Change is Hard

The change I’m proposing you make is the harder one.

When I started A Healthful Life, I had a nightmare of a time figuring out how to convey to people that I wanted to create custom tailored programs for them to find THEIR health. In a way that would last.

When I got hurt, I was really blessed to have a group of people advocating for my health and encouraging me to think about how I wanted my health to look over the longevity of my life. 

This is the difference between you and me: I don’t approach fitness from the standpoint that this is a 30 day and done program. I don’t view this as a temporary aspect of my life. I don’t see this as something I can “take a break from” or let up on.

I know that if I let my workouts go, if I let my eating go, my health will immediately go and I will know that because chronic pain will absolutely debilitate me. I know the potential consequences are not worth the risk.

However, I also know that most people don’t approach health in the same way as me. We, as a fitness industry, have established a standard of the quick fix with no road map of how to maintain the results you achieved.

Meeting someone where they’re at and creating change in a realistic way turned out to be the easy part. The hard part was getting the person on board with the change taking longer than what they wanted.

It means being patient and it means being willing to fail. You have to be willing to try things, see how they work and change them when they don’t. Which means you can’t beat yourself up when you try something and it doesn’t work, you have to be flexible and adaptable to try something different.

I get the appeal of the fast change. The instantaneous results. You want that fast result because you’ve taken so long to change that by now, you wanted that change like yesterday. You don’t want to take the time to make change that will last for the long term. It’s the “I just need to lose 15 pounds” but not thinking past what happens AFTER you lose 15 pounds. 

What I teach is not the temporary, rigid, give up your whole life change just to drop a few pounds. It’s the change that will teach you how to effectively incorporate healthy habits into your life, so you feel like you have balance and you’re not deprived of the things you love.

So you feel like you’re thriving and not surviving.

So you don’t make a drastic change just to lose it a year later when you permanently fall off the wagon, because you gave up too much and couldn’t take it.

I want you to know health as just life. Not a sacrifice, not an inconvenience, but just how you live your life. Healthy, sustainable change means taking the long road. It means trial and error to find what truly works the best for you, and being able to have the skills necessary to make changes when your life changes.

Create Your Foundation

The strength you find today creates your foundation for tomorrow. 

We get into this horrible and self sabotaging place of comparing when we start our fitness journey. Because our fitness journey starts well before we put on the spandex and pick up a weight. Our fitness journey starts with us looking at the people around us, be it on social media or in person, and comparing how we look to how THEY look. You know who I’m talking about…it’s the woman who’s on kid #4, but kid #4 is only a month old and she already has a 6 pack. Mind you, you’re only on kid #1 and all you see when you look in the mirror is…fluff…

Whether or not we realize it, we take that negative energy into our workouts and it sabotages the hell out of our progress. What we want is the instantaneous result, the immediate feeling of being happy in the clothes we wear and being able to finally rid ourselves of the obligatory “mom” sweater. We’ve sat in this uncomfortable skin for far too long so by the time we’re doing something to get it gone, we want it gone NOW. Or yesterday. Whichever.

But that discounts the foundation that you’re building. That negative mindset is so much more likely to impede your progress because you’re always going to feel like it’s not enough. It’s not enough resistance, it’s not a high enough speed on the treadmill, it’s not enough weight on the bar…it’s not a fast enough result.

Keep something in mind for me when you find yourself in this place of frustration that really stems from guilt that things have gotten this far and that you feel this miserable: you didn’t get to the place where you felt like change was a necessary component of life overnight, and transformation that is done in a healthy and sustainable way, also doesn’t happen overnight.

Every single day in your journey towards your health and fitness goals is a building block from where you were yesterday. Enjoy the journey. Even if it’s not evident to you, single day you’re getting stronger, and more importantly, you’re putting a foundation in place of habits that will sustain your health and your strength while facilitating the transformation you’re seeking.

The process of change, albeit annoying AF and rip your hair out frustrating at times, is also beautiful. What an amazing thing to demonstrate to yourself daily that you are deserving of those goals and that you’re willing to do what it takes to reach those goals. Maybe you’re not there yet, maybe it’s your first day or you haven’t even started, but I KNOW you’ll get those goals and I’ll be cheering you along the whole way.