What Are Results?
A 6 pack. The arms and butt you want. The acknowledgement of everyone around you of how fit I am. 6 months, max.
Honestly, there have been many times I’ve told myself that if that’s unrealistic, then why bother. Too tall of a hill to climb, too many chances we get thrown off.
I’ve had to learn to fall in love with the process. The process tends to yield more good results than the end goal itself. There’s an element of looking better in every training program’s desired outcome. I want to be clear: training to look better isn’t wrong. But if that is the only goal on our radar, it is likely a race we have no chance of winning (or even finishing).
Whether you are looking to lose weight, build muscle or transform your body: we all want the visual outcome of an exercise program to make us feel better about what we see in the mirror. That may be the extent of your goal when it comes to working out, as it is for many people. I’d be lying if I told you the first time I picked up a weight after high school sports wasn’t because I saw what I’d become and finally decided to do something about it. I’d also be lying if I didn’t tell you that the main reason I sit here today is due to the injuries I suffered training for vanity instead of function. That isn’t to minimize our goal of looking better and feeling better about ourselves. That is to make the point that achieving our main goal can leave us no better off than we were before if our goals aren't calibrated to what works in the long run.
We have to ask ourselves two questions:
What is our goal?- What are we looking to achieve in the long run, or what box are we ultimately looking to check?
What are pieces of evidence that we are inching closer to achieving that goal?- If our goal is a 6 pack, regardless of whether that is a ‘good’ goal to have or not: we aren’t going to go from no 6 pack to 6 pack without noticing some smaller, more subtle results in the process. What are those? What do they look like? What should we be looking out for? (celebrating the incremental progress along the way is the mechanism that keeps us going throughout the process of achieving our initial goal)
We don’t want to be so hyper-fixated on our destination that we lose track of what we learn in the process. If we do, we will miss the positive outcomes that the process delivers while working towards our ultimate goal. Oftentimes our pants will start fitting better, putting on socks and shoes becomes less of a burden, we are able to ski longer in the day with less soreness than we used to have, and we’re able to play with our grandkids on the floor rather than watch them from a chair. We notice these improvements long before we take the “after photo”.
In reality, getting (much less maintaining) a 6 pack is miserable. You won’t enjoy it. The people you think will be impressed, won’t say anything to you about it. The diet you have to maintain to get and stay that lean is bland, repetitive and limits your life beyond just what you can & can’t eat. What does feel good is those pants fitting better than they used to. That shirt you kept around becoming wearable again. The satisfaction that you can engage with your grandkids on a level you weren't able to before: that’s what keeps us training.
If we train for a better life, rather than a better looking mirror, that’s what leads to consistency, and consistency leads to those results. There's no way around it. Go out of your way to notice the subtle improvements. Those will keep you encouraged throughout your time working out, and become the necessary stepping stones towards that original goal.
