“Why is being healthy so hard?” One of my clients, with the utmost sincerity, asked me this last week.
She’s right, it is hard. It’s easy to sit down instead of move, it’s easier to get fast food than cook a meal at home, it’s easier to spend money on entertainment than spending it on a gym membership (When I say easier, I mean less psychological resistance).
She humorously and ironically mentioned that she and her husband were talking about their favorite junk food on the way to the workout class. We all got a good laugh out of this, but I also thought how deeply human it was to admit that.
Human beings pursue ideals. (In this context, health is regarded as the ideal) The paradox of pursuing an ideal is: The more you pursue health, the more aware of your unhealthy behaviors you become.
This can be incredibly frustrating, and somewhat demoralizing.
Health is not a destination
As far as I can tell, the main reason frustration ensues as we become more aware of ourdeficiencies is: We assume we will one day “arrive.” We assume the struggle will eventually cease to exist.
It is always a struggle. I have been pursuing a healthy and fit life for the past 14 years.
Through the past 14 years, routines have changed, diet has changed, my body has changed, but what has been recognizably consistent is that I have never stopped struggling.
How this liberated me
I chose, for quite some time, to look at health as a list of consecrated standards that I needed to abide by. When I did not, I failed, I came up short, I was “unhealthy.” I viewed myself existing on one end or the other of a false dichotomy.
The truth is that we always exist in the “in between.” We talk about junk food on the way to workout classes, we workout and undersleep, we don’t always hit our protein, we over-eat, we under-eat, we don’t drink enough water, we don’t get enough movement in, and that’s okay. I have become convinced that if I abide by a list of restrictive rules, in order to label myself as “healthy,” I am not really living. I am becoming somewhat robotic, and subsequently losing some of my humanity.
My understanding that I will never reach my “ideal of health,” liberated me. It allowed me to accept myself for where I was, and give myself grace.
At a deep level, I believed that I would become an “ideal of health,” because it allowed me to think that struggle would end at some point. But, it won’t. By accepting that the struggle will not cease, I am forced to accept myself in the midst of struggling.
Practical steps to accepting where you are in the journey
Ask Yourself:
1. What do I struggle with?
2. What do I want to be different?
3. What have I done in the past that I want to leave in the past?
4. What have I not done in the past that I want to do in the future?
5. Do I spend more time comparing myself to others than truly reflecting about
myself?
One of the most practical ways to accept yourself is to honestly engage with our own minds. Just like you would with a friend you are trying to get to know, ask yourself questions.
Discover how you view yourself, what ideals you are spending time and effort pursuing, and whether or not these things are worth it. If we pursue health without doing the internal work, we will talk ourselves into quitting.
If we pursue health under the frame of mind that says, “You will eventually get there, the struggle is only temporary,” but the struggle never ends, then we will eventually say to ourselves, “this is not worth it.”
But, if we can accept that health is not a destination but an ideal, and the struggle will always exist, then we can be liberated for legalistic living. We can laugh at ourselves as we think about junk food while we exercise, and know that we aren’t weird for that. It’s deeply human to sense our own incongruence of values.
The beauty of this is: We begin to change when we start to accept our own incongruence. This is the point of asking questions and engaging honestly with yourself. This is a lifelong journey.
Lee Ramsey has a passion for fitness as a way to help people grow and change into more adaptable, capable and resilient versions of themselves. He is owner of Sanctify Fitness in Covington and a regular fitness columnist for the NKyTribune.