How to keep a fitness oriented lifestyle healthy

Today I went to the gym to train, again, as I routinely do every week day and very occasionally, on a weekend day as well. The arrival of 2018 marked the 21st consecutive year of a fitness lifestyle that I haven’t fallen out of love with since first stepping into a gym in the late 90’s.

But it hasn’t been all smiles and roses along the way.

Truth is, I’m not here to boast about my tenure, but instead to provide some valuable insight into how finding balance in my fitness lifestyle has actually been my most vital achievement to date. This is what I encourage all gym goers to strive for in addition to their fitness-specific goals to achieve maximal health and longevity in their fitness lifestyle. The following article outlines how I ultimately overcame an unhealthy obsession with my fitness lifestyle, and provides insight on how to sustain a healthy balance in fitness for a lifetime.

NEWFOUND MUSCLE: THE BEGINNINGS OF A FITNESS LOVE AFFAIR

When I first walked into a gym in the year 1997, I quickly became
o b s e s s e d with all things bodybuilding. I was in my last remaining year of high school, still playing competitive hockey, but was kind of falling out of love with the game. When I first began working out, like most guys, it was primarily to appeal to girls. Not gonna lie. I dove headfirst into the pages of all the different muscle magazines and very quickly became relentless in the pursuit for a supremely muscular and defined body that I believed girls would want to get real close to (yeah, you can laugh now). The magazines I read all typically steered me towards a belief that the bigger and more heavily muscled the male body, the better.
Also interesting to note is that I felt in building a very impressive muscular physique, I could help replace the money and cars that I didn’t quite have to offer that other guys from more privileged households seemed to have as resources for attracting girls. I realized that all of the money in the world couldn’t build someone a muscular body; only consistent, hard work associated with training and diet – coupled a handful of good genetics – could create a such a physique different from the rest. These were all attributes I was in possession of.

I was hooked.

At the time, it was exciting to still be doing something physical, but unlike playing hockey it wasn’t a team thing, it was only me and the weights. And the protein shakes.
Early on, my body responded very quickly as I had just started university and had a residence meal plan for my daily eating. I waded through the ‘non-healthy stuff’ and sussed out all the lean chicken, beef, fish and eggs as my protein sources, and added mostly vegetable or fruit sides to pair with it. I wasn’t a diet pro, but I did know one thing – protein builds muscle. So I ate (and drank) it in mass quantities as all proper bodybuilders did.

And the muscles grew.

AN UNHEALTHY OBSESSION DEVELOPS

Over the next 5 years or so, I carefully crafted my bodybuilder’s physique and started to become ‘bodybuilding first’ everything else second in terms of my priorities. I began competing in bodybuilding under the OPA (Ontario Physique Association) and won my weight class in my first show in 2003. I would go on to compete for 9 more years and ultimately win a Natural Provincial Championship for my weight class (Light Heavyweight).
Early on, my family began to fear that I would end up using steroids, but I at least had the sense to not to mess with that route. I prided myself on being natural, and I still do.

For me however, most of my decisions in life were beginning to be shaped around the gym and my bodybuilding. I skipped on things like needed study time, dates with girls or at times hanging out with friends in favour of more training. I even passed on most of the food at the dinner table during holiday meals because it detracted from my bodybuilding goals.

This wasn’t good.

As a bodybuilder, I grew addicted to getting that euphoric ‘pumped feeling’ once my targeted muscles started to be filled with blood after the few first sets of a given workout. Coupled with the endorphins the body releases with exercise, it’s kind of like being high. Endorphins triggered by exercise create a positive feeling within the body, similar to that of morphine. Although this exercise-induced feeling is indeed a good thing, I was pushing aside so many other things in my life to get to that gym to activate those feelings over and over and over again. The cycle works like this: a good workout bolsters up one’s confidence, which slowly tapers off again until the next workout begins. It’s like a junkie waiting for their next fix. In my opinion, when an exercise habit begins to inhibit proper social function, it can begin to be quite counter productive. As an example, on numerous occasions a younger me actually passed up on going to pool parties that were full of exclusively girls in favor of going to train again. I kid you not.

On the outside, I received growing compliments and praise on my physique development and my fitness ethic. On the inside however, I was at many times very vulnerable and insecure about it all. Constant guilt about not training hard enough, long enough or eating clean enough were often at the forefront of my thoughts. I certainly wasn’t an emotional wreck, but the big strong confident persona I projected in the outside certainly didn’t match up with the often guilt-ridden and doubting psyche on the inside. I missed out on a lot of great things because of my obsession with being muscular. I also succumbed to certain acute and chronic injuries over time; my body’s way of telling me that it was physically and emotionally under too much stress. Though I couldn’t realize it, I was at times leading an unhealthy lifestyle through my increasingly obsessive and meticulous fitness routine. I was under the popular impression that those who are sedentary and not paying attention to their diets are the unhealthy ones, not me. Little did I know that a state of declining health could occur in a person who was in fact training regularly and fully committed to a strict fitness regimen.

PERCEIVED SUCCESS AND SELF GUILT

It’s interesting to note that a great deal of people who are successful in their pursuits are also plagued with nagging self guilt that they’re not working as hard as they should be and that others with an harder work ethic might be about to steal their lunch from under their noses. It drives them to work harder. But not always smarter. Working out and managing a fitness lifestyle in a much smarter manner is what this article is all about and what I ultimately had to learn to do. Learning to find balance and manage self-guilt (by keeping just a manageable little bit on hand) is what is needed for longevity in this fitness game and to not suffer burnout. Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands. As the stress continues, you can begin to lose the interest and motivation that led you to fitness in the first place, or at worst, succumb to a chronic psychological condition (such as anorexia, orthorexia or body dysmorphia to name a few) that many people fall victim to.

Over the years, I can’t count all of the people I’ve encountered in the gyms and on stage that have at one point achieved an incredible physique that sadly they couldn’t maintain and ultimately burned out and let fall apart at some point. For some, it seemed that it was a yo-yo routine of being fit and then not, only to be fit and then not again and again. For many, habitual steroid abuse was to blame. For many such people, it’s a stressful cycle of all or nothing, and thankfully I’ve learned how not to think that way. Looking outstanding for a year or few can’t compare to looking great and feeling healthy for decades or even a lifetime. I can’t say that at times I didn’t feel burned out from it all. For me it became a complex, stressful juggling routine that became harder and harder to keep on doing.

HOW STRESS AND CORTISOL AFFECT YOUR BODY

As I previously stated, I was under a great deal of constant physical and emotional stress associated with my training lifestyle. Cortisol is hormone secreted by your body while under physical or emotional stress that is actually fat-promoting and muscle-wasting in nature. Cortisol is a catabolic hormone, meaning that it breaks down and ‘wastes’ muscle tissue when secreted by the body. Over time, excess cortisol released from stress patterns can hinder one’s own immune system and can eventually lead to injury via weakened physical resources. Like many, I firmly believe that emotional stress can manifest itself in the form of a physical ailment like, sickness, injury, or a chronic physical condition. Think about it; what often happens when you are nervous about something like an interview or having to speak in public for example? For many, they get what they refer to as ‘butterflies in their stomach’ and can quickly feel like they have an upset stomach or even throw up or develop diarrhea as a result. The reason why I mention this is to demonstrate the body’s ability to take negative thoughts or feelings in the brain and trigger a negative physical response in the body as a result, whether rapidly or slowly over a period of time. For me, the habitual subconscious guilt I was putting myself through surrounding what I saw as the constant shortcomings of my fitness lifestyle was having a creeping negative impact on my mental and physical well being, and sending me towards an eventual burnout.

On top of that, I was competing in bodybuilding shows. Unlike others, I never competed in more than one show per year. Competitions and the excessive training and dietary requirements associated with them can take a huge physical and emotional toll on the body. Whether it’s from the often countless accumulative hours of cardiovascular work prior to stepping onstage, or the required dehydration techniques used to make the skin thin to display the muscle underneath in a well defined, vascular fashion, competitions and the processes leading up to them are generally not regarded as healthy at all. At one point, I stepped on stage to compete at approximately 5% bodyfat. Some bodybuilders are known to bring their body fat levels down as low as 2-4%  for competitions. This is unquestionably dangerous, and can have a host of side effects including depression and lethargy, loss of sex drive, potential heart problems, as well as degradation of bone, hair, skin and nails, as the body is forced to enter survival mode.

Something had to change.

A POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL SHIFT

Ultimately, between the 12-14 year mark in my fitness journey, I began make a major psychological shift and begin to be in control of my fitness lifestyle instead of letting it control me like it did in the past. I’d like to say that it was something I had a sudden epiphany one day but it wasn’t. Instead it was something that ultimately developed through an growing awareness of what was going on. As I mentioned before, a manageable bit of guilt is alright to keep you accountable in your pursuits. It’s a subconscious voice that helps in keeping things consistent and in alignment with an ongoing fitness regimen. However for many, that little voice can yield too much power, and can cause unhealthy inner dialogue of obsessive guilt and shame that can plague an individual and create burnout, unhappiness and a state of gradually declining health. Once I became conscious of what was really going on, my health and my appearance actually improved as I shifted to being in control of a fitness lifestyle that was more pro-health than ever before.

As it turned out, less was more.

THE SCALE OF HEALTHY FITNESS

Over time I’ve grown to identify various stages that an individual can go through in progressing towards an active lifestyle. As it turns out, It’s a little more complicated than just grouping populations into categories of simply ‘active’ or ‘inactive’, for not all active lifestyles are healthy as I’ve mentioned. From my experience, it looks a little more like this:

The vast majority of the public is predominantly inactive. They are typically unmotivated to begin a training regimen and have little to no dietary structure in their lives. For these populations, prolonged inactivity can lead to a host of health problems and reduced quality of life. This lifestyle is typically regarded as being unhealthy and is shown in the red area to the left on the Spectrum of Healthy Fitness above.

Many people however, do make the decision to embark on training and improve upon their body’s appearance and health. These people begin to regularly partake in physical activity of some sort and attempt to stay consistent within some semblance of a regular routine. For such people however, training is typically still viewed as a chore and not enjoyable for the most. I refer to this part of the population as ‘fairweather’, meaning people who are regularly training, but are prone to ultimately falling off of their regimen and dropping out of participation in physical activity. This portion of the population is illustrated in the yellow area of the Spectrum.

For others, many make a very rapid shift from inactive (red) to the complete opposite end of the spectrum (also red) and become obsessive with their fitness practices. These are characteristics I used to embody before gaining control. Obsessive types are often dominated by much self guilt. Many lead a stressful, unsustainable fitness lifestyle associated with traits of overtraining and overdieting, and impose extreme forms of regular training upon their body. Whether it be disciplines of bodybuilding, powerlifting, CrossFit, cardio or even group classes for example, such individuals can become prone to mental burnout, injury or at worst, a chronic psycological disorder associated with training and/or eating. Many such people ascribe to a true ‘no pain, no gain’ and ‘every workout better than the last’ philosophy which I ultimately decided to abandon over time. An individual in pursuit of a short term goal like a competitive event must be conscious of the risks associated with this form of fitness lifestyle, and aim to manage it properly and taper it off after a predetermined period of time to reestablish proper health and vitality through balance.

Balance being the key word.

For longevity in fitness and a healthy and sustainable fitness lifestyle, balance is most important. Though currently in good control of my fitness lifestyle, I’m continually learning and at times catching myself being intermittently obsessive, only to balance things out again. I hold myself accountable in training and diet but am not plagued with guilt like before, thus lowering my body’s release of the destructive cortisol stress hormone. Instead, I properly schedule rest and less intense training periods as well as time for relaxed eating and ample social activity so that I can keep doing this fitness thing right, for a lifetime of good physical and mental health and well being. I illustrate this state of being in the green portion of the Spectrum of Healthy Fitness.

CONCLUSION

Though it’s been a long time coming, I now feel that I have a balance methodology firmly in place that can keep me training, fit and healthy for years to come. I no longer feel like my routine could slip out from under my feet like it did years ago. I’m growing more adept at managing the right amount of a subconscious voice to keep me accountable, keep me challenging myself and striving to improve, yet keeping me balanced with rest, socialization and relaxed eating in place. I’m happy with my muscularity and no longer feel like I have to look mass muscle monster anymore. Though it took a long time to realize, but what I ultimately discovered is that women seek a man that looks strong, but typically not one that looks like a 300lb mutant from a comicbook.

What a relief.

My hope is that this article can help others. From the inactive masses who are in need of starting a fitness routine, to the obsessive many who may be in need of regaining a healthy balance in theirs, I hope it makes the process a bit easier through the awareness that balance is the key factor in maintaining a truly healthy fitness lifestyle for the long run. It was a wonderful realization to actually see improvements in my physical health and appearance through reduced amounts of training and strict eating, which ultimately led to greater happiness. Managing fitness is an ongoing challenge. It’s hard to get started and it can also be hard to ease up once it’s taken root. For many, it’s hard to get to the gym at all. For others, it’s hard to stay out of it. Find that perfect ‘in between’ and enjoy a lifetime of truly health-forward fitness.