Friday, April 25, 2008
Many of us look into the mirror and our eyes seem to go right to those areas of our bodies that we are least content with. I?m unclear as to whether this is simply a human characteristic or if we have trained ourselves to focus on the negative while disregarding the positive. In any case, it has been my experience that any time my habit is to focus on the negative, it will serve me greatly to find a new way of viewing things. It?s a new year and a perfect time to re-evaluate our fitness goals and the way we view our bodies. Certainly they do not revolve entirely around how we want to look on the outside, but there is a little vanity in all of us, and that?s okay. Allow me to offer a few suggestions as you embark on a new year of fitness training.
First of all, let us all begin to consciously look at those parts of our body that we do like, and remove our focus from those problem areas. Will that make them go away ? Not immediately, but in the meantime, you will not be putting more of your energy into creating more of that. Instead, you will be loving and appreciating those parts of yourself that you can. As you proceed on your fitness path, there will be more and more to admire over time.
I recommend writing your fitness goals down somewhere, so that you will be apt to look at them often. One, it will help to keep them in the forefront of your mind and two, you will be more likely to spend a moment or two visualizing yourself having achieved those goals each time you see them. Remember that visualizing is an extremely powerful tool. Olympians and athletes of all types will spend several hours each week sitting quietly, imagining themselves preforming their sport in a very detailed and precise manner. Those who do are often the ones who actually end up at the top of their game. Our thoughts set up a clear and powerful intent and put into motion energies that assist us toward our goals. There is no doubt about this.
Another important piece of information that I believe is very important to bear in mind is this: Our bodies begin to become healthier from the inside out, literally. As you begin to make efforts to fitness train 2-3 times each week, particularly if you are returning from a long period of time when you did not train or if you are brand new to training, your body will not start to immediately show improvement on the surface. The improvements are happening, trust me, but they are happening within you where you cannot see them in the mirror.
The first 2-4 months, depending on how de-conditioned you may be, what your body is busy doing is growing muscle and burning intra-muscular fat. Our bodies store fat not only between the skin and muscle ( sub-cutaneous fat) but also it is marbled throughout our muscles just like a chuck roast. As you continue to train regularly, you will eventually completely eliminate that marbling and you will have become a filet minon, metaphorically speaking. During this process, you simply will not be able to see anything much changing in the mirror. This is when you have to stay loyal to your goals and trust that you are, in fact, becoming increasingly more fit. Oddly enough, you can actually gain a couple pounds during this time because muscle weighs 5 times that of fat. As you are burning fat and gaining muscle, it may take a bit of time to see the scale drop. I use measurements during this time, because you will shrink in size even if the scale goes up. That way you will be encouraged that your hard work is truly paying off. It makes me sad to think of the number of people who fall off their program during this time due to this phenomenon. Stay the course ? you will begin to see changes when you look in the mirror. As soon as your body has completed this process, it will begin to burn the sub-cutaneous fat next. This is when your eyes will begin to get the satisfaction of seeing it in the mirror.
Consistency is the number reason why people succeed in reaching their fitness goals. Please hang in there long enough to realize yours. Once you feel like you have accomplished them, of course, it is time to set a few new ones. We will never arrive exactly, we will never get it done. We need to attend to our blessed bodies until we make our transition, and the better the job we do now...the gentler that transition will be and the longer it will take to get that point. Healthy, happy, healthy, happy, healthy, happy...dead. That is as good as it gets. Happy fitness.
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