I’m an English teacher, so I’ll admit to a few things. First, I am particularly affected by words, in general. I have genuine emotional reactions to words (both positive and negative, depending…). Second, I am particularly analytical of written word. I tend to pick them apart to find complexities in the author’s meaning, rather than taking them at face value. So, when reading certain “motivational quotes” typically associated with fitness, you’ll have to forgive me for both of these tendencies, as I reveal my genuine aversion to the following "motivational quotes" that are completely counterproductive. 1. "Do it for the after selfie." There are a variety of quotes similar to this one floating around in cyberspace, and they keep multiplying. They all kind of piss me off. This is the mentality that generates more people at the gym taking pictures of their muscles than actually working on them. You should never “do it for the after selfie.” Who is going to see your “after selfie”? One of your 3,402 instagram “friends” who you’ll never meet and couldn’t care less about your personal progress? This inspires people to workout for gratuitous attention, and when things get tough in someone’s fitness journey, how far will those “likes” get them? If you do not put merit into personal motivation in the beginning of your journey and rely on gratuitous satisfaction from uninvested spectators, you will have no one to motivate you when your selfies are lost in cyberspace with the billions of other ones that no one cares about anymore. 2. "Once you see results, it becomes an addiction." At face value, I suppose there is not much harm in this quote. I see the underlying intention, yet there are two things about it that leave a bad taste in my mouth. First, just like any other thing in America, we are attaching a reward system to fitness. Why do results have to be the reason that working out is enjoyable? What happens when you stop seeing results and hit a plateau? Does that mean you’ll lose your love for fitness? Unfortunately, for most people, that is the case. We begin a workout regiment with the expectation of immediate results, and then when we don’t see them, we lose motivation, lose the results that we may have obtained, but did not notice, and have to start all over again...IF we start all over again. Here’s a novel idea: don’t worry about results. Just be happy that you are moving, and as the owner of my CrossFit gym always says, “Enjoy the process.” Second, it makes a healthy practice akin to something with an inherently negative connotation: addiction. We live in a country that more often than not glorifies laziness to the point that exercising carries a negative stigma. For example, when I tell people that I regularly do CrossFit, I usually get a sideways glance, followed by the accusation that I am “an addict” and probably “crazy.” Why does a regimented schedule for my fitness paint me as an addict? Does that also make me a workaholic because I go to work daily? Am I addicted to food because I eat dinner every night? No. Then why does the frequency at which I engage in difficult physical activity somehow consistently produces a negative reaction? Quotes that associate words like “addiction” to fitness perpetuate the negativity that our already lazy country attaches to it. 3. "Sweat is just fat crying." I mostly hate this one because it’s just stupid and teaches ignorance. Sweating is a natural means of cooling the body down when it is overheated (or a reaction to intense emotions like stress or fear). There is no direct correlation between losing fat and sweating. According to livestrong.com author Krista Sheehan, “Although sweating is necessary to help you achieve weight loss, it does not actually cause the pounds to melt away.” In fact, you might be giving a workout your all and never break a sweat. That depends on the movement, the person, the environment, et cetera. For those of us who have spent most of our lives understanding absolutely nothing about fitness, this is a dangerous misconception. It allows us to honestly believe that breaking the smallest amount of sweat means that we are doing fitness correctly. It doesn’t. I can sit still on a hot summer day and sweat, but that doesn’t mean I am doing anything beneficial for my health. Speaking as someone who was heavy, this mindset was golden: you mean I can do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and still burn fat? YESSSSSSS. Only no. Not at all. This is why some of my personal attempts at losing weight were unsuccessful. After a month of walking for 10 minutes each day yielded no results, I couldn’t help to say, “But I broke a sweat!” That means nothing. Unless you are pushing the limits of your personal fitness (safely, of course), you will see no results. Period. 4. "Skinny girls look good in clothes. Fit girls look good naked." So, if I don’t feel like I look good naked, does that mean I’m not fit? If you are losing weight, especially a substantial amount, the fact is that you may never think you look “good” naked. Whether that is based on the inevitably skewed perception of beauty AND self image that comes from a significant physical transformation or the actual physical constraints of getting six pack abs when you once weighed 300 pounds, this mentality diminishes the hard work that a person does to become a healthier version of him/herself. Guess what? I’ve lost 150 pounds and the simple fact is that I will never have a flat stomach or thighs that don’t jiggle. Society tells me that does not look “good.” But am I fit? Hell yes, I am! 5. "Pain is weakness leaving the body." These types of sayings, to me, are the WORST of them all. (Yes, I intentionally chose the version of the latter quote that uses My Little Pony as the background image, just to emphasize the ridiculousness of this statement.) If you have never been physically active before, it can be very difficult to understand the difference between being sore and being in pain. Being sore is normal, but pain is your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong. When I first started losing weight, I absolutely convinced myself that if I felt pain, my subconscious was making excuses to not workout, just like I’d done for so many years. I hope I am not alone in this, but I feel like this is pretty typical psychology. Unfortunately, only you know how you feel, and only you can tell if you are experiencing actual pain or making excuses. But when you make the decision that it is, in fact, pain, there is absolutely no shame in listening to your body and alleviating that pain rather than exacerbating it. Pain leads to injury, and injury leads to a losing momentum in your progress toward being a better you.
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August 2017
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