Boundaries and Balance: We All Need Both

We are all entitled to living our lives the way we want to. We are in control of the choices we make, which can be healthy or unhealthy. There really is no in between. We stay active or not. We eat nutritious foods or not. We have some sort of routine we stick to or not.

At one point in time I spent 6 days, sometimes 7 days every week working out for 2 hours, sometimes 3. I lived in the gym. Not only did I coach for a few hours, I then worked out a couple, and sometimes stuck around until the doors closed.

There are a few things to mention with this. I believe in boundaries and balance. I did NOT practice this for several years, and as I tried to balance my life out a few years ago, I was met with some unexpected and odd resistance. I had to adjust my mindset into thinking that if I didn’t work out every day, I wasn’t being lazy, I was being reasonable. I had to understand that the level of achievement I had reached with my body was due to grueling sessions at the gym, injury after injury, and maxing my body out in ways that it shouldn’t have been.

I had a body that was complimented almost every time I went somewhere. “Do you lift?” “Wow you are strong!” “Wow, you are so fit!” Of course, this was something that felt good because I worked so damn hard. I found myself in this weird spot at that point. I felt like I had to continue doing this and being the best in order to be accepted. It was a serious mind fuck. I feared a piece of pizza ruining my body with one bite, or that a weekend of beer and sweets would wipe away years of work.

Just like it took me 7 years to achieve some sort of almost ‘perfect’ body in my mind, it would take me more than just a day or two to undo it all. Though the downfall occurs much more quickly than the building does, I still became obsessed with every angle and every centimeter of my body.

We have to remember what we are doing this for. Are we doing it because we enjoy it? Are we doing it because we want to be healthy and be an example to our children? Are we doing it for others approval? Just make sure however you’re training your body, that you are also keeping your mind healthy. Balance what you love and enjoy and cut down what you don’t. Achievements are all relative, you can’t measure yourself up against someone else because they are living a completely different life from you and have different ways of measuring success in their eyes. If you’re moving, active, and eating healthy (most of the time) then you’re successful.