In a space that's come to be dominated by a language of extremes - biggest, fastest, leanest, best, you'll only ever hear me default to the more sober-sounding enough.
Smack bang in the middle of the road with just:
Enough exercise. And enough dietary restraint. Enough of the time.
I've got plenty of other things to do, so - the 'bare minimum' required to maintain my desired fitness level - forever describes where I pitch my fitness tent. And while you may well have more ambitious ideas, 'enough' is always the base camp from which you'll make the attempt.
And strictly in keeping with how our biology works, where fat loss is concerned, the tipping point of 'enough' is all you ever want to be looking for.
Speaking of which, I was talking to a friend this week who is getting married today. Excepting a last-minute change of mind from either concerned party, he will be married now.
But like many leading up to their big day, he figured he had a bit of adipose baggage to lose, maybe 2-4 kilos.
No big deal.
I'm yet to address the biggest Leftfield nutritional rock of all in this forum, but, while I won't be making the key distinction between fat and weight loss today, it was described as such only because we both know we both know the difference. That's not a typo.
I know he knows. And he knows I know he knows. So we're on the same page.
A necessarily clumsy way of stressing there's a critical difference here from every other similar or identical-sounding conversation you've ever heard, or, as likely, participated in.
Anyway, I thought we said we weren't going to talk about it…
The problem, and subject for today, is that although he knew what to do, he wasn’t doing it enough. For months.
Until, finally, and suitably motivated by the big day looming, he tightened the screws sufficiently to get it knocked off in less than two weeks.
Huzzah!
Yes. But.
While I'm happy for my match-fit mate, he is the exception that proves a wretched rule. And the reason he's the exception is because he’s had a fitness practice — the raison d'etre of Leftfield Training — for over a decade now.
Noting that the word fitness as used around these parts always and forever includes dietary behaviours —and everything else adding to the sum of all parts, which is to say Every. Thing. Else. — this is someone who, via that practice, has been in relationship, in conversation, with his body such that he knew he hadn't been disciplined enough. And he knew to continue.
But many, many, more are lost to that liminal no man's land of not quite. The unrewarded effort that so often comes to define fitness or dietary efforts. And just as often spell the end of it.
And why wouldn't it?
It was, he admitted, an annoying few months. Doing things that fail to move the needle but still materially subtract from your quality of life is about as good a reason as there is to not continue doing those things.
I wouldn't do those things either. Because this is the singular case of extremes: all or nothing.
I would either do (all of) enough. Thus minimising any period of ‘annoyance’.
Or I would do nothing and so be better prepared to give it enough when ready to do so.
And, more importantly, I wouldn't have discarded something that was always going to work, but only if I was prepared to do my bit.
Because, to further echo last week’s disconnects from underlying realities, there are literal legions of those who fail to connect these dots, throw the baby out with the bathwater, only to move on to the next thing that won’t be done enough.
And so it goes.
But in the absence of Goldilock's evil twin warning that we're just wrong, how else would you know?
And the answer is you wouldn’t. Not without a fitness practice - that of understanding the broader principles of what your body responds to, but, most importantly, learning to look to yourself for the answers.
Unlike, I’d estimate, 99% of society. Those who have been steadfastly ignoring their bodies since a bad experience in P.E. you might readily accept, but who you won't be including are those with repeated fitness ‘starts’ under their belt or anybody with even a fleeting contact with the diet industry. All the way to those who, to all intents and purposes, may well be fit, but, who have come to be so without ever discovering their how and why. So it’s possible, you could do it. Only it’s much harder and introduces one wholly unnecessary factor to the equation: luck.
And so here we are. Deep in the mire. But fortune is already smiling on you because you now know there’s an alternative.
A fitness practice is a collection of variables you will work on forever. There’s a lot to get through, but don’t worry about it, forever is a long time. It’s defined by the fact that — despite external pressures — it gets done. And it keeps getting done.
It begins with understanding your body ALWAYS reflects what you do with it: that nothing will be so faithfully and fully transcribed as your fitness efforts —remember this includes anything and everything. And while it certainly helps you ask yourself the right questions it’s less about being right, than isolating — thereby knowing— when and why you’re wrong.
A never-ending process of course correction that unfailingly guides you to that always-swaying sweet spot. And the great thing about enough — not aside from it leading to what you want, but equally the reason for it, is that it's always specific to you.
Your enough is exactly that: yours. And while it may change from day to day and from month to month, and, absolutely will from year to year, it will also be the same. Yours.
For better or worse. Richer or poorer. In sickness and health.
I’ve got a wedding to get to.
- OLI