Have you ever seen posts on social media where the poster points out a long list of their “challenges” alongside a photo of their “results”……………
And asks “What’s your excuse?”
You know the type – “I’ve got a million kids, 27 businesses, all the illnesses and medical issues, I was raised by wild animals and look how good my abs are. What’s your excuse?”.
Anyone else hate them?
They can be ok until those last three words.
“What’s your excuse?”
Instantly turns it from “inspiring” to “a bit d!ckish” in my mind.
I’ve never really liked the word “excuse”.
“seek to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offence); try to justify” is the first definition that Google gives.
Scroll a bit further down and we get a bit closer to how it’s often meant in such situations: “a poor or inadequate example of”.
It’s generally used to dismiss our reasons as being irrelevant.
And they’re not.
They’re valid.
They’re genuine challenges that we have to work around in our lives.
Dismissing them just causes people to switch off in my experience.
“They don’t get it”.
I know because that’s how I feel when I see such posts.
Our challenges are genuine.
But…………..
(And you knew that was coming, didn’t you)………….
From my experience……………..
I know the human brain is very good at “rounding up” with what those challenges mean.
What’s going on in our life might mean that we can’t train like an athlete for two or more hours a day.
It might mean that we can’t eat “perfectly” (whatever that means) in all 168 hours in the week.
It might mean we don’t get as much sleep as we hear we should.
It might mean that we end up with more alcohol and caffeine and less water than is recommended.
But………………
It doesn’t mean we couldn’t do any exercise at all (5 minutes of press ups a few times a week will get more results than no exercise at all, no matter what we might tell ourselves about it “not being worth it”).
It doesn’t mean we couldn’t create an average calorie deficit across the week as a whole.
It doesn’t mean we couldn’t make a few better choices here and there around our lifestyle.
But, ultimately, we don’t have to do these, or anything else.
Our lives, our bodies.
Do what you like with yours.
It’s not an “excuse” if you just want to make different choices.
But, if you want some relatively easy adjustments you can make to still live a life you’re happy with………………
But make some changes to some parts of it…………..
Then let’s not switch off to those relatively easy wins just because we can’t do the most full on version (and click www.myrise.co.uk/apply for help in consistently actually doing that).
Much love,
Jon ‘Me’ Hall
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RISE in Macclesfield was established in 2012 and specialise in Group Personal Training weight loss programmes for those that don’t like the gym and find diets boring and restrictive!
