Punishing Yourself?

We all have the same amount of time, 24 hours each day. How much do we try to fit into our day?

One of the big obstacles people give for not working out is not having enough time. Yet some people will make sure to budget time into their day, several times each week working toward improving fitness. Even though we all might have different reasons to workout, here are two key distinctions that I have found.

First, there are the people who exercise because it is a form of atonement. Sometimes even a punishment. We exercise because we ate too much at supper or we indulged in some treats at a party, or we let the weekend get way out of control. So we try to burn off several hundred calories because we need to make up for the excess. There is no real joy in it, just the hope that, perhaps, we managed to stay ahead of the calorie curve. We want to feel “worked over” and “hard hit” so that we can rest assured we accomplished something to offset the food. It is hard to be motivated to exercise because we don’t see it as a joy, more of a necessary evil. And, if we had our way we wouldn’t need to exercise our bodies in the first place. How many people have completed a 6 week body blitz program to get “leaner than ever before!” and instead of creating a new lifelong habit of health and fitness they drop the activity/accountability until they have gained the weight back and it is time for another 6 week top up?!

The second group of people approach working out differently. It is not making up for dietary sins, it is a way to claim our body’s physical birthright! The body was made to move and meet challenges in this world. The body thrives on being pushed and having its limits expanded. To approach exercise in this manner is not a punishment, rather it is striving toward a goal! One does not think of beating up the body to destroy fat cells or needing to walk funny for 2 days because of extreme muscle soreness in order to feel accomplished.

We don’t have to work out, we GET to work out!

Some have described the distinction between these two approaches as the difference between exercise vs training.

Exercise is something we do right now for an immediate feeling or result. There is no long term plan or goal. I need to do something right now so I can check off the activity checkbox.

On the other hand, training is something we do that fits in with an overall plan to accomplish a specific goal. We go to the gym to train because it is one of the steps we have set out in order to get to something we want and believe will bring us enjoyment. Sometimes we don’t even need to suffer at the activity in order to bring us closer to that goal. Imagine that.

Why are these distinctions relevant to the discussion of finding time in our day? We make time for things that are important to us, really important to us. We also make time for things that make us happy. It is really hard to get excited about scheduling an item onto our calendar if we really don’t enjoy it. And who enjoys punishment? We would rather avoid something that reminds us that we were “naughty” with our food intake. And it can be tiring to think of how much effort we need to work off bad eating habits. If we were to document how we spend the hours in our day we might be surprised at how much time we spend on things that give us momentary happiness but do absolutely nothing to help us be better, stronger and more fit physical beings.

I truly believe everyone needs to train. It gives us something positive to direct our efforts and energies. I think an important change occurs in the life of a person who trains. He or she starts to look at time priority differently and to look at food differently. We become more motivated to show up more often and put time into changing, training, and preparing our bodies. And our bodies will respond by getting more fit and ready! We are more willing to see food as fuel instead of therapy. To see food as energy and not little bundles of calories with guilt and emotion.

An athlete trains. We want our members to see themselves as athletes because an athlete will prioritize getting the time in to train. An athlete is willing to forgo the types of food that make most people feel regret an hour later, who must now try to convince themselves they need to find the motivation to punish off those calories. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t play a sport. Life itself is an arena of intense competition and the quality of our later days can hinge on whether we took the time to train our bodies to actually make it to the later rounds.

We all have the same amount of time in each day, 24 hours. You get to choose what to put into those hours and you have more control than you might think. Maybe it starts with how you see your physical birthright. Will you drift aimlessly on the shifting current of exercise and atonement, or will you look at yourself as an athlete and start to train?

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