Approaching Fitness With An Open Mind

Someone recently asked me why I bothered trying out intermittent fasting.  Couldn’t I see that this is something that wouldn’t work for me?  During their conversation they said “sorry, but that kind of thing would NEVER work for me”.  At which point I asked “How do you know?  Have you ever tried it?”  Of course they had not.  In fact, they never even considered trying it and yet they had such a strong opinion of it.  It reminded me of myself a few years ago.

When I first started thinking about exercise, I had a very narrow image of it in my mind.  Exercise essentially fell into three categories.  First, I thought of weight lifters in the gym.  That’s exercise, right?  Large men with huge muscles popping steroids and bench pressing a ton of metal.   Second, I thought of jogging.  That was clearly exercise in my mind, after all, everyone was doing it and they all seemed so fit.  Finally, I thought of calisthenics of the sorts I would see in the movies.  Drill sergeants telling people to “drop and give me 20 push ups!”  That was exercise to me since those people would always start out of shape but would finish basic training in style, after some sort of musical training montage of course.

So yes, my image of fitness was very limited and that limited my starting point.  It was no surprise that the workout regimen I picked out included a lot of weight lifting, jogging and some calisthenics.  I would lift weights five times a week, jog five times a week and do an army style workout on the weekends.  First of all, that was insane.  There was no way I could keep that workout up both in terms of time and the toll it was taking on my body.  Second, this workout got boring really quick.  I was doing the same thing over and over and over and over.  By the second month I was ready to quit and go back to eating cheetos while sitting in front of a computer screen.

By the way, this monotony also extended to my diet where I thought a healthy meal should consist of a small piece of chicken and some veggies on the side.  Sounds funny now but I ate chicken and veggies for every meal for about a month.  By the end of the month I hated chicken and I couldn’t even look at steamed vegetables.

What Was Wrong?

I made three mistakes which led me down this path.  First, I did no research.  Second, I underestimated the cost of monotony.  Finally, I approached fitness and health with a closed mind.  The first two mistakes were easily fixed but the third took more time.  I’m not going to discuss research and monotony today, those are topics for a different post, but I would like to go over the benefits of an open mind vs. the costs of a closed one.

A Closed Mind

When I thought of exercise, I thought only of weights, jogging and calisthenics.  When I thought of healthy eating, I thought of steamed veggies and chicken.  It’s not that these were the only things I knew, it was more that they were the only things I would accept.  For example, I knew about swimming and had done it in high school, but I thought it was boring.  I knew about the elliptical but I thought it wasn’t as good as jogging, even though I had no real reason to think that.  I knew about salads but I considered them “rabbit food” and didn’t think I could ever like them.  I knew about hiking but thought it was only for nature nuts and didn’t really count as exercise.  What I’m trying to say is that I had a completely closed mind.  I knew what I knew and I refused to consider any other option as viable.

Note that I actually had a lot of experience with some of these things in the past and in some cases I had actually liked them.  When I swam in high school I had always enjoyed it.  When I hiked as a child I considered it a lot of fun.  When I ate salads in the past I always considered them very tasty.  However, my mind was closed.  I KNEW what fitness was and I didn’t think of including anything else in my definition.

Common Mistake

We all do this by the way, not just me.  We all KNOW what’s right for us and we often discard other options without even considering them.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to people and heard “Oh, I could never be a vegetarian” from people who had never tried it,  “I could never jog” from people who had never jogged a step or “sorry, I just hate gyms” from people who had never set foot in one.  For some reason, people have preconceived notions of what they like and dislike.  They are unwilling to try new things and they are unable to imagine the possibility of changing their habits.  They are set in their ways and refuse to change.  In fact, they refuse to even consider the possibility of change.  Their minds are closed.

A Life Not Lived

What would my life be like today if I had retained this mindset?  My guess is that I would have stopped my experiment with health sometime in the second or third month.  I would have gotten bored with lifting weights, tired of the chicken with steamed veggies and sore from all the running.  I would have quit and gone back to my unhealthy life.  Still, it’s even worse than just being unhealthy.  If I had kept a closed mind I would have missed out on experiences like hiking to the top of Masada in Israel and watching the sunrise over the dead sea.  I would have missed out on wonderful dishes and recipes that I now know and enjoy.  I would have missed out on the thrill of a boxing workout, the rush of dancing and the exhilaration of mountain biking.  So many things that I enjoy these days would be missing.

What Saved Me?

For me, the thing that opened my mind were the people in my life.  It was the coworker who took me trail running.  It was the old friend who took me hiking.  It was the girlfriend who took me dancing and the mom who made me salads.  It was all of these people and quite a few others who introduced new ideas into my thinking.  I resisted as best I could.  I said no many times, I didn’t show up to things, I complained, I rejected.  I did everything I could to avoid new things but they persisted.  They kept asking and I’m really glad they did.  Eventually, I opened up my thinking and I’ve never gone back.

A Simple Plan

it doesn’t take much to open your mind, just two little things, a willingness to try and a persistence to try again.  First, say yes.  If someone asks you to try out something, say yes.  I know, you think you’re going to hate it.  You think you’re going to dislike every minute of this new experience.  You don’t want to try it and you have no intention of enjoying it.  Still, say yes.  Try it just once.  Then, once you try it once, try it one more time.  It takes more than one time to really get to know something.  It takes more than a single experience to see if you’re really going to enjoy a new experience.  The first time you do something you’re brand new at it.  You have no idea what you’re doing, you feel like an amateur, you feel self conscious and you’re not quite sure how to behave.  That’s normal.  Just keep trying.  Try it twice, try it three times and don’t give up until you really know something.  At that point, if you still don’t like it then maybe you should stop, but don’t stop trying after the first time.

If you’re interested, take a look at Steve Pavlina’s 30 day experiment idea.  It’s one way of trying out something new and seeing if you like it.  However, that’s just one possibility.  Bottom line, don’t be afraid to try new things and don’t give up after your first attempt.  Sure, there are some things that are clearly too stupid to try.  Smoking will make you lose weight but I wouldn’t recommend you picking it up just as an experiment.  There’s a difference between having an open mind and being an idiot who’ll do anything without any thought.  However, there’s a whole big world of ideas out there.  Hundreds if not thousands of recipes, exercises, workouts, activities and sports for you to try.  Don’t rule them out just yet.

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What new thing are you going to try this week?  What about next week and next month?