The Downside of Working Out
When I first started working out, I created a list of all the goals that I wanted to achieve and all the physical improvements I wanted to accomplish. I went and I finished the workouts, sometimes even breaking a sweat. This was when I learned the first downside to working out:
1. You can’t simply show up to the gym and see results. You have to show up (more than once or twice a week), and you have to actually think through what you’re going to do and put forth actual viable effort. If I leave without sweat on my brow, I better be leaving just to grab something from the car because I’m definitely not done working out.
So, I started going in there, armed with actual workout plans, hitting it hard and being intentional with my movements. I started getting better about having the correct form (I’m notoriously awkward and physically uncoordinated), and left the gym feeling both victorious and beaten (a sign of a good workout). This led to the second downside:
2. Working out is not an overnight miracle pill. After a few weeks of hitting the gym, my diligence didn’t seem to make that much of a difference. I had read the transformation articles. I had seen the before and after photos. Going to the gym drastically changed how your body looks– had my body not gotten that memo? Consistency and a whole lot of stubbornness is required for you to stick it out until you see the changes.
I put forth effort and I stuck with it for months! I finally began to see some improvements– my legs were started to look like “mighty feminine oak trees” (my husband’s words, but still my favorite compliment to date), my waist whittled down… things were going rather nicely. And then the buzz to my joy. I tried to put on my jeans. My skinny jeans. This was the moment of the final downside I’ll be sharing:
3. You can’t predict the changes and even the positive ones can be… inconvenient. Yeah, I said it. I know what you’re thinking. That my skinny jeans didn’t fit. You’re right. But they didn’t fit because they were loose around the waist and tight around the quads. Talk about an awkward fit. This created an inconvenient day of trying on all my pants and discarding half of them because the body changes that I had longed for were closer in sight. I went to the store to get new jeans and quickly discovered that most jeans are made for…. someone else’s body. Because they were certainly not tailored to mine.
If you’re like me, you need a heads up for what things are going to look like. I want to plan it out or at least not be caught off guard. Working out is great and I’m really enjoying my journey, but not everything about it is perfect. If you’re expecting this to be a cure-all for everything, it’s probably not going to work out for you (see what I did there?). Your journey isn’t going to look like mine, but expect to have some downsides going into it, and you’ll be fine.