Is Your Mind Stopping Your Body from Getting Fit?

When I think of what fitness is and how someone gets fit and stays fit, it’s painfully obvious it has little to do with how athletic they are. Fitness has little to do with abilities, coordination, strength or stamina BUT it has EVERYTHING to do with the BRAIN. Success begins in the noggin.

You don’t have to be Einstein to get results (thank the LORD, because I’d be DOOMED!), but you do need to get your brain fit before you can get your body fit. The problem is, people are working on getting their body healthy but their mind is still sick.

Sure, you have to burn calories and you have to do work to get results, but many people let their mind sabotage their body – when they have very capable bodies to get the results they want. I have witnessed people doing “less work” than another person, or lifting less weight than another, and getting amazing results. Why? It’s not because their body is in better shape (often times they are more out of shape) – it’s because they aren’t letting their mind get in the way of their body’s success. They keep showing up and giving THEIR 100% – no matter what that is. 

I can’t tell you how many people I have seen who were 50-100lbs overweight who start working out, or doing a program like our BCx Boot Camp, and say out loud “I don’t know if I can do this” – but they DO do it! and they DO succeed! I also see a whole other group of people who find success and they STILL question themselves. They wonder if they are “ever going to lose these last few pounds“, they think “am I always going to battle this” or “I’m never going to be able to do this or that’“. If you want to control your body, you need to first be able to control your mind!

1. Quit pondering success. Don’t wonder, don’t doubt, don’t question! Don’t procrastinate. Don’t worry yourself to death weather you can actually “do it”. Don’t wait to “feel motivated” to start working out. Don’t wait for a less stressful time to diet or to “be strong” to resist high-calorie foods. Nike says it best: Just Do It.

2. Stop doubting the process. Getting fit is science. There’s no magic to it. There is no fitness spell relying on just the right words and potion to get the spell right. Fitness is like 2+2. You will always get 4 no matter how you feel adding it up or how it may look to you. If doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it,  2+2 will always equal 4. The same goes with fitness. For example, if you do an hour of BCx Boot Camp, it doesn’t matter how you feel doing it, it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it is working and it doesn’t  matter if you don’t like it, your heart rate monitor will show you burned 500-700 calories – PERIOD. You WILL get stronger & you WILL burn calories – whether you doubt it or not.

3. Fight Giving Up. The only way to not give up is to keep showing up. Even if you have one of those days where you give up emotionally, drag your body to the gym anyway. One day something will “click” with you. A perfect example is going to church. There are people that go to church every Sunday and nothing changes – until one day. One day, although you’ve read that scripture a million times or heard that message before, all the sudden you “get it” – and your life changes forever. I don’t know why we are so stubborn, but we are. I will continue to preach the same message until the day I die, all in hopes that one day you too will “get it”. I will use different analogies, I will use the gentle method, the brutal method – I’ll try them all, but the message will be the same and every day someone new will “get it”.

The same goes for you on your fitness journey. I PROMISE, if you keep showing up, you WILL eventually get it. It may be running into the right person in the gym, seeing your cheesy butt in a three-way mirror (happened to me!), learning something new you didn’t know, or hearing someone’s success story that changes your life forever. So, when you feel like giving up, just remember all you have to do to fight giving up is to keep showing up. 🙂

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