Sometimes, being healthy sucks. It sucks when you go out with your friends, and they are swilling beer and cramming pizza down their throats and you are eating a salad. It sucks when everyone wants to go out and stay up late but you have to call it an early night because you have boot camp in the morning.
It seems like living a healthy lifestyle, or working towards your goals, is keeping you from doing the things you love. It’s always hard to be different.
You know what? You are different. To lose weight, or stay healthy, you have to live differently than most people. Most people are over weight, sedentary, and suffer from, or are at a very high risk of, developing diseases that will keep them from enjoying life to the fullest, and will in a lot of cases kill them prematurely. Most people can’t climb a flight of stairs without getting winded, dread bathing suit season because they hate they way they look and can’t play with their kids and grand kids.
I get poked fun at constantly for my choices. My friends tell me to relax and just eat a cheeseburger everyone in a while, and to let loose for once and stay out a few more hours on the weekends. People push food on me and groan when I say I’m on my way to the gym. “Have fun every once in a while” they say.
You know why?
Because we make them uncomfortable. If a real life person, like you and me, can make healthy decisions on a daily basis toward losing weight and staying healthy, it means it’s possible. It means they can can do it, too- they just choose not to.
To them, indulging in unhealthy foods and treating their body poorly is fun. That’s not my idea of fun. Sometimes, yes, but not always. You can make yourself feel good and have fun without the aid of cheese and alcohol.
It’s not your responsibility to police others, but it is vital that you don’t let food pushers and workout distracters sway you from your goals.
My strategy? Don’t apologize: teach and motivate. If someone makes a comment about my overly complicated, healthified order at a restaurant, I explain why I made the choices I did, and when it arrives, I offer them a bite. If someone makes fun of me for heading to the gym, again, I let them know all the positive health benefits exercise has on one’s health and body, and I invite them to come along. 99% of the time, they will decline, but even if they say no, they learned something, and will gain a little appreciation for you working so hard to take care of yourself.
4 comments
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May 13, 2010 at 11:07 pm
Nicole
I loved this. I wrote about something very similar over on my blog because you’re right – this is how some people are. Thanks for touching on this topic!
May 17, 2010 at 7:33 pm
jlnli
Living a healthy lifestyle shouldn’t suck though – making your lifestyle an extreme (where you can’t ever have pizza) doesn’t sound like it would actually be healthy. If eating salad when your friends have pizza makes you so miserable, maybe it’s better for your overall mental health to just pick the healthiest pizza option!
If your friends are going out every night, that’s a different story, but if we’re talking about a once a month social event, then who cares? One night of passing up the salad won’t ruin your lifestyle.
If you’d rather have salad that’s great, and if your friends are making fun of you then that part sucks, but that’s not about being healthy, that’s about having friends who like to tease (or who don’t respect you, but I assume they’re just teasing – otherwise you wouldn’t be friends with them!).
I hate the idea that being healthy = suffering and smugness. It shouldn’t be that way – I don’t like pizza or salad, and that should be fine. And I like exercise because it’s fun, but it doesn’t make me any better than anyone else. Fitter, maybe.
I love the blog though, so I’m sorry for my first comment to be so negative – the sucks/smug thing is just a pet peeve of mine!
May 19, 2010 at 8:50 pm
myrevolutionbootcamp
As fitness professionals we constantly hear clients and campers say that they made poor decisions that they normally wouldn’t have made because they felt pressured and didn’t want to be different. You get singled out, and more often than not, people cave. It’s not the food itself, it’s how the food makes you feel. If you have pizza occasionally, and are fine with it, cool, but if you feel guilty or can’t control your eating, which a lot of people do, then it’s not cool, and you need a strategy of how to handle it. No one said you can’t have occassional treats and splurges, but you don’t want to and end up caving because of the company you are with, and end up feeling guilty and disappointed in yourself, you need to change your way of thinking, which is what we were trying to get across.
Obviously we dont believe that being healthy equals suffering- we have devoted our lives and careers to being healthy, and helping others do the same. We are trying to teach people who do feel that way that it doesn’t have to be so hard or as painful as they think.
May 21, 2010 at 3:05 pm
jlnli
Ah, that’s cool.
I just worry that the focus on the “sucks” elements scares away people who want to take a step in the right direction and are afraid because they imagine it’ll be too hard for them. But I do see that bouncing around saying “Don’t worry! It’s fun!” isn’t going to be helpful for people who are trying and struggling, either.