitness. It’s not natural to be sick all the time; it’s not healthy to be lethargic all the time. You need to understand that your body was not designed to feel bad all the time, one of the biggest changes I’ve noted in myself has been my continued general sense of wellbeing.
I am so cognisant of this that often I can tell if I am become sick or run-down or potentially over training my body. If I eat bad food, I can feel the degradation in my performance even if I’m not training, I feel myself being tired and groggy and irritable.
Life is incredibly short and unfortunately our bodies albeit marvellous can be fragile and susceptible to illnesses beyond our ability to prevent. You have a duty to nurture and maintain your body to the best of your ability, there are so many people out there who cannot walk, cannot function without aid from medical experts and they would give anything for a day with your life.
I’m not being righteous or suggesting you owe it to anyone other than yourself to look after your body but having lost family and friends far before now their time I feel that for the factors under my control e.g., diet/training I have no excuse not to take care of myself, laziness or a lack of knowledge or claiming not having the time are absolute lies.
There are 24 hours in a day, you can exercise in 30 minutes, and you can prepare your meals beforehand. People with harder circumstances than you are doing better than you.
Remember, chin up, chest out and handle it.
Yours,
Stephen