It's Not About Your Summer Body
Unfortunately we live in a society that places a lot of emphasis on body shape and size. Just look on any magazine cover marketed toward women and see “15 workouts to tone and tighten!” look at the ones for men and see “the 2 week plan to get ripped fast!” Curvy is the new skinny, slender is the new bulky… whatever is in style, the point is to get you to want to change something about yourself while simultaneously getting you excited to buy their product that can help make it happen.
When people say they want to start working out, it’s almost always because they want to change the way they look (much more so than change the way they feel). One of the greatest things about CrossFit is that regardless of the reason you start, it ends up changing your priorities and focus as you keep putting in the work.
It’s Not About Your Summer Body.
You may come into the gym with the intent of wanting to lose 15 lbs so you can fit into that dress, or because you really want to get those abs to show off over the 4th of July beach party, but as you continue to progress in each class you'll discover something;
Your body is the byproduct of physical progress.
When you stop obsessing with body image, and start focusing on mobility and performance level, you will naturally start seeing your body change while achieving more goals than just dropping some unwanted body fat. CrossFit focuses on mastering endurance levels, olympic lifts, and gymnastic movements through functional fitness. It doesn’t focus on getting toned or bulking up. It retrains your mind to want to better your performance and challenge you to push your hardest.
Remember the theme of mentality during your workout. Remember the goal of reforming your habits to fit into a healthy lifestyle. Because what happens when you suddenly hit that magic number on the scale? Do you stop working out? Do you just work to maintain it? Where is the emotional reward in that to get you to keep going? Your primary motivation has to come from somewhere else.
It's About Sustainable Motivation.
To not only achieve success, but to keep achieving success is the goal. Our motivation for coming back to the gym has to come from someplace other than outside of ourselves. Our motivation has to be sustainable. The reward you get from hitting your body goal is outstanding, but the reward you get from breaking a new PR is just as emotionally gratifying and measurable. What’s better is that you can always improve upon your performance. You can only hit your weight goal once (relatively speaking) and then hope to maintain it.
The coaching staff and community at 8th Day Gym absolutely support wanting to improve upon your physical health. Feeling good about what we look like is a large factor in our happiness and it would be juvenile to say that it doesn’t affect our self esteem. But it will help you to take the power away from what the scale says. Aim to love the journey of fitness and the progress of your physical strength and stamina. It’s a guarantee that when you do, you’ll see the work reflect on the outside too.
