What might make someone fall out of love with fitness so soon

It was a bit disheartening to hear a young lad talk about giving up on fitness. While stretching after my gym session, I overheard two young lads chatting on the mats next to mine. One exclaimed to the other that he had fallen out of love with fitness. I guess that meant that he had previously loved it, so with my curiosity piqued, I was interested to find out why his attitude towards fitness had changed. 

I’ve seen many people come and go, and it always fascinates me to understand why people leave it behind. There are many things that can get in the way or be demotivating and sometimes we are just looking for an excuse not to do it. Maybe, little old me could understand this lad’s reasons and help him look at it differently to give it a second chance.

His friend also looked a bit crestfallen by this admission. So of course, I was going to poke my nose in and get involved. To the lad’s surprise and the bemusement of his friend, I simply asked what’s not to love?

He explained it to me. It was an accumulation of a few reasons, all combining to give him a demotivating attitude to what he admitted he previously loved. However, I wasn’t so convinced. I told him so. I argued that maybe he should give it another chance and that after pushing through this short term feeling for a bit, he will get back to the enjoyment he once had. All it would take is a bit of perseverance over a short period of time. That is if he even wanted to get back to loving it at all.

His main reasons were he had started doing MMA and wanted to focus a bit more on that. He was also struggling to lift anywhere close to the weight he was lifting before the summer when he took a bit of a break, and it was demotivating. At the same time, he explained that he dieted so hard over the summer with keto alongside a drastic caloric drop that it made him feel really sh*ty, miserable and uninterested, but it was still good because he got really ripped and looked really good for a month or two.

I jokingly pointed out to him that this is why you shouldn’t take long breaks because when you do come back, you will be demotivatingly set back. But in reality, sometimes life makes us take breaks that we don’t necessarily want to take. And if we’re honest sometimes one wants to take a break just to live a little where you don’t have to be so disciplined and precise with your training regiment and just enjoy a bit of social and nightlife, maybe even travel a little. Understandably so as we have one life and it should be lived.

However, the truth is that you shouldn’t let the inevitable setback that comes with an extended break demotivate you. This is what I stressed to him. Because on the one hand you enjoyed your time away, so you shouldn’t necessarily regret it. And on the other hand, and this is the kicker, it won’t take very long to get back to where you were before. You just have to push through this short interval that you may feel is demotivating.

Besides, if he wanted to focus on MMA then maybe heavy lifting isn’t the best way to go anyway. It may become more of a hindrance than a benefit. You would want to be more agile, and the goal of strength or muscle bulk can potentially get in the way of that. It seemed to me that he hadn’t really turned his back on fitness. It was just the type of fitness that his attitude had changed towards, I suspected. 

The most disconcerting part of his admission, though, was what he put himself through for the quick and short term gain. In order to achieve the ‘looking ripped and good’ part for a month, he put himself through unbalanced and unsustainable restrictions. These made him feel sh*ty and miserable, and added a negative element towards this entire element of his life. This is in fact the most demotivating part. This sort of dieting makes one feel that if this is what they have to do to achieve the perfect Instagram look, then they don’t want any part of it.

Long term, it is unsustainable. One shouldn’t live with such restrictions if that isn’t what they truly want or if it isn’t life dependent. It takes balance to keep it up. Yet, what is often shown and promoted alongside images of the perfect life and perfect body are unsustainable no days off heavy training regiments and obscure diets that no one living a normal life should really impose on themself. I see it everywhere. One gives up their life and wants in full for a look that is unsustainable without keeping up the thing that makes them so miserable.

It’s important to feel good as well as look good. Fitness and physical activity has so much potential in helping one with this if done in the right way. Sometimes though, it takes a bit of perseverance and discipline to get back to where you want to be, actually in fact giving you another transferable skill that you can apply to other elements of your life and character.