The special sauce in fitness is consistency.
It’s not a perfect program or a new secret supplement; it’s showing up day after day and putting in the work.
If that sounds like drudgery, here’s a different way to look at it.
You don’t ever win at fitness or well-being.
There isn’t a finish line. All there is, is the process.
That means you don’t have to sprint to the finish or worry about losing; all you have to do is show up.
Your program doesn’t even have to be perfect. If you’re consistently putting in the work on a mediocre program, you’ll get 10 times the benefit of a person who puts mediocre effort into a perfect program.
Why?
Because health and fitness work on a compounding scale.
If you consistently make health and fitness “deposits,” the benefits will build. At first, you might not notice the gains from the sacrifices you’re making. But over time, those deposits will be reflected in your body.
One day you’ll notice when something that used to be difficult for you to lift or move is easy. Or you’ll be happy to take the stairs when the elevator is out, and you won’t be winded when you get to your floor.
On the flip side, if you’re consistently making withdrawals from your account, the negative aspects of your health will compound, and you’ll experience the exact opposite of what we’ve just described.
Things will get harder. The stairs that used to be a minor annoyance turn into a mountain that fills you with dread.
Things that were heavy and difficult to handle become immovable objects.
Here’s the wild part, just like there isn’t a “finish line” for fitness, there isn’t a “finish line” for poor health either.
Time and poor choices continually chip away and our physical capacity until there’s nothing left.
We don’t mean to turn this article into a tragedy; we’re simply stating a brutal truth that everyone needs to comprehend.
Here’s the silver lining.
Consistently showing up for your health doesn’t take as much work as you think.
It starts small.
Walking 21 minutes daily decreases your risk of heart disease by 30%.
That’s a HUGE deal.
Heart disease is the number one killer in the US and Europe. It kills one person every 36 seconds in the United States.
The bar is set incredibly low for us to start taking control of our health.
If you couple that with 2 days of strength training, you get ~ 75% of the health benefits you would get from a more intense exercise program.
That’s amazing!
You don’t have to become a fitness enthusiast to dramatically improve your health and likely extend your life, or at the very least prevent yourself from ending up with a serious chronic disease, like heart disease or type II diabetes.
Here’s the takeaway:
Fitness and well-being are ongoing journeys, so they don’t have a finish line, and that’s a good thing because all you have to do is keep showing up.
And “showing up” doesn’t have to look like a highlight reel from an influencer's Instagram. It can be as simple as daily walks at a moderate pace and 2 days per week of strength training.
