Lose-Lose Game: The Fitness Quandary

It breaks my heart when people elect to participate in a quandary with fitness. A quandary, of course, is a game with no upside. Inevitably, it’s a lose-lose situation.

When you view fitness as an exchange program for lifestyle issues, you’re electing for the quandary. Fitness is not a penance, people. When individuals tell me, “Well, you workout so you can probably eat whatever you want” they are telling me that they subscribe to this quandary. When you have to “earn your desert,” you, too, are on the field playing that good ole’ fashioned lose-lose game. Every time the volume or intensity of your training is a reaction to poor lifestyle choices, you’re fully guilty of this awful physiological handicap.

These are the people that make their life the pencil and their fitness regimen into the eraser. While it’s frustrating to watch, the most tragic part of this issue isn’t the lack of success, it’s how much work it will take to make no progress. It’s a hamster wheel.

Am I telling you to eat and drink like a saint? Nope. Am I telling you to train like a madman regardless of what you do on the weekends? Nope. All I’m asking you to do is separate the two from each other. When you pursue beer for its own sake and you pursue fitness for its own sake, you’re able to own them both. If fitness is only a reaction to beer, you’ll have beer but you’ll never truly have fitness. This ownership will control your accountability to both your lifestyle and your training in a more authentic way. From there you can turn the dials up or down as you wish.

Remember, Sisyphus? The poor bastard’s punishment in hell was to roll the massive stone up the hill only to have it come rolling back on him repeatedly into eternity. Don’t be like Sisyphus.

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach