When you embark on a fitness journey, one of the few things that is guaranteed is that you will eventually fail at some aspect. It may be failing to stick to your workout plan, it may be failing to succeed at a certain max rep attempt, or failing to avoid giving in to a craving for a not-so-healthy snack or meal.
However failure manifests itself, the most important thing is to not let it derail your fitness journey. This is something that I struggled with for many years. You may relate to the following scenario – I would be doing well for a time, but then I would find a sugary snack or a fast food deal to be too tempting, I would give in, and then a momentary relapse would turn into a long-term binge.
Another scenario is that life would get too busy, or I would not feel motivated enough on a given day, and I would skip a workout. One skipped workout would turn into two skipped workouts, all the while with me telling myself mentally that I would get back on track the next day. Two days would turn into a week, a week would turn into a month, and pretty soon I was right back where I started before I pursued a fitness journey.
In those scenarios, part of it was the initial failure, but more importantly, it was the continued failure that ruined my fitness journey at the time. It wasn’t until a little over two years ago that I finally accepted the reality that I would have weak moments at times, and instead of beating myself up about it and giving up, I used those weak moments as opportunities to learn.
These days if I falter in some way, I take time to deeply reflect on what motivated me to fail in that instance. An example is when I was making mini hotdogs wrapped in croissant dough for an upcoming party. Someone requested that I make them, and I knew while I was making them that they were not part of my dietary plan at the time. But when I pulled them out of the oven they smelled and looked so delicious that I gave into the craving and blew up my calorie intake limit for that day.
When I took time to reflect on what motivated me to give in to that craving, I recognized that it was the smell and visual appeal of the snack that lured me in. But, also, I reflected on how they ultimately didn’t taste as great as I expected them to, how bloated I felt after eating them, and that in hindsight it wasn’t worth the calories. I then wrote down a list of how many healthier things I could have eaten that would have been the same amount of calories, and how many more nutrients I would have consumed by eating those alternatives. That planted in my mind a plan of what to do next time.
I am proud to say that I have made wrapped mini hotdogs several times since I gave in to the craving on that day (people keep asking me to make them for some reason), and I have never given in to the temptation to eat them again. I learned from that failure and didn’t let it derail my pursuit of chasing my fitness goals.
Even legendary bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger failed at times but learned from his failure, which he writes about in his book The Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding.
“Anytime you undertake any difficult task, you have to face the possibility of short-term failure, obstacles that block your path and have to be overcome.” Arnold writes (page 233). “Failure doesn’t have to discourage you. It can be a great training tool. It defines limits for you, it instructs you as to which parts of your program are working and which aren’t.”
“It tells you what step of the staircase you are on and helps to motivate you to climb higher. Failure is not what hurts the aware: it is fear of failure that most often gets in the way.” Arnold also writes.
Always strive to stay on the right path of your fitness journey, but if you stumble, which is inevitable, don’t beat yourself up about it too much. Instead, learn from it, strive to do better, and keep going. Value progress over perfection and keep believing in yourself!
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