Fitness Is Not A Competition

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been working out, or being active, there will always be someone in better shape than you are. That is just a fact of life and unless you hold multiple world titles this still applies to you.

Unfortunately people have a tendency to base their worth by comparing themselves to others. For some reason it doesn’t matter how well you’re doing at something, when you inevitably find someone better than you are at it, we all take it personally.

How come I don’t look like that? What are they doing that I’m not? What’s wrong with what I’m doing?

We all do it. And it’s really quite stupid. Maybe that person’s been putting years more of their life into that activity than you have, or sacrifice their personal life to get better. You haven’t got a clue how they got there. It doesn’t even matter.

Who cares how they got there? Good for them they’re doing great! Good for you, you’re doing great too! Why do you need to be better?

YOU DON’T.

Fitness is not a competition. It’s a lifestyle. You do it because you love it and you spend your life improving yourself. As long as you’re making progress and you’re happy where you are, why bring yourself down with thoughts like that?

Now for some people they just can’t help it. They compare themselves to everyone and everything, it’s just how they live.

If you’re this kind of person, it’s how you react to these comparisons that is so important.

You can do one of two things:

1. You can feel bad that other people appear to be more successful than you and drag yourself down and let it affect you’re own personal progress and sense of accomplishment.

2. You can take their success as inspiration for you to reach for even higher goals. Let it drive you forward and motivate you to improve.

It’s all about how you think. Change you’re thinking, change your life. The most successful people in life are the ones that take draw strength from moments like this. This takes practice but anyone can do it.

To practice this, every time you find yourself comparing yourself to someone else, your mind will do what your mind normally does. But make a point of finding one thing that you can take away from their success that you could apply to yourself. Then do it.

There’s my take for the day. Don’t make fitness a competition. Use others strengths to bring yourself to greater heights. You’ve got this!

Your Life Your Fitness

Fitness is great. There are so many benefits to living a healthy active lifestyle I could be here all day listing them all. When you think of fitness what do you think of? Most people think about a gym with treadmills and weight racks or going for a run.

BREAK THIS LINE OF THINKING

Fitness is different for everyone. What if you don’t like treadmills and weightlifting? Does that mean fitness isn’t for you? Absolutely not! It just means that those activities aren’t for you.

Maybe you like sports. So you could do something like soccer or football. Winter sports like skiing or skating. Track and field. Swimming. Running up stairs at the office. Pushups during commercials. Taking the dog for a walk.

See what I’m getting at?

There’s no one thing you need to do or participate in to get fit. You just need to love what you do. If you hate something that benefits you, it doesn’t matter how good it is for you, you’ll never stick with it because it’s not enjoyable. Why would you? You want to do something that’s fun!

So don’t listen to others opinions of what you need to do to get fit (I mean if they know what they’re talking about that’s one thing), you need to find what works for you! If you don’t know what you like, TRY THINGS! What better way to find out what you like then to try a bunch of activities. It doesn’t have to be expensive, you don’t have to join a bunch of clubs to do this. Find a YouTube channel, do a google search. There are lots of ways to try things for free but it helps to have something guided to get you started. It makes you feel more included you know?

When you find that thing you like Get Into It. Don’t short change yourself. Your enthusiasm will carry you into it and you’ll find fitness and exercise comes easier. If you’re having fun it doesn’t feel like a chore.

I personally like the feeling of lifting a really heavy weight until my arms or legs just give up. They can do no more. It makes me feel like I really gave it my all. And most importantly, the struggle means progress it coming! That feeling is what keeps me going.

So, the most important thing here is to find something active that you like. If you like it, you’ll do it more. Simple. So go out there and get started!

What’s your favorite thing to do to keep active? Tell me in the comments!

Fitness Goals

Everyone Has Barriers

There are so many excuses I’ve heard why people don’t or can’t work out it blows my mind. People have barriers. Some self made and others that are imposed on them. I don’t have time. It’s too much effort. That’s too big of a change. These are Bull.

So I’m going to share something personal about myself on here. I’ve always tried to live an active lifestyle, eat right, be healthy, the usual. But about three years ago I was diagnosed with Crohns Disease. Didn’t have a clue what that meant at the time. They said something about diet changes and I thought how bad can that be? It’ll make losing weight easier. Well the diet changes turned out to be pretty severe. Losing the weight stopped being the problem. I struggle just to put weight on now.

If you don’t know what Crohns is, is a digestive disease where your body can’t digest certain foods and has a big problem absorbing nutrients. That means I take supplements every day and I have to watch absolutely everything I eat or risk lots of pain and time off work. I was basically told it would be a struggle just to have proper nutrition in my diet let alone put any muscle on or have any level of fitness.

Obviously this was a huge blow to me. That’s my entire lifestyle.

Back On Track

But it’s not my style to let things get in the way of what I want in life, I wasn’t losing to this disease. I take supplements everyday. I make homemade shakes with lots of nutrients to keep me healthy. I take every possible advantage of my extremely restrictive diet to get calories in every day. But most importantly, I found a goal.

I heard about something called a spartan race. It’s like a tough mudder but with hills and burpee punishments. It’s an obstacle course race, one hell of a physical challenge. So I signed up for one. The goal was to be in good enough shape despite my disease to beat that course.

I got back into the gym. I ate only what my body allowed. I started putting on muscle. And wouldn’t you know it I damn well beat that course. Not only did I beat it but I finished in the top 30% of all racers. HELL. YEAH. That was the most accomplished I’ve felt in my life. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to achieve that level of fitness again. For me, crossing that finish line was like the ultimate victory over my Crohns. You can bet I’m signed up for more of those races too!

Takeaways

There are lots of things that get in the way of living a healthy active lifestyle. Whatever your reasons, you can conquer them like I conquered mine. Never let something dictate your life for you. Finding the right goal can be crucial in achieving what you want. It gives you something to strive for, it gives you a purpose. And in my case, it can help you overcome something you never thought possible. If I can do it so can you. I’m pulling for you every step of the way!

Tell me some of your fitness goals! What helps push you to achieve them?

Fitness is Hard. Here’s Why You Should Get Into It

Welcome to JFitness Lifestyle!

For some people, fitness is one of the hardest things to get started in. They have no motivation, it’s too much work, they like eating cake too much. Whatever the reason is ( and there’s always a reason) I’m here to tell you that fitness is 100% worth your time and effort.

So say you finally cave and get a gym membership. You go to the gym for the first time and there’s all this equipment you’ve never seen before, there’s a bunch of muscle heads everywhere looking all intimidating making you feel inadequate. STOP that train of thought right there.

Every single person has felt this way at some point because nobody was just born fit. They all started at zero and worked their way to where they are now.

And to be honest, I’m more impressed by the person who comes in completely out of shape, but is genuinely trying to make a difference in their life than the really jacked guy that comes in everyday.

So don’t feel intimidated. Come in and get started.

Do a little research first so you can have something that resembles a routine to get you started. This routine does not have to be perfect, and probably won’t be for a long time. You learn as you go, through experience. Maybe this exercise doesn’t work for you, or that exercise is too easy. You tweak your routine over time, so don’t worry about where you start off. Just start simple.

Learn the equipment. Most machines have pictures or diagrams of what muscles theyre for. If you don’t understand the equipment the gym becomes difficult and intimidating so make a point of doing this!

Now run through your routine. It may not be pretty the first time but at least you got started.

So you finish off your routine and everything hurts (if it doesn’t hurt you probably didn’t lift heavy enough to challenge yourself, remember that for next time). This pain is what makes most people quit. It hurts and makes everything in life harder for a few days until it heals.

DEAL WITH THIS PAIN.

After a few weeks of this being sore all the time nonsense, you will find you will heal a little faster, be a little less sore. The weight gets easier to life. And maybe you can see the beginnings of some muscle growing.

This is the point you want to get to. If you make it here you’ll be hooked for life. Now you’ve made progress you can see. It feels good. It becomes a habit. It becomes an addiction.

this point it stops being a negative experience and starts being a positive one. You will start having more energy, getting stronger, looking and feeling better (and who doesn’t like that?).

Get started and give it a serious try. If you want to get fit and get in shape, suffer through the early pain and intimidation and get to this point before you think about giving up.

At this point, you won’t want to.

Get fit. Make it your lifestyle.