The Way You FEEL

Tony Horton was recently quoted as saying:

“How do you feel when you skip a workout? How do you feel right after you finish a workout?

Go ahead and think about this for a moment because it really will help you out! We all have those days when the alarm goes off or we just get off work and a vigorous P90X or Insanity workout just does sound so appealing. “I dont feel like working out this morning” is what we say to ourselves. Even Coach Todd here has those days (shocking, right?). So what should you do? You are faced with the choice to either skip the workout or push play anyway.

Let focus on the choice to not do the workout for a moment. Anyone who has ever skipped a workout knows exactly how you will feel afterward – You feel guilty. You feel that you have failed yourself and your goals. You begin to wonder if you can even stick with the fitness program. You will get worried that you have fallen and wont be able to gain back the momentum. These are all very negative thought that can really undermine your success.

Now lets look at the other side of the coin. You decided to ignore the way you FEEL and decided to drag yourself out of bed or out of the lazyboy and went over to the dvd player and pressed play. Keep in mind, you still have zero motivation to work out even though you have just pressed play. You see that warning screen about “this fitness program is not for all people” lol. Sometimes I love that message. Even though I dont want to press play and work out, it reminds me that not everyone is willing to do what I just did and they forfeit the reward. And what happens 1 hour later? You feel like a million bucks! You have just set the bar for the rest of the day. You FEEL amazing and your energy levels are head and shoulders above all the other cubicle rats at work. You realized that you pushed yourself harder this go around and that you are one step closer to your goal! You start to realize that getting RIPPED is possible!!! Now you are GLAD you pressed play!

I have been reading this book called “The Magic of Thinking Big”, by David J. Schwartz. In one of the chapters he discusses overcoming fear with action. I think that the same thing can apply to your workouts. You overcome the feeling of not wanting to work out by doing the action of pressing play anyway, by getting out of bed anyway, by skipping your oh so important TV show. On a little tangent…If you are one of those people who say they dont have time to work out, but you watch TV…you are lying to yourself and you need to quit making excuses! If you have time to catch up on who Brad and Angelina adopted or who just got voted off the island, then you have time to work out!!! STOP MAKING EXCUSES!!! Sorry about that.

The same exact principles can be applied to eating clean and tracking your nutrition:

“How do you feel when you cheat on your diet? How do you feel after an entire day of eating clean and hitting all your targets for nutrition?”

So DO the actions that will lead to you to your goal no matter how you feel and you wont regret it! The next time you are at that fork in the road, choose the path less traveled. When you see results like mine or anyone else who has had success with their health and fitness. The success is a result of choosing to do what gets me to my goal. They are not decisions based on how I feel. If I based my health and fitness choices on how I feel, I would still be where I was at 1 year ago: 50lbs over weight, no energy, and not taking care of what God has blessed me with.

There is no substitute for doing what you know needs to be done. Contacting your coach to confess your sins so to speak wont do it. Working out twice the next day wont make up for it. The damage has been done! Learn from it and dont make the same mistake twice! DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME! You will get better results and you are going to feel alot better about yourself during the journey.