If you’ve ever fantasized about living on pizza, chocolate, and wine and ditching your gym membership for a nightly date with your couch all while having a model-size body, it’s time to come back to reality. Maybe it sucks that looking and feeling great require eating well and moving your body, but it’s the facts. Unless you were blessed with miracle genes--and if you were, please donate your body to science–it’s time to pull up your big girl pants and gets some tough love.
Tough Love #1: You’re Really Not That Busy
We’re pretty sure that the president himself works out on a fairly regular basis. If the leader of the free world can find time to shoot some hoops and run up and down a court with his political pals, then you can, too. Yes, he may have a team of people helping to run his life, tend to his family’s needs, and do the chores, but that doesn’t mean he’s just lying around the Oval Office take naps and eating cookie-dough ice cream (or at least we hope not).
If you have time to read the latest social media posts, catch up on the last episode of the dating reality TV show, or vent to your co-workers about a menial task you were assigned, then you have time to exercise. In fact, you could still do all three of those very activities AND exercise at the same time.
We live in a world that glorifies being busy, and that needs to stop. Your health is important, and being busy constantly is a stressful burden. It’s time to put you first: Say no to over-scheduled activities, turn down invitations, and ask people for help. If your schedule literally has no time open, then the next best thing is to pair up your fitness with your other activities. No one says you have to be in sweats or spandex to work out.
Tough Love #2: You Aren’t What You Eat
Eating right should be a life change. That means once you start doing it, you don’t stop. Does that mean you should eat nothing but fruits and vegetables for the rest of your life? No–after all, you need protein and healthy fats. It does mean that you need to approach food in ways that are neither positive nor negative but more neutral. The food you take in nourishes your body and provides you energy. It is not, however, a manner for how you should judge yourself. Yes, there are foods that are good for you and foods that are not-so good for you. Neither type of food though makes you a good or not-so-good person. Try to make good choices as much as possible, but don’t beat yourself up for the times when a funnel cake at a festival is calling your name. Enjoy it, and move on.
We’ve said it before, but it needs repeating: Stop rewarding yourself with food. Exercise is not the same as healing, rolling over, or playing dead, therefore you don’t get a cookie when done. That’s not to say positive reinforcements are bad. They’re great! Here are five that won’t undo the hard work you’ve put in:
- A day at the spa
- A new pair of shoes
- A trip to Rome
- A mani/pedi
- Tickets to a concert
Tough Love #4: Results Take Time
Dropping excess fat will not happen overnight. That’s because the weight didn’t go on in one night. In the same way that it took months or years for your favorite pants to move from a little snug, to not buttoning, to simply not squeezing past your knees, the same is true when working in reverse. Use those pants to judge your progress and ditch the scale. Scales can be misleading thanks to water weight and muscle growth. Even if you’re making progress, the scale may not move, and you’ll feel defeated. Be patient, keep up the hard work, and good things will come…in time.
Changing your body is possible, but it doesn’t always come easily. Stop fantasizing about magic weight loss solutions and just start working. We all need a little tough love now and again.
What tough love advice has helped you be a better you? Share in the comments.
Carrie Anton is a freelance writer focusing on health, fitness, and sports. She's been published in Self, Women's Health, Oxygen, and Maximum Fitness.
