On Fitness

I wanted to write about fitness because , at the moment, it is by far my deepest obsession. My days have many things - but they mostly revolve around my body.

I wanted to write about fitness because , at the moment, it is by far my deepest obsession. My days have many things (or at least a few)- but they mostly revolve around working out, eating well and seeing how my body feels and looks different.

Deep in an obsession is where i find deep satisfaction and right now i feel it sighing within me.

There are easy markers, including but not limited to - feeling like i have boundless energy to give to my obsession, a feeling of irritation around things that pull me away from it, but most of all, is the excitement of having a goal and the steadfast, unbridled optimism that i’ll get there. Over the last week my workouts have expanded to two in a day with one being a focused weightlifting workout and the other a zone 2 training workout. On top my protein intake is close to a gram per pound of bodyweight.

Both of these are generally in service of reducing my body fat percentage from 25 to 15ish. But getting into the nitty-gritty of it is not the point of this, i just want to talk about why i like fitness so much.

The major thing that fitness gives me is:

It is a deterministic process, as long as i follow certain guidelines and rules and as long as i put in the work, i will always get where i want to provided my goals are realistic.

There may be roadblocks along the way but they are just puzzles to figure out.

It is one of the most reliable, dependable and predictable ways for me to feel like i have bearing over my life and the easiest reminder that hard work pays off - it’s important to have some steady progression in your life. It is life affirming, it is agency affirming.

A previous version of me would’ve bristled at finding so much joy in an act that was predictable, mundane and boring - or at least in framing it in this way - i thrive in unpredictability, cowboying things in the moment is quite frankly, what i find inherently cool. So i think it’s a mark of maturity for me to feel so deeply comfortable in my slow and steady progress of workouts and nutrition.

Another thing that fitness has taught me is patience - the timelines are always longer than i hope and shorter than i feel. Few things teach more viscerally than the frustration of not being able to work on your goals because your body is incapable. Months spent rehabbing shoulder injuries, Years with back issues and i can safely say that even though some of these tings will never be back to 100% - i am stronger, stabler and surer of step that i was when i was 21. In fact, physically i have never felt as sure of my body as i have as i’m 30.

Each physical discipline i’ve put time into has given me something or the other to take into all the other facets of my life - weightlifting has shown me that i am capable of building strength, yoga of patience and flexibility, martial arts and movement training of stability. I know my physical decline will begin sooner rather than later in the decades to come, but i doubt i’ll stop finding immense joy in pushing myself to do things that the average person does not. To feel my best, to look my best and to move my best.

In the 10 years that i’ve seriously worked out, i have been driven by many things - i have been the person obsessed with vanity (visible abs and whatnot), the person obsessed with strength (squatting twice my bodyweight), the person scared of failure (being on an overload streak for months), the person who just wants to feel good (hello cardio), the person of habit and no enthusiasm - and having been so many people i can safely say that none of those goals are purer than the other, at least for me. I think people trap themselves into goals that they think are virtuous when all they should be doing is doing.

I understand that for many people fitness is the opposite of a reliable, workable process - i feel comfortable in saying that apart from the fringes of the bell curve, most people just haven’t figured out the solution for the puzzle that works for them.

Patience and attention.

Patience and attention.

Patience and attention.

Yours,

H