Love, Your Program, & The Connection
Love.
A 4-letter word.
As Amy and Erik celebrate their wedding anniversary today, it gave me a great (and I feel deep) idea for a post today.
To survive 1 year of marriage, let alone 10, 20, 50, or more years of marriage, it takes work. Let me rephrase, through hell and high water, it takes a TON of work. Whether you married your high school sweetheart or met on Match, the initial feelings are GREAT and it makes you motivated to keep going. It’s new. It’s fresh. In your mind, it feels so good, how can it fail? However, what happens after those initial butterflies and giddyness die down?
Do you stop? Do you quit?
I sure hope not.
To be able to give your best in a healthy relationship such as marriage, you have to give your best (even at your worst) to someone and vice versa as you love (as that is an action, not a feeling) on them.
How do you do this?
By loving yourself first and ultimately.
I don’t mean in a narcissistic manner; rather, in a way that you give yourself worth and honor.
This is what is meant when we say “fitness is a lifestyle” and “losing weight should be done in a sane manner”.
#1: You must love yourself enough at your present moment because you cannot and will not give your best (in the long run) to your training and nutrition program. Yea, in the beginning, it’s new but after a few weeks, that’s when the real work begins. Are you going to quit because it’s hard?
#2: No one CHOOSES to live insanely (or I would at least think they don’t). Like in any relationship, the most successful ones are not bound by strict rules and competition with each other, it’s built on sacrifice and the idea that you want to win together. You cannot expect to be successful in your training and nutrition program without sacrifice. You MUST understand that it is give and take and if you feel it’s all “take, take, take” and no give, you will quickly learn fast it’s a one-way street to failure.
#3: Going from single (my way aka MY lifestyle) to married (OUR lifestyle) is a complete shift. Going back to sacrifice, you can’t expect to live your old, potentially broken lifestyle and make your “new” one fit in to your ideals. What might like your single lifestyle but when you CHOOSE to marry in to a new lifestyle, you CHOOSE to change your lifestyle. Maybe not everything but a lot does change. Same with your training and nurition program. You have a life. Yes. You have priorities. Yes. We all do. The most successful people are the one’s who can take all of what they can control create a lifestyle that not only doesn’t put there head barely above water, but helps the get to their goal and also keeps their other priorities in check.
#4: You will have great days and crap days. Let’s be honest…I’m not married BUT I come from a family and have friends who’s parents have successful marriages (and I say this with the utmost respect as this isn’t to shame ANYONE as everyone’s circumstances are different). What I am saying (in general) is it’s easy to get through the great days but its the crap days you really need to work. Same with your program as it’s fantastic to be motivated and get work with a fresh brand new program but knowing that the results don’t just yield in a week or 2 or even a month or 2, be prepared to have great days and crap days and work accordingly because guess what, after your 9-5, your gonna have to tend to your other 5-9…Life: and things happen.
So while I want to personally wish Amy and Erik a happy anniversary, I want to remind you as you travel on your journey to a new you that it will require sacrifice, it will require a shift in lifestyle, it will take A LOT of work, and most importantly, you must love yourself.