Do I Just Keep Lifting and Eating Well Until I Die?

Hello fitness fans! Welcome to another installment of fitness wisdom. All of the things I wish that I knew earlier :)

There’s a misconception that being fit is a destination where you can arrive and all your hard work will be over. The assumption is that you will one day reach a level of strength, or body composition that you are content with, and you will sigh deeply with satisfaction as you drift off to sleep knowing all of your goals have been accomplished and you never have to worry about your fitness again…..

I’m sure you know where this is going. That day doesn’t exist, and it can be depressing to think about isn’t it? Clients ask:

So I just have to do this forever? I just keep lifting and eating well until I die? 

Well yea. 

As with anything- it’s the journey. You have to enjoy the ride mannn. We’re often mistaken to think that we will magically arrive one day at a place where we are truly content and happy. Most songs and poems of the last thousand years are about how even when you get the money, power, fame you will still be left unfulfilled. Mo money mo problems, am I right?

While you’re working hard until you die, I’m sure you’ve also noticed the pendulum swings in your own journey. Everyone has them. You go a couple weeks of not watching your nutrition and you gain a couple pounds. Then you get upset with yourself and hit the gym every morning and cut out every single delicious but unnecessary calorie. You may or may not tell everyone you know that you are doing this. You lean up. You feel good. But then time passes and you’ve been doing a great job so why shouldn’t you have a piece of cake when you feel like it? The pendulum swings back, and damn if you’re not right back where you started.

So if you can never get to the fitness endzone where you get to stop, and the pendulum is always swinging back and forth, the BEST that you can hope for is to miss smaller. Instead of wild swings between detox celery diets and eating whatever you want, you learn a method of controlling your calories for the long term and you add in tweaks when you need them. Instead of doing a full blast 3 hour a day powerlifting cycle that leaves you feeling terrible so you just quit, you learn a style of lifting that makes you stronger that you can also- GASP- enjoy. The goal is to pay attention to your successes and failures enough to refine your process. You don’t decide in the gym to do Zumba or ‘the weights’. You decide if your top set should be at a 7 or 8 RPE. You don’t decide to buy a pyramid scheme diet knowing you’ll probably quit in a week. You decide between which vegetables look the most delicious this week at the grocery store. You refine and hone your own playbook; knowing that you will always be adjusting and refining. 

There is no destination with your fitness- you have to do it your entire life until you die. And you will always be tweaking the dials to find your own goldilocks zone of a life that you enjoy and a level of fitness and strength you can be proud of. If you find that depressing I’d imagine it’s because you thought this was a game you could win. That takes some mourning to get over to realize that you do indeed, have to work hard forever. But after a while there is beauty in the struggle. There isn’t joy without pain, or love without loss in anything in life, so why would fitness be any different. There is a time eventually when you truly won’t care what you can lift or what you look like. So find the beauty in the temporary nature of the body you’ve been given. Treat your body like it belongs to someone you love. Miss smaller everyday, and help someone else along the way.