It's tough to reach your ideal level of fitness with a busy lifestyle. I'm not just talking about completely failing to make time to exercise; I'm also talking about those folks who already make time to exercise a few times a week but aren't seeing the results they'd like, one of the people I used to be. Unless you have the metabolism with the calorie burning capacity of a steel mill in the early 1900's, you might have to put a little more thought into what you eat to bust through your fitness barriers.
That requires changing how you think about fitness.
Here's my story: I'm a runner, and I used to think that was a license to let my sweet tooth take over as my third most active (pseudo) organ. I would run three to six days a week sometimes with a couple days of lifting, biking or swimming, obviously amping up my lung and heart activity, and afterwards eat as many sweets as I wanted to because I thought I could "because I'm a runner," hence leaving my sweet tooth with a strong third-place finish in the organ race. I was definitely in good shape and was by no means anywhere near overweight, but I had fitness goals I'd always wanted to reach but never could because of this sweet tooth, so I thought.
After a while, something would inspire me to finally reach that goal, once and for all. I can be kind of a purist, so of course, that meant making extreme changes in my already-decent lifestyle to go from Average Joe to Superman all at once. So, of course, I would start with changing my diet, and unfortunately, that's also where my endeavor ended. I would try to give up sweets and fried foods for long periods of time until I reached my ideal level of fitness. My virtual sugar fast usually lasted for ten-day periods, but once I think I maxed out at a month without sweets, which for this guy is a serious act of will considering my sweet tooth's third-place status. Then, after a while, my extreme health make-over would fizzle out as I psychologically burnt out from forcing so much will power with food all the time. I felt like I was somehow punishing myself by depriving myself of something I enjoyed, and I wasn't seeing the results I wanted as immediately as I changed my lifestyle, so I would just give up on my fitness ideal. I'd go back to the good 'ol runner boy attitude of "I can eat anything I want because I just ran 'x' amount of miles." After a while, I'd get frustrated with myself for quitting my last fitness feat, and I'd give up sugary treats all over again, and the cycle repeated itself. I was always stuck in some form of this pattern for about nine years.
I finally realized that my vacillating cycle of veritably condemning my sweet tooth as the culprit of all my fitness failures would never work because it wasn't the culprit of my follies. I thought if I gave up sweets completely for one, long spurt, I would reach my fitness ideal and thenceforth only treat myself with as many extra calories as I burned exercising. But that was just the wrong way to think about it. What I didn't realize is that I could literally live into that ideal of being able to enjoy desserts here and there, while still improving on my physique.
It would be great if we could go through one, hard diet, and reach our fitness ideal forever, but, frankly, that's not how we work because even if you do reach that ideal, there's always going to be a certain amount of maintenance work to perform. I realized this when I recognized that feeling of silent defeat after my sweet tooth whispered through my psyche, "You've seriously been punishing me by depriving me of sweets for such a long time. Forget that ridiculous ideal I'll never reach. I want some cake!" That feeling of defeat, that I'd been punishing myself, is what was defeating reaching an ideal that was right in front of me the whole time.
I realized that fitness is something we attain by sometimes giving things up a little at a time on a daily basis, not all at once. And if you work the system well enough, it won't feel like your giving up anything at all because you're gaining the satisfaction of reaching a goal and feeling well because you treat your body well. So instead of giving up sweets altogether, when I really craved something sweet, I would have something small and call it a game for the rest of the day. Of course, I'm human, so sometimes I'd overindulge, so to compensate, I'd work out longer the next day or go without sweets completely just for one or two days. But cutting back a little allows you to satisfy that tiny screaming brat of a sweet tooth, which by the way is sheerly psychological. But being a psychological phenomena doesn't mean something should be ignored, because part of fitness is not how many miles you can run and how present your six pack is, but also taking care of your mind. Fitness should be a way to enhance your lifestyle, not govern it, and when you're constantly obsessing over that craving you're squelching, you're not going to be able to shut out the noise to listen for the flight attendant to call for you to board your plane to those fitness heights you've always wanted to reach. If you let yourself indulge a little here and there, that little voice won't be screaming like a three-year-old having a temper tantrum in the middle of a grocery store, but walking away quietly and contently with a Popsicle, able to forget about it when he's finished eating and move on with the rest of the day. And that's what you should be able to do: as long as most of what you eat is healthy, you're golden, and you won't have to obsess over fitness to feel like you're getting somewhere with it. Just make it a point to eat at least three meals daily, each including whole grains, protein, fruits and/or vegetables. Make sure you always have a granola bar or some sort of energy bar that's high in protein on hand, and, as a rule of thumb, allow yourself one small indulgence daily if you're still trying to get leaner. If you feel like having a piece of cake, by all means go for it. Your body isn't keeping a running tally of every single calorie you eat to see if it fits in with the FDA's daily recommended amount, and it's also not going to shout "retreat, retreat!" to your metabolism because you ate something sweet. Firstly, your body might have room to burn off your sweet treat without exercise depending on how small and calorie-dense it was. Secondly, even if you replace some of the extra calories you burned from exercise, you can still manage to burn extra calories and lean out if you don't overindulge. You will, however, likely crack and go crazy eating the very thing of which you starve yourself in a diet if you take extreme measures to meet your fitness goals. If you take that route, your little sweet tooth-psyche kid will be kicking and screaming because you're punishing it, and won't shut up until you give it that candy bar.
Gandhi once said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." I'm here to tell you that you have to live into that carefree lifestyle of enjoying your fitness and your treats at the same time; you must be the change you wish to see in your diet. Changing my attitude toward what I ate helped me to finally reach that ideal, and I'll share in my next written post the exercise component that helped me reach it. Until then, get up and do something active, and don't hold off on treating yourself every once in a while. Rize up, get fit.
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