A large number of people today, whatever their physical merit, chose to believe that fitness is a fundamental part of their life. And while at a glimpse this may have to do with fitness being trendy and aggressively promulgated at every corner, there is another side of the coin.
Fitness is a habit. A way of life, some would say. But then again, much the same is increasingly true about why we adopt fitness- Health, looks, increased performance through measuring functional fitness… But that’s only half of the picture. The other half, often neglected, is somewhat painful for discussion.
The addictive side of fitness
If the one side of fitness is your garden variety of health and energy, good looks and performance, the other has to do with everything psychological churning in the back of your head.
Fitness is addictive. And that is an understatement. It creates aches, satisfied only when you move your body. The longer the addiction goes, the tighter the grip.
This addiction, albeit complex, is at its core a chemical one. Endorphine, Seratonine, dopamine… All the feel-good drugs created within our brain. Once you start to move, they flow in abundance. When the fitness habit is neglected, the flow becomes disrupted. Mood swings, as the most noticeable among other symptoms, start hitting you in staccato-like sequences.
The social factor
Fitness is trendy and it seems as though everyone is doing something fitness related. Feeling like falling behind the crowd, many people put on their shoes and start dancing at the music. Gyms, home workouts like the P90 workout or the 21 Day Fix as depicted in this review, outdoor sports… As long as it helps to blend in, it works. The social factor, you see, is the deciding element among many. After all, ask yourself whether you would prefer to exercise at home, dripping sweat, or go out in fancy apparel and put a selfie on Instagram after you are done.
And if you prefer dance workouts, learn more about the new Cize workout from this huge Cize review.
Fitness – grand illusion of self-improvement
Don’t get me wrong now; I myself am a fitness addict. But while I can put my running shoes at egg-beater speed, I’m still largely aware that fitness can serve as a way to procrastinate on the things that matter, fill in a gap in your life and help you delude yourself that you are doing something immensely productive.
It can be all that, let us be clear on this one, but more often than not it will give you a false sense of self-improvement, perceived importance, and the feeling of being productive.
Learn to differentiate between what fitness helps you with, and what suffers because of it. As it is with work for the sake of work, fitness can become equally time consuming while producing zero tangible results.
The chill pill when needed
Relying on alternatives when looking for a way to combat accumulated stress, and being limited to legal substances only, I place fitness my number one go to medicine. Being short of words, it keeps me at bay.
And the way it is consumed can vary rather much from one individual to another. If yoga turns the switch with some, others might go after calisthenics, weight training, sports, endurance ordeals, physical punishment with P90X, the Insanity workout, or the new Insanity Max 30 workout.
Different approach, in effect, makes for a different result, and my advice is to keep them in rotation. Variety can go a long way when trying to leverage fitness as a means to fight stress, anxiety, whatever it is that keeps you on your toes.
What is your why behind fitness?
The fitness coin has in fact more than two sides. The complexity of why we adopt exercise as a part of our life is bigger than we care to admit, and often times it might give us a false picture on why we do the things that we do.
It goes without saying that you must have a clear agenda behind fitness and the way you include this trend into your life. Is it a need, a way to catch up with trends, a vessel that helps you redefine your life? Whatever the reason, it is nice to be aware.