(BlackFitness101.com) Sometimes looking in the mirror and coming to terms with needing to get in shape can be a discouraging moment. If you remember a time whereby you could trust your body and had confidence in your appearance…seeing what has happened to said body can be difficult. Many of us have gathered the strength to move towards change by working on one’s diet and heading to the gym. However, sometimes we find those changes difficult to maintain. With the being said, the idea might appear that having a friend to workout with as an accountability buddy might be the best way to stay motivated becomes the plan.
Unfortunately, everything from differing goals, workout routines, and schedules can make this plan crash and burn. This can lead one to say let me just return to working out alone. However, the solitude is not always a friend. Sometimes it is in that moment the self sabotage begins. While on the treadmill you begin thinking about every time you’ve started over and failed. The mental journey of how one got so far gone began…even if it’s not your fault, and nothing productive comes from this space. If this mindset is allowed to linger there can be yet another exodus from the gym. Medical setbacks, and injuries can also cause a plan to fail as the longer you are away from the gym the easier it is to fall out of practice; in this case many gains can quickly be lose leading to discouragement.
At some point in my journey to return to fitness I have been in just about ever situation mention. Granted I have found the self-sabotage space, and injuries have been the hardest to bounce back from. It seems in those spaces everything goes left, so the losses of my gains were significant. I could see them on the scale, but more importantly I could easily see them on my body. I had reached a point whereby I no longer wanted to discuss health, fitness, nor weight loss with people I knew. As you might be able to relate…it was just another reminder of how many times I had tried and failed. In that space the why really didn’t matter, because embarrassment set in. Having them say, “don’t feel bad, you look great…we know you can do it” felt more like a punch in the stomach than the encouragement that was intended. I wanted to hide from everyone I knew, and even if it was just for a little while I wanted to try to work myself to a space whereby I could tell myself it was okay to try again.
Social Media can be an endless display of self-proclaimed fitness gurus trying to sell you a pipe dream. Too many of them are trying to market them maintaining or fitness, or a path for some that doesn’t have an excessive amount of weight to lose. It’s like seeing workout equipment and gadgets, and thinking they look really cool but do they work when you need to lose over 50lbs. Can I use this product efficiently when everyone in the advertisement I fit? It can cause you to keep scrolling. However, sometimes you run across a fitness personality, and you feel drawn to their post as they expose the struggles they face while pursuing their goals. Somehow, they manage to show viewers that they have been the above mentioned person, they have been you, they have been me.
As you follow you begin to feel motivated because someone made it, and you can relate to them. You might have found a mentor that you can reference from afar. If nothing else, they let you know you aren’t alone in the world when it comes to how many times you’ve had setbacks. They manage to encourage you to get up again and give it another try for no other reason than you want to be better for you. I admit I recently experienced this for the first time. I later found out the fitness trainer I had been following was a sorority sister, but the bottom line is through listening to her testimony I decided to get up and get moving again. Sometimes we need the stranger to help us get back to fitness. We don’t always need direct interaction; we just need a reminder that everyday is a change to begin again. It doesn’t matter how many times you have missed the mark on your fitness journey. It’s a journey, and we just have to get back on track.
Staff Writer; Christian Starr
May connect with this sister over at Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/christian.pierre.9809 and also Twitter; http://twitter.com/MrzZeta.