There are many things that can detour a person away from reaching their fitness goals and making progress of any kind slow to come by. Family, work, social life, you name it, any of these can be a hindering when it comes to trying to get in the best shape of your life. This is not to say that there are not more important things in the world than your fitness goals, but this suggesting that when your priorities are in line your goals should be a little bit easier to obtain.
Priorities, a word that is so relative it’s scary. What is important to one may not be important to someone else. Ideally there should be certain things that hold precedent over fitness and the goals that come along with it. Family first and foremost. Work is pretty important too because if you do not have a job you cannot support your fitness hobby or lifestyle (unless you are fortunate enough to actually get paid to be fit). Social life is important too, but a healthy balance is important.
Balance, there is another relative word.
Fitness should always simply be a facet of life, and not life itself. However, it is ok to take your fitness lifestyle seriously. Many times, you will see however people who take it lightly, very lightly. This is where that lack of balance creeps in between fitness and maybe other things that should not be seen as priority.
One of those things is partying.
Many people use the gym and fitness as a stress release. For some however the gym is not enough, and they need to “let loose” with some friends and maybe even family. Letting loose usually consists of eating foods that are not on your meal plan and drinking alcoholic beverages to the point where maybe you have a hard time remembering your name. Yes, people need to be able to enjoy themselves, especially with family and friends, but this is where you have to ask yourself how important your fitness goals are to you.
Many times, people will go hard during the week when it comes to the gym and “reward” themselves with a weekend of partying and having fun. This is kind of a ridiculous mindset because the gym was once your stress release and now you are rewarding yourself for being disciplined at relieving stress. This is like rewarding yourself with dessert for eating a healthy meal, then rewarding yourself with more dessert for eating the dessert.
YOU CANNOT DOUBLE DIP WHEN IT COMES TO REWARDING.
All this mindset does is slow down whatever goals you have set for yourself which will in return do what? You got it, cause more stress. So, the very thing that is supposed to relieve stress ends up causing more. Than you get upset and go out and drink more and party more because you do not see the point.
It is a horrible cycle you need to avoid.
Find balance. Give yourself a weekend to start where you go out with friends and let loose. This is not to say you cannot go out on the weekends, but for the most part everyone has their own definition of “partying”. Hang out with friends whenever you want, but simply “party” once a month to start and see how it goes. The unhealthy food and alcohol will do nothing but cause adverse effects on your body so keeping them to a minimum is important.
Remember, balance. There are more important things in life than fitness goals, but goals they still are and do your best at avoiding cutting yourself short in achieving them.
