Work For It

"All I did was wear this cool Ab Sculpting belt and eat healthy and work out 5 days a week."  Oh, is that all?


Right now, it's 3:43 in the morning and I had to get up out of bed to write this because I was laughing so hard.  I woke up to the usual infomercials that were clearly meant to target people in a half-awake, gullible stupor who will buy anything if you tell them it will give them abs!  Buy this belt and you'll have a six pack...oh yea, and I'm sure the fact that the person ate healthy and worked hard for it, had absolutely nothing to do with it.  But it got me thinking...


Why are we so quick to buy into these products that give us "quick, easy" results? Haven't we learned by now that nothing worth having comes for free?  And nothing that promises to work overnight, with no hard work on your part is going to stick, even if it gives you temporary results.


Something I've noticed over the past year is that when you lose a dramatic amount of weight, people tend to want to know how you did it.  I get comments on a daily basis about my weight loss - some are encouraging and meant to be taken as compliments, others not so much.  The one thing they all have in common, though, is that they are followed by "What have you been doing?"  When I first started getting asked this question, I would say "I eat healthy and I work out."   Apparently this is not the correct answer, though, because you get some very strange looks when you tell people this.  At first I was confused, thinking maybe this was just too blunt and would then fumble around in an attempt to make the story sound more interesting and theatrical.  Sometimes I would take it personally and spend the rest of the conversation trying to figure out what I had said wrong.  Did they think I was being sarcastic or snide?  Or perhaps lying?  



Then it hit me.  It simply wasn't the answer they were hoping for.  They wanted that quick, easy fix so that they, too could jump on the magic weight loss bandwagon.  And my answer was neither quick, nor easy.  It's not magic.  It's science.  It's dedication.  It's consistency.  


Calories in, calories out.  You can't expect to eat 5,000 calories in fast food a day and cross your fingers that your body will just "forget" because you did a half hour of cardio that day, or because you took some magic fat burner that claims it's going to make you look like a fitness model!  And you can't expect to go to the gym 3 times a year and see results, either!


It sounds harsh, I know, but somebody had to say it.  But the truth is that, from where I stand, if I had the choice to use some magic product to get quick, easy results or to work hard for the body that I want...knowing what I know now, I think I would choose the latter.  Because the feeling of knowing that you worked hard for something and stayed dedicated to a goal is even better than the aesthetic results of that goal.  Whatever your goal is, when you reach it, of course it's a great feeling!  But when you can say that you got there because you and only you put the effort into it, it's even better.


I think most people do know this, because I'm sure at some point in your life, you've felt that feeling of pride when you worked hard for something and really earned it. I'm not inventing the concept, here.  We are just so quick to forget, and sometimes we focus on the wrong things - the results.  I have a folder on my computer of motivational pictures that I've saved over time and I look over them when I'm having a bad day.  This one always helps when I'm starting to feel like I'm fixated on the end results, instead of enjoying the process it takes to get there:

Sometimes all it takes is a little change you make in your life.  And then another.  And another.  And then it snowballs into a whole new way of life and you start feeling better and better everyday.  I just told a friend recently, that if you had told me 5 years ago that I would be so into living a healthy lifestyle, I would've told you that you needed to be committed, because you're out of your damn mind.  I never thought I would make such a big change in my life - I'm not sure I even thought that I wanted to make that change.  Until I did.  And it feels pretty amazing.  

So, if you are someone who is thinking about making a change to your diet or exercise routine, as I said earlier, you will have to learn the facts, do the work and understand that real results will not come overnight.  It's a lifelong journey and you will have to learn to appreciate the process.  It won't be easy, and you might even have those days where you just want to give up, but what I can promise you, is that it will be TOTALLY worth it in the end to know that you worked your ass off for it.  :)