Getting Comfortable with Your Priorities

The most profound thing I've learned on my journey towards true fitness is how to be realistic about what a body can do within a given schedule.

Being lean and strong takes a time commitment. To get in Peak Condition the way we do it requires at least an hour a day of pure exercise. That doesn't sound like much but it comes out to more than 30 hours a month. And that's not counting the time it takes to prepare your own healthy meals. It all amounts to a pretty big time-sink.

This isn't meant to discourage anyone. In fact, the way I see it, this lets a lot of people off the hook. If you are working a full time job and have an active social/family life, you will not have the time to get into totally "ripped" territory. And that's ok.

What isn't ok is people thinking that they can work a full time job, take care of all their obligations, and still squeeze in enough time to work out and look like an underwear model. This just isn't feasible. Sooner or later something will slip. You'll be too busy to prepare your meals and end up eating out too much, killing your diet. Or you'll start to gradually skip days and then weeks of workouts. I've seen it and done it many times myself. The only reward you'll get from thinking you can do it all is increased stress and guilt.

So, here's the deal. If you aren't prepared to make some time for a daily workout (and by make time I mean cut something else in your busy schedule) then you are saying that being in awesome shape isn't really that important to you. If it was then it would be easy to cut one of your other lower-priority activities, right?

This means you can relax and understand that, as your life stands, it's just not in the cards for you to have a six-pack at this time. Stay active and healthy, but relax about not having the physique of people who put the hours in for it. Your investing your time in other stuff which hopefully is giving you rewards equal to or greater than what you'd get from a "killer bod".

If you get truly sick of not being in shape it will be natural to cut one of those things that seems more important now and get to working out. And if that day never comes then why are you feeling guilty about something you don't really want to do?

Of course for this technique to work you must be pretty comfortable with yourself and not fall for your mind's many tricks that are designed to derail your fitness plans.

Among the hits list of these tricks are:

"I'll start tomorrow"

"I deserve this"

"But I can't miss _____"

"I'm getting too old to worry about looks"

"I swear this is my last _____!"

"I don't have that body-type."

Falling for these old tricks will only prolong the guilt, not alleviate it.

Often my yoga students express frustration that they aren't as flexible as they want to be. I ask them if they are practicing at home between classes and they admit "no, I'm just too busy". I sometimes tell them, "then you don't REALLY want to be more flexible, do you? Why stress about something you don't really want to do?"

To make a comparison, I have no particular interest in visiting South America. I'm sure it's a nice place and maybe one day I'll make it there, but there are other places I want to see first. So I don't stress about how I'm not going to South America this summer, right? This is the same relaxed attitude I wish people would take about the guilt that piles on from not exercising and eating well enough.

When your ready you'll do it. Once you reach that point get in touch and we'll be happy to give you the tools you need. Till then, relax! It's the stress that kills, not the fat.