And the lost art of patience.

‘If you want to see results FAST get on this plan!’

Or what about…

‘Guaranteed results in 4 WEEKS!’

I love the classic…

‘Shed pounds and get the body you deserve IN A MONTH!’

We’ve all seen them, promises of big results from this diet or that workout method or blah blah blah. It’s tiresome isn’t it. This blog deals with the way many of us view our health and the way we look at it as something that needs dealing with fast. We’re also going to try to deal with the question of why we want this fast fix and why it’s such an impatient way to look at changing things in your life.

Let’s look at a scenario. So you’ve put on weight? Feel like you need to lose it and start getting into shape? Great. Like most people your probably going to google gyms, or you might go with a friend to a fitness class. Awesome.

After a month your probably going to find this harder and harder to stick to, so you start getting more desperate, you hear of a lady who lives close by who lost 3 stone on a plan she found on the Internet and you think ‘why not?’ So you sign up for it, shelling out good money to do so. You get sent a whole bunch of tablets and soups in packets, and very quickly you lose a lot of weight. Fast forward 6 months when the plan ends and you can’t afford to carry on and hey presto, all that weight goes back on and the merry-go round starts again. There’s lots of different methods and ways of doing things in this fast and impatient way of living, but I chose one of the most damaging ones.

Why do we time and again choose this fast track method of living? I think it’s the world that we now live in, we’ve become very easily influenced by flashy non-factual media and by bad teachings. Social media puts pressure on us to feel the need to show off what we are doing. Information overload has led many people to basically question there own morals, many people now really have trouble figuring out or even more accurate, allowing themselves to trust what is right and what is wrong.

So many people want things to happen fast. Express results. Accelerate. Go go go. Get that selfie. Look at me now.

I see it all the time in my clients. Before Covid -19 hit us, back when I was training people face to face, on a weekly basis, I would have conversations with clients who would ask for my advice on this diet or that weight loss pill or some groundbreaking tea that would make you lose 5lbs a week or similar nonsense. It wouldn’t matter that I’d trained them for months and slowly built up their knowledge, it was that niggling doubt brought on by this information overload that made them doubt their own morals. They KNEW that they didn’t need it, deep down they KNEW, but I’m convinced that modern living and all this overload is basically, making us into less confident beings. Trusting our own gut feelings is increasingly becoming harder to do.

As far as health goes, and this need to show off our feathers, I guess it’s just our obsessive desire to look better. What many people ‘perceive’ is the hard way is to exercise regularly and eat a good diet, so they choose what they think is the easy option – to buy an expensive supplement or similar and get it done quickly. But what they don’t realise is that this is in fact the hard way, they are putting themselves under more intense pressure by choosing this ‘easy’ option and ‘performing’. They’ve chosen to allow their health to be influenced, setting a deadline, micro-monitoring their weight and just giving themselves one hell of a hard time mentally and physically.

On the other hand exercising and looking after your diet a little bit feeds the soul, is ‘feels’ hard at first because it’s uncomfortable, whereas taking a pill isn’t as uncomfortable. But in time, it’s an endorphin pumping journey that will tell you way more about yourself than a pill or a quick fix ever can.

I do like the saying; ‘nothing easy is ever worth doing.’ And it’s so true in this context.

The answer to this problem if your reading this and struggle with trusting your own gut, is (you’ve guessed it) to start PRACTICING trusting yourself again. Think back to a time in your life before you had a phone, before you could question so much. For me, I’m sure I’m more unhappy now because of all this distracting information, it can definitely make me question my own guts feelings. So maybe turn your phone off on one day of the week, stop guessing and start doing, be you, don’t be influenced, try listening to that quiet and still voice. I make the best decisions when I’m me, in the moment and contented, trusting myself. In a nice sort of way, when I’m in this place, things take on their own rhythm, life just happens in its own way without barriers and decisions get made naturally. I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do, I just do! Know what I mean?

Your health demands that your patient and that you trust yourself, that’s it, that’s all you need to know, you don’t need to pay anyone money for this talent, it’s in you and has been in you since you were born. So start cultivating this understanding in yourself today, it will take a while but it’s in there, eventually you’ll find this space in yourself that will see you through and take you on a journey than no pill or potion ever can.