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#DadFit Hard Work

Project #DadFit – This Sh*t Is Hard

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I knew the journey to a healthier me would be challenging but I had no idea it was going to be this difficult. Late last year I started running, hit the gym multiple times a week and even had P90X3 going strong. Nothing could stop me. Or so I thought.

Enter the busy Christmas season, snow on the ground and a bout of laziness and everything I had worked for is now far in the rearview mirror. I’ve wanted so badly to get back into my routines but I’m struggling to find the starting point. I’m now back to my old ways, which happen to include non-stop snacking, shortness of breath, sucking in my stomach to fit into my clothes and a complete lack of motivation to do any of the things I used to love doing, such as blogging and podcasting.

Inconsistency seems to be the only consistent thing in my life right now and I’m slowly working my way through it. What is this thing that holds us down even though we want nothing more than to move forward? I’ve watched all the motivational videos, seen what being out of shape can do to you and even interviewed a bunch of health experts, yet here I sit, unable to muster the strength to get off the couch.

I took a first step yesterday when I signed up for a trial membership at my local GoodLife Fitness and plan on attending my first session in the coming days. There is a lot of work to be done and I honestly have no idea if I’ll be able to get it done, but I’m going to keep chipping away at it in hopes that it’ll eventually stick.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that others are going through the same struggles that I am so I can feel like less of a failure and more of an every man. If you are struggling, feel free to share your story in the comments and maybe we can work through this thing together.

Community

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Encouragement

I always believed that a community is simply a term to describe the area that you lived in. In my limited time in the blogging world, I have come to respect the fact that the word, community, means so much more than just a grouping of similarly coloured houses.

I decided to make a life change today. I decided that it was time for me to stop punishing my body with junk and a lack of exercise, in order to create a healthier version of me. Let’s call it Me 2.0. There were a handful of things that pushed me towards this decision today, none of which I will be discussing here. The point is that I got suddenly motivated and had no idea where to begin. I’ve had this sudden burst of motivation in the past and it always turned out the same; I would tell myself I was going to the gym but when the time came to actually do it, I would find any excuse to bail out. Then I would eat chips.

Today was different though. I innocently tweeted my intention to hit the gym for the first time in years and something funny happened. Encouragement. From complete strangers. There were no less than 10 tweets from people I have associated with online, each pushing me towards completing a goal I have failed to achieve so many times before. It was probably the single coolest thing that has happened to me on Twitter so far, and that includes the time Wil Wheaton scolded me.

And I did it, too. I took all the messages of encouragement, got my ass to the gym and it felt great! When I finished my workout, I sat and wondered why it took me so long to finally do this. It wasn’t that hard and it was made easier by the fact that I was reading the tweets coming in as I was doing it. Community. That’s what helped me get over the first hurdle in creating a better version of myself, for myself and my family. I shared all of those messages to illustrate my point and to my surprise, I received more messages from people who just needed to hear the encouragement, even if it wasn’t intended for them.

This new online community I have found is something that has started to transform my life. That might sound like an exaggeration but those who are willing participants in it will know exactly what I am talking about. It’s one of things where you absolutely get what you put into it and I have decided that I am all in. If a simple tweet of encouragement can make someone feel the way it did for me today, imagine the effect of 10 or 20 or 100 would have. It’s something to think about the next time you see someone innocently posting about a goal, hope or dream, while secretly looking for support.

Community is important. It’s what drives us to be better to each other. It’s what motivates and inspires us to do the things we didn’t believe we could do. I’m incredibly thankful for having found such a great community of people and can’t wait to pay forward all the kindness that has been given to me thus far. Thank You all.