Results Don’t Come Easy

Whenever a new year rolls around, most people are feeling refreshed, excited, motivated, and ready to take on a new way of life. We see the gym get busier, people posting online about their meals, and photos of progress as months go by. But we always see that number drop off as time goes on throughout the year. It could be because of a number of things, but I often hear people mention that, ‘_______ didn’t work for me.’ CrossFit didn’t work for me, Paleo didn’t work for me, Pilates didn’t work for me. And when they say that, most of the time they are saying that they didn’t get the intended results in their hopeful timeframe.

Well, let’s try to erase those preconceived notions before going in. Whenever we try something new, it’s often because we saw a friend or acquaintance try it and they had great results from it. So we go in expecting the same results in a short timeframe. We are a community of instant gratification. We can get almost anything we need in a matter of minutes, hours, or days. And since the fitness and supplement industry knows that we are instant gratification people, we are continually bombarded with ads and promotions talking about getting results within weeks or months. So when we don’t see or experience the results we expected, we usually jump to conclusions that the said activity doesn’t work.

What you don’t often see or hear from the fitness industry is that results take TIME. Results take hard work day after day, week after week, year after year. Sure, a change to your diet or your activity level will definitely show some results in a matter of weeks, but continued results take continued action. And not all of us fully understand that. It’s easy to commit to a few months, but committing to years and years of hard work is daunting. I get it. Saying that you can’t wait until year 10 of your fitness journey sounds ridiculous, but I can promise you that year 10 is going to be pretty awesome after you’ve worked hard from year 1 through 9.

I want to share my own personal experience as an example because I’m one of those people that has a hard time building muscle, unlike some of my friends I’ve met throughout my fitness journey. I didn’t grow up playing sports so I didn’t have much muscle memory to work with when I started trying a bit of CrossFit in 2009. I could barely squat, I couldn’t do a push-up, and I could barely make it through 10 burpees. But I kept pushing through, modifying, and sticking with it day after day. As I became more involved in the fitness industry, I would often feel ashamed as I would see women who had so much more muscle development than me and I would wonder what I was doing wrong. But even with that feeling of frustration, I kept going. I always wanted to have more muscular legs, but my lack of experience in the past and my search for what worked best for me, made things take more time than I had hoped. Now that I am 10+ years into my fitness journey, I’m continually seeing changes with my legs. They slowly are taking a more muscular shape that I never thought was possible with my genetics. That’s after 10+ years of working hard and trying different things. And that gets me super excited to see what the next 10 years bring.

The point is – results take time. They take hard work, they take experimentation, and they take never giving up. If I had said, ‘Working out didn’t work for me, my legs never got more muscular’ and I had just given up, I would have never known my potential later on. It’s EASY to throw in the towel and to come up with excuses as the year goes on, it’s much harder to simply put in the work. But remind yourself – when you’re thinking about throwing in the towel and coming up with excuses to give up, your 10-year potential is just waiting for you down the road. Your results may not come in the time you want them to and you may have to work harder than you thought, but that hard work will payoff. And you’ll be so proud that you stuck with it. When you’re thinking about throwing in the towel this year, DON’T. Don’t do it. Because you’re worth the sacrifice, the frustration, and the ups and downs. You’re worth the commitment.