Change the Way You Think About Fitness

“Do you think if you do a poor job you won’t have to wash the dishes anymore?”

My dad held up a pan with a hardened piece of spaghetti on it, as I pulled my foam headphones off of my head and paused my walkman.

“What?”

"If you think leaving food on the dishes is going to get you out of doing the dishes, you've got another think coming."

I stood there, marveling at the idea, which hadn't ever occurred to me. The idea that I could be that deliberately calculating was much more credit than I deserved as a teenager.

Eventually, as an adult, my family (and many friends) realized that leaving a little egg on a pan was less about my shrewd effort to avoid dishes and more an overall lack of attention to detail. As I understand it, I take a lot after my Grandma Lloyd, who was notorious for doing things like making my dad a sandwich and forgetting to put anything between the bread.

Growing up, my parents were fanatical about putting elbow grease (I’ve never seen a greasy elbow…) into anything my brothers and I did. When it comes to a work ethic, my parents had zero tolerance for anything less than full tilt.

Despite my poor attention to detail and overall distaste for any kind of housework, I’d like to think I absorbed the value and importance of working hard. And I think the same is true for many of my clients.

While that mentality serves us well in so many places – our pursuits in academia, achievement in sports, and a reputation for being a hard worker, when it comes to our health and fitness journey, that "all in" mentality doesn't always serve us well.

Because when we come up short in our effort to pursue things like weight loss, we make a plan, and it is ingrained in us that we need to follow that plan, as it is written, come hell or highwater.

But eventually, hell or highwater does come, because life. And so we feel like failures, because we not only know how to work hard, but for many people, hard work is a core value.

I often have clients start our work together by doing an exercise where they identify their core values. Because the better we understand how we work, how we think, and what’s important to us, the more we can make a workable plan that is suited to us.

If our only definition of a job well done is all or nothing, we’re going to spend a lot of time battling ourselves in this journey. And I’m not saying that it’s ok to half-ass your effort when you show up to your workout or the process.

It’s absolutely important that you put a little elbow grease into this work.

But it’s equally important to understand balance. Two of my most common questions to clients is:

What feels doable this week?

What’s one thing you can do to stay connected to the process?

There are going to be many, many times when you don’t have the time, space or energy to go full tilt in your workouts or your wellness in general.

So please, please - understand that it’s ok to not be all in, all the time. It’s great to have a solid work ethic. But it’s also important to know that sometimes, you just have to do what you can, with what you’ve got, wherever you are.