Your attitude is why your body looks the way it does—no muscle, no nothing. Your body is the physical manifestation of your mental state. I don’t mean this in some woo-woo new age way.

You don’t care about what you eat, if/how you exercise, or anything. Your body reflects your apathy and complacency.

When you learn to care about yourself, you’ll behave like you do. If I were you, I’d want someone to tell me this:

Put some f’ing work into your diet and exercise even if you don’t want to until you see and feel results. You’re probably not going to like it because you sound like you’ve never worked hard in your life so you don’t know the rewards and how good they feel and improve every other part of your life. Fitness isn’t easy. It’s awesome.

I liked how this post I wrote elsewhere came out enough to share it here. I especially liked the phrase “Fitness isn’t easy. It’s awesome,” which didn’t show up in a search, so I wanted to share it. I find it motivational.

Here’s the question I responded to:

So basically I’m totally new to fitness in general, and bodyweight fitness is what really interests me most and I can picture myself realistically sticking with. I am not an amazing eater. I don’t eat terribly, I skip desserts, only drink water and diet soda, etc. Problem is when I DO eat its usually not something super healthy and helpful for growth, like chicken/veggies. I usually eat eggs, yogurt, or oatmeal for breakfast, but I tend to totally skip lunch and have a mediocre dinner. Basically, every day I am under my caloric intake, and I don’t hit the right amount of protein, carbs, fat, etc, because it’s always been hard for me to get into counting all that sort of stuff

However, I still want to do the RR [recommended exercise routine] and change my gross looking body. Will I change for the better if I continue to eat the way I do or do I really need to put time into increasing how much food/how healthy I eat?

I’m 19, 6 feet tall and 167 pounds with pretty much no muscle on my body if that means anything. Standard skinnyfat body with a gross gut and skinny weak arms. I was overweight at 220 pounds and I simply totally cut down on how much I ate and lost it all, did zero exercise until now

I couldn’t live with myself with that much apathy and complacency. He calls his body gross but does little about it. He sounds like he’s never known any different.

I didn’t either, at least about the emotional and physical rewards of a healthy diet. I just got back from the farmers market with a head of cauliflower, a giant pile of kale ($3!), an acorn squash, and a giant head of broccoli. Most of my life I wouldn’t have cared about this stuff. Now I can’t wait to eat it. I look forward to eating these vegetables more than if someone took me Union Square Café, one of my favorite restaurants.

Plus I’m about to eat a persimmon I cut while writing this post. It will be more satisfying after rowing for 30 minutes and 468 calories this morning.

The cauliflower, by the way, is purple/magenta. Crazy looking. I can’t wait to enjoy this wonder of nature.

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