To write a clap-worthy, endearing story about your “fitness journey”, as the internet calls it, you need to cover the following 4 stages of your story. First, start by introducing how you were the lazy and chubby protagonist who lives to eat, drinks because it’s the weekend and dines on whatever is available on Swiggy (or Uber Eats).
Second — abruptly reveal the moment you realise you have been ignoring your physical health for too long, which also may seem to be affecting your mental wellbeing. Popular choices for this scenario are —
- Seeing a photograph of yourself with your mates and realising you can’t recognise yourself anymore
- Being dumped by a superficial significant other for, well– superficial reasons such as appearance
- Or worse, being referred to as the father or mother of your similarly–aged friend. Hang in there, buddy.
Third — how a great emotional upheaval ignited a furious passion to get fit. This part of the story can be summarised in a list of things you changed in your life (no beer, only salad, no carbs, etc); or if this is a social media based journey, posts about what you ate today (hashtag–healthyeating), Nike+ maps of how much you ran and Instagram stories of how early you woke up to start doing all of this.
Finally, describe how all the hard work paid off. You have now reached a pretty admirable level of fitness and everyone can definitely see the change. The grand finale can best be marked with a side-by-side ‘before & after’ photograph. And you live happily ever after.
The end.
I am a typical lazy chubster. And I had my own moment of realisation and gave myself a 7 month deadline to lose a certain number of kilos. I would remind myself of all clothes I’d fit into and all the stairs I would effortlessly climb, to help get myself out of bed at 4am to run. With the help of a fitness app I started recording the number of calories I gained while eating and lost while exercising. And I seemed to be winning.
7 months later December came, but I was still the same.
All this while, my mind was pumped and ready to go, but my body didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. No amount of reading about other people’s successful fitness journeys had prepared me for the feeling of absolute disappointment, frustration and helplessness at not seeing any results. Every body is different. But I had no idea why mine was refusing to get with the programme.
One day at the airport I judged a book by its cover and bought it. It was bright orange, had an expletive written across it in bold and claimed to teach me the very thing I had wanted to learn how to do. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, basically told me to woman–up and accept what I’ve got and find ways to get somewhere better despite it. Of the many things I absorbed from that book, one thing really stuck. It spoke about doing things to enjoy the process of doing it, not to get to the end goal. Applied to my “fitness journey”, it meant not keeping any end goals in sight. Or rather, keeping goals that never end at all. My hypothesis was that my aim for a “ripped bod in 7 months” meant I was only doing it all for results. My mind wasn’t actually enjoying the physical pain and discomfort of the exercise — so my body was taking cues and staying the same. And even if in a parallel universe, I did reach that goal someday, what would I do then?
I decided to do an experiment. And maybe you could try it too if you’re completely disappointed with your effort to get fit. I made it my goal to go running for 40 minutes and eat smaller portions of my current meals — for every single day of the rest of my life. The goal was also to mindfully experience the actual act of running. To appreciate the stretch in my leg muscles as I ran, how hard my lungs were working to keep breathing the cold early morning air and how good it felt to eat a little less everyday. This helped me look for ways to help my body do it all more easily, instead of punishing it by blindly following what worked for other people. And my body responded real fast.
6 months since, my goal has stayed the same in essence, I have simply altered it to level up and challenge my body more when things feel easy. From running, I started going for strength and conditioning sessions regularly. From there, I graduated to attending very intense and scary classes of mixed martial arts 6 days a week.
The older version of me could not have imagined surviving these intense sessions–I can’t move for hours afterwards, get stubbed toes and injured thumbs and receive punches to the face and kicks to the gut. But she would have easily fallen for the daydreams where random gym goers come up and say things like “Wow, you really throw a mean punch” or “You’re so badass! I wish I could also do these classes.”
So I stay chubby at heart and keep participating, mindfully, in all the kickass as well as sucky bits of the sessions. No end goal in sight, only the one goal for the day, everyday.
Also, if you were waiting for the climax, yes — my friends say I’ve started looking fitter, throw a mean punch and have become badass.
The end.
