5 Ways That Fitness Will Ruin Your Life

Fitness can be one of the most fulfilling parts of your life, or it could be the most stressful. Avoid these traps to ensure its the former

Fitness should be a beautiful thing.

It should be about developing sustainable habits that help us look and feel our best. It should be an inspiring and positive force that deeply enriches our lives.

Unfortunately, this is not an experience that everyone has with their fitness journeys. For some, fitness turns into a debacle of comparison, stress, frustration, and self-loathing.

Many people go from fad to fad and repeat the infuriating cycle of pushing too hard and then crashing from burnout.

I believe that living well requires one to establish an enjoyable, fulfilling, and sustainable approach to fitness, but there are many pitfalls that cause this to be difficult.

I’ve been seriously into fitness for over 3 years now, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way. I’ve fallen for many of these pitfalls, and I want to share my experience in the hopes that you can avoid them.

If you want a healthy and sustainable approach to fitness, avoid the following pitfalls!

Let Dieting Interfere With Your Social Life

It’s well-known in the body-building space that prepping for a show is hard on one’s social life, but the truth is that this problem can affect those who have no intention of stepping on stage with a spray-tan.

It’s a terrible thing to feel nervous about a social event that should be relaxed and fun, and ultimately this is not a sustainable approach to living your best life.

If you’re in a temporary and demanding circumstance (such as preparing for a physique show) such an extreme sacrifice might be necessary, but for people who are just trying to get leaner, feeling this way is a red flag.

You won’t be able to avoid social events forever, and it’s this inability to negotiate that causes people to fluctuate between the extremes of complete denial to reckless abandon.

You need to find a happy medium and fit your social life into your fitness strategy.

You will have to compromise — the truth is that you can’t eat as much of whatever you want whenever you want if you want to be lean, but you also can’t neglect to see your friends and family and enjoy these precious moments.

If you find yourself tempted to say no because you’re worried that saying yes would mean breaking from your diet, this is very possibly a sign that you need to consider whether you’re aspiring to something that is unsustainable.

Fitness needs to fit into your social life. If you can’t get that right, you’re doomed to fail.

Compare yourself to others.

This is a problem in all walks of life. It’s especially easy to do this with fitness, however, because of the prevalence of photos that tell us what we should look like that are plastered all over the internet and our news feeds.

These photos are often taken in very unique circumstances: They’ve been taken professionally with perfect lighting, and the model is very likely leaner in the shoot than they would be if you ran into them on a random Tuesday.

This leads to a classic example of comparing your reality to someone else’s highlight reel.

There is also a significant variance in genetic potential between people. I had a friend in high school who looked better after he had been training for a year than I likely ever will.

Let’s face it — some people are genetic freaks.

The problem is that some of these people don’t recognize this, and they may proceed to sell you a program that says:

“If you do this, in 12 weeks you can look as good as I do.”

In reality, you couldn’t look like them if you had 12 years.

It’s not fair, but it’s the truth.

The person you’re comparing yourself to could have years more experience than you, they could have lighting, angles, and touch-ups working in their favor, or they could just be a marvel of genetics. Going down the rabbit hole of comparison never ends well.

To have a sustainable and healthy fitness journey, you need to be competing against yourself, not other people.

Focus on being better than you were yesterday, and let other people do their thing.

Believe Fitness Influencers

The natural result of a multi-billion dollar industry that has an extreme focus on body image is a metric tonne of bullsh*t.

This bullsh*t often comes from the hundreds of thousands of fitness influencers who saturate all your social media apps.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing fitness influencers who create educational and honest content, but for every one of them, there are at least 100 who spew pure garbage.

Believing this garbage is a great way to fall into the trap of comparison and generally feel terrible about yourself and your own progress.

Here are a few of the main problems to look out for:

Fake Naturals

A “fake natty” is someone who lies about the fact that they are enhanced.

PEDs (performing-enhancing drugs) are not hard to get — you could in fact open up a new tab right now and order some online if you wanted to.

The ease of obtaining PEDs combined with the competitive nature of the fitness industry has led to a surge in their use; it has been estimated that up to 30% of typical gym users are using some form of enhancement.

Many of these people also lie about this.

Why?

It’s easier to sell a program to someone if they believe the seller is natural.

They’ll believe that they can achieve the same results if they just do the work.

It’s a dirty lie, but it is very common.

Fake Binge Eating

Several years ago, fitness influencers began to realize that the YouTube algorithm heavily favored videos featuring massive cheat days, and this led to the trend of binge-eating on camera that is oddly very popular.

The trouble is, if you’re in fitness, you can only do this if you stay lean…

This is where dishonesty comes in.

Some people are merely misleading — they post nothing but their cheat meals which makes it appear as if they can eat this way all the time, while in reality, they eat very low calories 5–6 days out of the week.

They may also conveniently leave out the fact that they do a casual 3+ hours of cardio per day to burn off the extra calories (this is their full-time job, after all).

In the worst cases, people actually fake these cheat day videos. It can be a bit hard to prove, but it is also incredibly easy to make it appear as though you are eating when you’re not. If you’re interested, you can watch an analysis of a fake eating video here.

Making It Look Easy

Aside from full-blown lies, there is often a general misleading sense from some of these influencers that fitness is easy.

You see more photos from their vacations in Dubai than you do of their hard training sessions in the gym. It’s all plastered with the hashtag #livingmybestlife and downplaying the amount of hard work that goes into it.

The takeaway is that you should not believe everything you see from fitness influencers.

If you do, it’s easy to feel like there is something wrong with you since you’re not getting the same results as they are.

Be discerning, and know that there is plenty of misleading garbage out there.

Apply Morality To Food

There is a particular moment from my own experience that illustrates this perfectly:

I had been on a date, and we’d ordered some “bad food” at the restaurant. It was deep-fried food — some Chicken Karaage and Ebi-Mayo (battered prawns with spicy mayonnaise… Mmmmm)

When I was on my way home (yeah… the date could’ve gone better) I felt compelled to stop at a corner store to get ice cream which I proceeded to scarf down all in one sitting.

The mental process for me here was:

This type of thinking is disastrous, and it’s completely illogical.

Food isn’t moral.

I don’t think it’s helpful to think of food as good or bad.

In fact, I’m not even a big fan of using the term “healthy food.” I think it’s better to look at food as a combination of energy and nutrients, and analyze food choices by how helpful they are to our goals rather than simply labeling them as “healthy” or “unhealthy”.

For most of us, food choices can be considered “healthy” if they have adequate protein, fiber, and micronutrients and don’t result in us consuming excess calories that will get stored as body fat.

Someone may become unhealthy after having made poor choices in their diet for an extended period of time, but the food itself is not “bad.”

This mindset can only lead to that illogical moment where you say:

“F*ck it, I’ve screwed up now so I might as well go all in.”

There are food choices that support your goals and food choices that don’t — but the food itself is not moral.

Understand your goals and the types of choices that will allow you to achieve them, but don’t assign morality to food.

Follow Every New Fitness Fad

In order to cultivate a sustainable fitness plan, you’ll have to dial in on what works for you — what you enjoy, what your body responds to, and what is practical for you to maintain.

This will never happen if you’re constantly switching regimens to try the latest fad. It’s useful to remember that Americans alone spend over 200 billion dollars per year on health and fitness, so the abundance of new fads and diets is more a reflection of economics than science.

Fads sell.

I’m not saying that getting (and staying) in shape is easy, but it is simpler than what many of the ‘gurus’ behind these fads would have you believe.

The most important thing is consistency — and for that, the best course is for you to find a way to incorporate fitness in your life that you see yourself sticking to for the long term and doing it.

If you follow all the new fads, you’ll likely end up frustrated and with worse results.

To give yourself the best chance of cultivating a healthy and sustainable fitness plan, do not:

• Let your diet prevent you from having a social life

• Compare yourself to others

• Believe Fitness Influencers (all the time — there are some good ones)

• Apply morality to food

• Follow every new fitness trend.

Thanks for reading, and I sincerely hope this can help you in your journey.