Workout Expectation vs. Workout Reality
I don’t write about fitness in this space as often as I would like to and there is one major reason for that. Fitness content is usually taken wildly out of context.
No matter how often people are reminded that health is individual, fitness goals take time, and fad diets are almost never effective - people are still looking for the quickest, easiest method to look a certain way. If it’s not dangerous dieting and nutrition techniques, then people seek to copy the routines of others who fit their ideal aesthetic. ‘Fitness’ influencers can make their entire living off of sharing their workouts and their ‘what I eat in a day’ videos and while usually they have some sort of disclaimer that this is just what works for them, it doesn’t stop people from attempting to copy them and then discovering problems with that routine when they institute it for themselves. Conversely, it also doesn’t stop people from attacking their routines - accusing them of working out too much or undereating, or any number of things.
I enjoy fitness and it’s a huge part of my lifestyle, but this part of the culture drives me crazy. There are so many things that influence someone’s health and how that translates to what they look like and it is built over their entire lifetime. Friends have expressed interest in my fitness or nutrition habits but I hesitate to share them because they are not meant to be copied. Everyone’s body is the sum total of everything they’ve put it through so far, so it will never react the same way someone else’s does even if the stimuli are exactly the same. For context, the following is what my body has been through, and why it looks the way it does.
To start, we have to go way back to the building blocks of my body - my genetics. Genes do play a part in what we look like and how our body might respond to certain foods. Through absolutely no effort on my part, I got pretty lucky in this department. Neither of my parents have any history of disease or pre-existing conditions that they might’ve passed on to me, and both were thin and active in their youth, with high metabolisms. Because of their genes alone, I started off tall and very skinny. That was my base to work with as a child.
The next part was also dependent on my parents. When I was little, they were responsible for what I ate and what activities I took part in. I don’t remember eating super clean, but I do remember they would cook most of the time and eating out was only a special occasion. I remember eating lots of eggs for breakfast and pasta for dinner. At this stage of the game, I remember preferring home cooking and I remember my mom’s aversion to fast food. They started enrolling me in sports when I was 5 or 6 to see what I might like. I competed in soccer, basketball, dance, volleyball, and swimming before swimming stuck at age nine. This is where I’ll start to take a little credit. I was an innately competitive child. Sports were fun for me because I liked something that provided me an opportunity to win. I’m pretty sure I ended up sticking with swimming because it was the first individual sport I got to compete in and I loved having complete control over my own results without being reliant on a team. That competitive spirit drove me to push myself early on in athletics.
At this point I’m only nine years old. NINE, and I already have decently healthy genes, I know that cooking at home is important, and I like to compete athletically.
Things really started to accelerate once I started swimming competitively. As I got older, practices just got longer and longer until I was practicing for 2 hours a day, five days a week at age 14. By this time, I was fully into puberty, had topped out at 5’9” for my height, and had started putting on muscle from all the swimming. By the time I finished swimming at age 18, I was training 5 hours a day 5-6 days a week. I had gained nearly 35 pounds over the course of my entire swimming career, and had very developed lats, shoulders, arms, and abs. My nutrition during this time got a little crazy, oscillating being hungry enough to basically be a bottomless pit, to barely eating because all the training suppressed my appetite. My teenage metabolism was all over the place. I still mostly ate home cooked meals but would have two or three servings, and then would gorge on cookies and all manner of sweets. I thought that my training would compensate for my terrible diet and I was right to an extent.
Throughout college my workout routines changed regularly. I swam, ran, and did circuits. I hiked. I lived with a power lifter and we did weight training together. I walked, I paddleboarded, but nothing stayed fixed. My appetite went way down from less training but I still had bouts of terrible eating when I was stressed. I remember one month I pretty much lived off of coffee and Sprinkles cupcakes. While studying abroad I found out that my body digests rice the best out of all carbs. I also gradually stopped drinking pretty much all beverages besides water, coffee, and tea, and the occasional alcoholic beverage. I dropped about 10 lbs during college which mostly consisted of muscle I was no longer using.
This restless routine followed me through my first couple years of post-grad as well. My first job required a lot of travel and it was very difficult for me to settle on a consistent cadence of activities. I still utilized a combination of HIIT circuits, running, and weights - things that were easy to do in those sad hotel gyms. Throughout all of college and my first two years after, I never really worked out less than four days a week so most of the body that I created during those really intense years of swimming was more or less maintained.
Currently, my routine is a combination of running, cardio circuits, lifting, and rock climbing. I also now don’t have a car so I walk or bike everywhere. My goal as an athlete is to be able to pick up pretty much any kind of activity with relative ease, so I keep my training well rounded. I still don’t really drink anything besides water, coffee, tea, and some alcohol. My diet consists of mostly whole foods but I indulge whenever I go out and I do still eat dessert pretty much daily. During quarantine, I lost ten pounds from stress, and have recently gained five back.
If this whole rundown doesn’t convince you that there are so many more factors at work for fitness and health then I don’t know what will. I started off with decent genes, have been athletic my entire life, and learned the importance of good food early on. I have worked out at least twice a week since I was 5 and at least 4 times a week since I was 11. I haven’t had a soda in over 7 years and I can count on one hand how many times I eat fast food in a year. I have had tons of advantages in this department and although I’m proud of my body and what it can do, my body is just MINE. Not anyone else’s. No one else’s body has been through the exact same set of experiences starting off with the exact same set of genes.
Furthermore, this takes time. My current muscle structure was built over a decade! It takes so freaking long. And it is constant maintenance - FOREVER. Your body is a reflection of all the years it has taken you through. So you’ll never look exactly like someone else because your experience hasn’t been the same. No matter if you eat exactly every recipe in their what I eat in a day videos and follow their workout plan to the letter. Unless you are my parents’ secret child, with the same genetic makeup, and also were a competitive swimmer for ten years followed by a couple years of intense weight lifting, then no - your body absolutely will not look like mine if you decide to adopt my current workout routine. The foundation is completely different.
I look the way I do because of the full 26 years of my existence. The comparison game just gets worse and worse as social media gets more ingrained into our society but I beg you - next time you feel the impulse to judge someone else’s body against your own, just think for one second how different your lives probably are. And relish the fact, even for just a moment, that only your body could have taken you through your unique set of experiences so far.
My body