Our bodies do not change overnight!
At this point in my life, I am officially a certified personal trainer who is the least fit I have been since I experienced chronic fatigue around 7-8 years ago. It has taken a lot for me to admit that, but it’s true.
The thing is, I didn’t just wake up one day and suddenly lose all the fitness, strength, and muscle I had worked on building over the course of years since my time with chronic fatigue. Around 3 years ago, I was probably the strongest and fittest I had ever been in my life. I was training consistently both in and out of the gym with an online personal trainer.
Since then, however, I have just not kept up with training for a variety of reasons. I spent lots of time with physio’s last year focusing on baseline muscular rehab, and this year my spiritual and gut health took precedence. Consequently I have steadily lost what I had previously gained, and I have reached a baseline within my physical fitness that more accurately represents my more recent (much more sedentary) lifestyle. Although I continue to live a somewhat ‘active lifestyle’, my main source of physical activity for a long time now has been walking, cleaning, and incidental exercise.
Just recently, in an attempt to find out whether any underlying issues have been causing an intense gut flare-up, I have spent the last three-or-so months consciously choosing to eat food that caused inflammation to my digestion, in preparation for certain tests. Needless to say, I spent three-or-so months feeling like my absolute base-level self, with my body under too much stress to be able to physically cope with anything more than gentle walking.
It is now a few weeks post testing (more on that in other blog posts) and now that I have certain answers and am able to avoid certain triggering foods, I am feeling more and more like myself, let alone like an actual human. I have officially started training again (well, let’s be clear here, I have completed three workouts within the last two weeks, with the first workout landing me almost two days in bed as I was so sore and tired, and with this last one I was able to add a little extra resistance than just using my body weight = progress!).
Four things I know right now in terms of my current fitness journey:
I am physically WEAK (in comparison to how I used to feel at my strongest around three years ago);
I am STRONG (in comparison to how I was feeling while preparing for my gut tests);
I hold absolutely no judgement for where I am physically (even if I have struggled to admit it); and
There will be absolutely NO ability or room for ‘getting fit fast’ with this journey back to fitness.
It has been through this experience as a certified personal trainer who is right now a total and absolute beginner with exercising (and proud to be! Again, I don’t judge this phase in my life at all, even if it has taken a lot to admit it!), that I have been repeatedly reminded of a recent conversation I had with a friend, which touched on two really great re-frames when it comes to the results we expect from our bodies so quickly after implementing new healthy habits within our lives.
Here’s the thing (well two things):
Firstly – If we think about how our current state (our weight, size, energy levels, etc.) are *generally* a reflection of our lifestyle and health status up until that point (more specifically our lifestyle and health status over the last days, weeks, even months or years), it makes sense then that in order to see or feel a shift within our state as a result of our recent changes in lifestyle habits (ie as a result of changing things up and adding in new healthy habits) it will TAKE TIME (days, weeks, months, or years) to see that shift on a physical, mental, and/or energetic level.
I often use pregnancy as an example of this concept. Pregnancy takes around 9 months, right? It takes at LEAST 9 months (up to potentially a couple of years, especially for breastfeeding women) for a woman’s body (hormonal levels and all) to level out, and ‘recover’ post-birth. Obviously so many individual factors go play into this, and I want to point out I am referring to the body on a more cellular and hormonal level here, not necessarily on a fitness or ‘physical bounce-back’ level. This is such a long time!
Bringing this back round to me – for me to expect to ‘bounce back’ with my own fitness after I have experienced so much physical stress within my body over the last few years and specifically within the last few months, is just not going to be realistic. It has taken me around three years to ‘regress’ to my current physical state. It won’t necessarily take me three years to reach that previous point again, but I do know that if I were to go ‘too hard-too fast’, I would burn out and the process would take even longer. 😅
Slow and steady here is key! THIS is where sustainable and LONG-TERM results are created!
Secondly – and to add to my first point, if we were able to change our current state EVERY TIME we either did, thought, or felt something different… our lives and bodies would be constantly changing in overly-dramatic ways!!
I hate to admit it… but we just aren’t that powerful! 😅
According to certain studies, we experience thousands of thoughts every day. Our thoughts lead to emotional responses within the body, and our emotions lead to the actions we take within our day, which then create shifts within our intrinsic world (our bodies) and extrinsic world (our environments), which lead to new thoughts and emotions, which lead to new actions.. etc.
Further to this, since we experience such a variety of thoughts throughout the day (some helpful, some not-so-helpful), and since we complete so many actions within our days (again, some helpful, some not-so-helpful), we would be living an absolute catastrophe of a life if our body and our state would shift so dramatically based of every thought, feeling, or decision we made.
Our bodies would be totally shrinking and expanding with each meal we eat or didn’t eat, we would be experiencing an incredible level of intensity within our conversations and our actions, and we would be living absolutely impulsive lives.
Thank god we are not that powerful! 😇
I bring this back to my first point – our bodies in any point in time are a generalised reflection of our intrinsic and extrinsic worlds. Our body weight is a reflection of a range of things like water weight, muscle, bone, and fat. We as individuals are a reflection of all the things we do, think, say, feel, (great and not-so-great).
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I really hope this lands. Learning and knowing this has been SOO incredibly helpful for me. I am able to come back to these reframes any time I feel frustrated that my body isn’t necessarily reacting the way I wish it was with my latest fitness journey. It is also helpful any time I may struggle with consistency and discipline within my business and health.
I would LOVE to continue this conversation with you! This topic is so important, and this blog post is just the tip of the ice berg of this conversation. I intend to expand on certain aspects of this conversation in later blog posts. For now though – please comment below what your take-aways have been, what you have learnt from this, or what your own experience with this has been like! I read every comment and would love to connect further.
Mon xx