Your Day 1 is Not Their Day 500
Why everyone else's fitness journey looks easier than yours.
When you scroll through Instagram and see uber-fit people, you’re seeing their “middle” or their “end,” not their beginning.
You’re not seeing the months (or even years) of struggle, the missed workouts, the setbacks, the injuries and illness, the diet fails, the plateaus, and the times they wanted to quit.
That’s why before-and-afters have so much power. That’s why a “follow along as I attempt to hit my 50 lb weight loss goal” video series is so compelling. There’s a guy on YouTube who created a now-viral video “I Worked Out Like David Goggins for 100 Days.” The video got 12M views and is insane. The reason it went viral is because it shows the messy parts that most people try to hide: pain, suffering, doubt, failure.
(Note: I definitely don’t agree with his training approach, but he’s also 20 years younger than me.)
That kind of honesty is rare.
Most of what fills your feed isn't the struggle, it's the polished result: the concrete abs; the personal best; the confident, hormones-perfectly-in-balance workout selfie. When that's all you see, it's easy to look at your own body, your own progress, your own stumbles, and feel like you're failing. Here's what's actually happening: you're comparing your beginning to someone else's middle or end.
I challenge you to make this your new truth:
Every confident person still feels insecure. Every successful person still fails. Every happy person still feels sad. Don’t mistake outside appearances for internal realities.
In midlife especially, everyone is struggling more than they’re showing because bodies don’t recover like they used to and energy is split between work, family, and general messy, beautiful, complicated life. You’re doing the best you can with what you have, and so is everyone else.
You're never as far behind as you think you are. The person who looks like they have it all together, doesn’t. They’re just not posting about the vulnerable parts.
So just be wherever you are. Even if it's not perfect, it’s real.
To ask yourself this week
Do you have unrealistic expectations for yourself? What if you decided that your struggles were normal and okay? What would that feel like?
To try this week
Drop one unreasonable expectation you've had for yourself. Maybe it's losing weight faster, training more days per week, or looking like you did at 30. Just let one go.
Let me know how it goes by commenting or shooting me a reply. I read every response.
Thanks for being here,
-Marek
