The story goes like this:

A former gang member trying to leave the gang life was assigned, among other activities, to a meditation group. Two weeks into the class, the instructor called his supervisor and complained.

“He doesn’t want to be here,” the teacher said.

“Where is he right now?” asked the supervisor.

“Here.”

Um…..

Show up, laugh, learn what a bird dog is....laugh some more...photo by www.leisejones.com

The student was in the class four months before he put his phone down and began to actively participate. I was struck, as I listed to the story, at how often that kind of situation occurs at the gym or with fitness related activities.

People come to the gym for a variety of reasons, and in a lot of different situations. Some folks show up because a doctor said so, some show up because if they don't change something in their lives, they'll have to go on medication, and still others come because a friend dragged them through the doors, metaphorically kicking and screaming (literally though, sometimes bitching and moaning). 

But I'll tell you right now, that showing up is the hardest part of adopting a new routine. 

In the past few months, I've fallen out of my meditation routine, so I spent the past week trying to reclaim that space. The best I could do was to sit on my meditation pillow for five minutes, which I did three times this week. 

I didn't meditate. 

I sat there, shifting around, thinking of everything I had to do that day, and then I got up when the timer went off. 

Sometimes, showing up is all we can do. Meditating feels hard for me right now. For others, being at the gym is hard - they don't want to be there. They don't love working out. Many don't even get the reward of feeling better at the end of the workout. They're just relieved to check it off the list.  

Some people fall in love with working out right away, but many folks don’t. I can think of one client who came to the gym for a full year and “tolerated” every minute of it. She openly hated working out, and it was always amazing to me that she somehow made herself get to the gym. 

I asked her once what her motivation for coming to workout was when she disliked it so much.

"I realized one day that I was the fat friend in a group photo," she said. "I don't know when it happened, but I suddenly saw a photo on Facebook and realized that was me." 

Somehow, despite her dislike of the workouts, she kept showing up. She didn't want to be at the gym, but she got there at least twice a week. 

Then something interesting happened. She missed a week when she got sick - and when she came back she realized how much better working out made her feel. Mind you, she'd lost 40 pounds through the process of showing up and putting in the work. But it took a year for her to want to come to the gym.

Even now, she doesn't love it. But when you're building a new habit, it's helpful to have a reward at the end of the behavior, and for many of us, the reward is that we feel better after the workout. She feels that now, but she didn't for the longest time. 

Maybe you’re showing up to the gym because a friend dragged you. Maybe you show up, do half of a warm up, and shuffle through the workout. You know you "should" do more, but you don't have it in you.  

I believe that if you keep showing up - if you keep putting in the effort - that one day you will realize that you don’t have to measure up to some abstract unattainable idea of who you should be. 

Let me repeat that last phrase one more time:

One day, you'll realize that you don't have to measure up to some abstract unattainable idea of who you should be. 

You just need to be you. 

Keep showing up. 

And good things will happen. 

I love old movies.

Love them.

Casablanca? Own it.

An Affair to Remember?

Cry every time.

The Way We Were?

Robert Redford as Hubble, swaying on that barstool with his sandy blonde hair....

But one of my all-time favorite movies is the Wizard of Oz. Maybe because I grew up without cable t.v. and it was a treat when the movie played around every holiday. (I also adore the Sound of Music).

I remember the dramatic effect of the movie turning from black and white to color because at the time and being mind-blown. 

Mind. Blown.

I watched the movie again over the Thanksgiving holiday for the first time in years, and at the end of the story, you'll recall that Dorothy yells at the poor old man when his wizard machine goes awry and his gig is up:

“You’re a very bad man!”

And he says to her:

“No, I’m a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard.”

How true that is, for so many of us in so many endeavors. 

I feel this way a lot, and I’m not going to compare this only to fitness, though I think you can see where I’m headed.

You set out to do something (like maybe post three blogs a week...I don't know...) and then at the end of the week, realize that you've posted only twice, you fell short of your workout goal, you didn't follow your budget exactly to the letter. And you think, sometimes, what an awful person you are. 

We set out to do many things in our lives, or at least I hope we do. I hope we find the courage to start new endeavors. And we have high hopes and high expectations, as we should, when we set out on our yellow brick roads. (Might as well run with the analogy now...)

In the process of starting these new endeavors, and yes it might be joining a gym or starting a different nutrition approach, we sometimes fall short of our goals. It doesn’t mean, it never means, that we shouldn’t hold ourselves accountable. But I think it’s important to remember, especially when we are making big, sweeping changes in our lives, that when we do come up just a little bit short, that we are not bad people. 

We are very good people. 

But sometimes we’re very bad wizards. 

Quote from a client last week:

"I didn't gain 40 pounds overnight. So I'm not going to lose 40 pounds overnight."

I followed her statement with 17 high fives, a cha cha dance, and a bear hug. (It's okay, she was cool with it.) We were having a conversation about what it takes to stay focused on your fitness routine when you're not seeing the changes, especially on the scale, that you want to see after a few solid weeks or months of training.* 

And I thought her above statement was spot on. We put weight on for a variety of reasons over the years; stress, having children, slower metabolism, maintaining the same diet at 41 as we did at 21, and when we start the journey to take off some of those pounds, the process can feel maddeningly slow. 

So how do you find a way to keep on keeping on when you haven't seen immediate results? 

1. Focus on consistency

Are you getting to the gym three days a week? Have you been doing that for the past month, when you weren't going at all two months ago? That is progress. The saying that has been all over fitness websites recently is that your best rep scheme is 3x52. Show up three times a week, 52 times a year and you WILL see results. I promise. Are you going to see all of those results after only one month? No. 

I know that you want the needle on the scale to move. I know this. And I know you want the waist measurements to go down. And the body fat percentage to go down. But focus on building the routine. The results will follow. 

2. Throw the *^%%$*& measuring stick out the window.

What is your measuring stick? One of the other mom's at the soccer game? The woman next to you on the treadmill? Gwyneth Paltrow? Your scale? What is it? Who is it? 

Throw it out the window. Yes, I just said to throw Gwyneth Paltrow out the window. And I meant it. You've been lifting. You can take her. Comparison is one of our worst enemies. 

3. Focus on performance goals

I'm willing to bet 50 yard line seats to the Pittsburgh Steeler-Baltimore Ravens game that by the time you work your way up to a bodyweight deadlift, you will have seen the results I asked you not to obsess about in number one. 

Change the focus from losing to gaining. Yes you want to lose body fat, but place the focus on your performance - the number of push ups you can do - whether or not you can deadlift your bodyweight - whether or not you can do a chin up - I promise that if you focus on these numbers and not the other numbers, and if you don't eat like a tool** you will see results.

I mean I'm willing to bet Steelers' tickets on that.***

And speaking of results, let's do the math on progress. Say you've been doing 15lb dumbbells for three sets of 10. That's 900lbs your lifting. If you can up that to 20lbs, that means you're lifting 1,200lbs. That's 300lbs more. 

300. Pounds More. 

Don't worry about the scale not moving. Because you can now break it with your bare hands. 

4. Find good people for your corner of the ring

I went to my first cornfield party when I was 16 or 17 years old - we were somewhere in rural Western Pennsylvania, there was a keg, red solo cups, and it was November....Someone had the good sense to burn a tire for heat, and the gathering ended with someone yelling cops and us scattering all over the place.

But what I remember most about the party was people coming up to me and taking my one beer out of my hands (I didn't like the taste anyway). They asked what I was doing there. I remember one guy especially telling me that I was a great softball player, was going to get a scholarship, and that I shouldn't be messing around at parties and lose that opportunity. As he dumped my beer out.

Despite the fact that we were all teenagers with under-developed frontal lobes, most folks knew I wanted to be an athlete and they were encouraging me to stay true to that journey. 

You need to find those kind of people to support you on your journey. You need to find the people who remind you to focus on you and feeling better and that you matter and are important and that good things will happen.

Find these people. Keep these people. 

5. Have a "go to" workout

I'm laid back about most things in my life. I rarely have opinions on plans, restaurants or the organization of my closet. I'm so type B I'm almost a Z. Except with my workouts. I am obsessed with doing whatever routine my coach wrote for me that day. It's taken me a long time to come up with a secondary plan for days when I'm short on time or nursing some minor injuries.

What is plan B? Well, I have a movement day that I keep in my program. And my movement day means that I'm at least going to the gym and foam rolling, warming up, and then doing 3-5 exercises. On days when I'm not feeling up to it, I get to the gym just to do this 20 minute workout. What I've found is that sometimes I feel good enough after the warm up to do the original workout. The key for me is having something in my back pocket that I gives me permission to go easy, but still gets me to the gym.

It keeps me in the routine. 

*By now, most of you know how I feel about using the scale to measure your progress. 

**It's important not to overlook this piece. You can't out-train a really poor diet. But let's focus on building the habit of getting to the gym first. 

***If anyone has tickets to the Steelers-Ravens game....I can be free.