We live in an aesthetic world, born of quick fixes and instant gratifications of things we think we need, right now, because we don’t want to wait weeks or months to buy that car we love, or to take that cruise we savor, or to look in the mirror and finally see that perfect body reflecting back at us.

The reason for this instant need, if we listen to the world, is that we lack patience.

 

But is that true?

Not really. We don’t lack patience—we select it.

 

Deep down, if we lacked patience, we wouldn’t raise our kids for eighteen years. We’d give them up within the first month of sleep deprivation. But we can’t part with them because a few things stop us from separating ourselves from our children. They include unconditional love, happiness and gratitude we feel for our kiddos. These feelings rise above any inconvenience we suffer. If we apply this theory to anything else that we have to work for, including results in fitness, then it makes sense.

 

Let’s get real. This world is full of profit-producing places that bank (literally and figuratively) on you hating yourself. That’s harsh, but true. The last thing a shady car dealer wants to see is a viable customer who is happy and loves life, because that person is more apt to wait until he or she can purchase the car they want comfortably and without their wallet getting dragged along the showroom floor. It’s the miserable people they target, those people who are escaping into the material world to forget their own reality.

 

A shady car dealer is no different than the company that has just created the latest and greatest diet pill or diet plan, designed to make you lose 15 pounds in your first week of taking it. They know that this is a quick fix that may or may not work, that may or may not be healthy for you, and will probably never allow you to see long-term results. They just don’t care.

 

Most people with any sense of how weight loss works know that slow and steady weight loss is the only tried and true healthy way to lose weight and keep it off**. The companies that promote these pills, or extremely rapid weight drop plans, tell themselves (internally, they’re not stupid) they are banking on your lack of patience for success. But what they are really banking on is you loathing yourself to the point you refuse to trust the process of getting healthy and losing weight over the long-term. Let’s face it. People who go for the instant gratification probably don’t follow through on stuff anyway, so they have no proof that if they stick with something, they can achieve a chosen goal. It’s not just a lack of patience they carry around, it’s the lack of self-trust because they have no confidence to think they can actually succeed.

 

I know in the past we’ve said high-fructose corn syrup is the devil himself, but he has a cousin named Negative Body Image, and that sucker will cut you and bleed you dry if you let it. So don’t let it. Nobody has ever said that just because you dislike your body that you’re also supposed to dislike yourself or your life. 

In fact, the opposite should be true. When you dislike your body, your self-love should be at its highest point. Love for yourself is the fuel that will help you change your body over the long-haul into whatever you want it to become. It’s self-love that makes you proud of the work you put in void of taking some magic and tragic pill. Think of it this way: Don’t patiently wait for results as you work; patiently work to obtain your results. You can’t pour from an empty cup any more than you can’t lift weights from an empty heart.

 

Remember, and we can’t stress this enough, when you are working toward the person you want to be, those who put you down are saying more about who they really are than who you really are. When looking at society as a whole, very few people take fitness seriously. But you do, so you’ve already leveled-up from the complainers, naysayers and narcissists. Just keep your chin up, love and accept yourself unconditionally, trust yourself and your process, or as my teenage son would say, trust your struggle. -J-

 

From the personal training staff: John Rutan, Don Moore, JB Baier, Victoria Young, Allison Worley, Julie O’Connor, Michelle Dwyer, Brendi Middleton, Mike Stuchl, Lois Johnson, Rachelle Jensen, and Byron Goff. Questions about personal training? Visit our website or email John Rutan at [email protected].