Not Painful enough
Posted on 3rd February 2023 at 15:30
sure it hurts, but does it hurt enough?
You might be forgiven for thinking the title of this article refers to a those who love challenging themselves, feeling the burn, the “go hard or go home” workout crowed, or a harsh “eatin is cheatin” rigid diet plan, or the bank manager called Dave sat in the corner of my living room receiving regular high voltage electrical impulses from the car battery attached to his nipples via wires and crocodile clips, if that’s why you clicked on this article, I’m sorry to disappoint you. (Note to Dave’s family, you can have him back when he agrees to lower my overdraft interest rates).
I’ve written this piece in consideration of a recently remembered Zig Zagler Story which I’ll try to paraphrase.
Whilst visiting a colleague, a guy notices a dog laying on the floor whining.
“what’s up with the dog?” he asks.
“He’s lying on top of a nail, and it hurts” the dog’s owner replies.
“Why doesn’t he just move?”
“It doesn’t hurt enough”.
And that’s where we arrive at the crux of change, how bad does it have to hurt before we do something about it?
How sad do you have to feel before you seek counselling? Should you wait till your about to throw yourself off a building?
How badly do you need to get into debt before you decide to get financial help and review your outgoings? when the debt collectors come calling?
I used to have a client who’s work colleagues told her that she really doesn’t need to see a personal trainer because she’s lean enough as it is, she never said it, but she told me that she always wanted to reply, “should I wait until I’m as fat as you then?”.
My point is this, if you’re aware of a problem starting to emerge, it probably doesn’t feel urgent to sort it. You can probably afford to wait a little while, but just know that in doing so, tomorrows problem will be more of a struggle to take care off, the longer you leave it, the harder it gets, a stitch in time saves nine and all that.
If you can summon up the courage (for that’s what it takes) to make a start on fixing the problem, you’ll often find it’s not as bad as you were expecting it to be. Our minds can escalate things into bigger and more scary terrors than reality reveals, this is why the best horror movies leave it to the imagination rather than use needless gore.
I completely understand this human phycological trait to ignore a problem till it gets much worse, in fact I’m often guilty of it myself, there are lots of reasons why most of us do this, I've tried to put together soloutions to the most common three reasons below.
1. What’s the point in trying?
Most people have tried to lose weight and improve their health before, sometimes quite often, and whilst some attempts have been successful, at some point life has gotten in the way, old habits have creeped back in, and people find themselves back where they started.
I completely get that, but understand this, it takes lots of attempts to succeed, don’t think that just because you’ve failed a few times, that you can never succeed, its well documented that the average smoker must quit at least thirty times before they knock the habit for good. Who knows what the average figure might be for losing weight and keeping it off, but perhaps one of the reasons we don’t have that number is that a lot of people quit trying because they haven’t succeeded with it on the first few attempts.
2. It Hurts
Exercise hurts, dieting hurts, anybody who tries to convince you otherwise is a liar with genital herpes who probably gets their kicks sniffing the bike seats after a particularly intense spinning class.
This point harps back to point one, why try to do something that will hurt, when it will most likely fail? Why put yourself through that?
The degree of pain is up to you, if the thought of a one-hour gym session is off putting, how about a ½ hr gym session?
If giving up sugary foods is something you don’t want to think about then how about just reducing them?
If you know what you don’t want to do, then try compromising with yourself to find what you could do that will still help you lose weight.
3. Time
We all have busy lives, we all have commitments of some sort, who has the time to work out or prepare food?
But as the old saying goes, “those who don’t make time to be healthy will one day have to make time to be ill” can you find a time efficient way to move more or eat less? Can you buy ready-made healthier food? Could you walk whilst doing some of your daily tasks? Can you find a few minutes a day to do just a few exercises?
Once you get the momentum going, the flywheel starts turning, energy increases and you find a way to overcome the challenge rather than be overcome by it.
Don’t delay, do something today
My reference to pain in this article is not to in relation to musculoskeletal issues relating from injuries or when you step barefoot on a piece of Lego. I’m referring to the pain of not liking your body getting fatter, or the pain of getting out of breath going up stairs or feeling embarrassed at having to buy much larger clothing sizes.
Pain is a useful guide to something being wrong, learn to pay attention to it when it occurs, and avoid waiting for it to scream in your face before you finally take some action.
If it hurts a little, it hurts enough, do something.
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