Mindset and Changes

What I write in this article may shock some of you, but you will understand if you read through the entire thing.

I don’t enjoy lifting like I used to. I don’t give a shit about it much anymore.

I realized this soon after my first physique show, and I struggled with it for several months. This revelation reminded me of the first IG fitness celebrity, chickentuna.

Her name is Laura Gordon, and she amassed over 300k followers posting thirst traps and the occasional workout video. Let’s be real here; they were mostly thirst traps. Of course, me being a man, I followed.

I distinctly remember one of her posts saying (paraphrased), “I don’t like working out, I don’t enjoy eating healthy, but I enjoy how they make me look and feel.” At the time, I scoffed at it. How could anyone NOT enjoy working out, I thought. I loved to lift, it was fun for me, and I couldn’t comprehend how someone would participate in an activity they didn’t enjoy.

Forty-eight-year-old me gets it.

After my physique show, I had every intention to continue on and attempt to reach a Master’s Pro Card. Delusional? Perhaps, but my nature is to push to excel, and this path opened up for me - a narrow path, but a path nonetheless.

What I didn’t know, but do now, is just how fucking tired I was of making lifting my sport.

I grew tired of quantifying my body, of obsessing over food, and was fed up with the obligation of trying to reach an aesthetic when I was happy with how I looked and felt.

I coasted along in the gym, trying to find my place in the active world, feeling increasingly distant as the weeks wore on.

I started to resent bodybuilding, despite it being something I loved participating in. Did I love the training and the competition aspect, or was it a cover for me to focus on something while going through a tumultuous time in my life? I don’t know, as I didn’t take the time to think about it that much, I just reacted and made some changes.

I wanted to use the gym as a tool to make myself better. I wanted to enjoy eating without the micromanaging of calories. I needed to find what made me tick.

I found it again, and I believe my mindset has shifted greatly. I have reinvented myself more than I can count over the years, both in my personal life and career.

I started wanting to train athletes and serious lifters, and I have progressed to never giving a shit if I ever train another person for competition. Of course, I can easily, but I don’t seek them out.

I shifted from rugby to powerlifting to bodybuilding with stints as a highland games athlete and strongman in the midst of it all, and now I want to be smaller and healthier.

The gym has become nothing more than another activity for me to enhance my life, and part of me is lamenting it, but a larger part is happy.

I no longer need to live in a gym and prove myself to anyone (including myself), and it mentally frees me to enjoy other activities I want to pursue, such as Jiu-Jitsu.

I know some of you will feel the same; it is inevitable to shift that mindset as we get older.

Some never do, and they chase the perfect body, workout obsessively, and spend time crunching numbers to find the optimal protein intake to support their training and life.

Me?

I have done that enough times in my life, and whether or not I eat 180g of protein or 200g of protein isn’t going to make or break a fucking thing I do in the gym or on the mat.

Know what makes a bigger impact on me?

Enjoyment.

Find what you enjoy; lifting is just a means to the end - not the end.