Reflections on Health

I think a lot at the gym, it's my refuge to go over the meaning of feelings in my human experience, and dissect my day. I'm tempted to get all Vonnegut one of these days and write a story about the absurdness of it all and how my human experience was so confusing compared to my Tralfamadorian experience... but I'm not that good a writer yet. :)

Today I made the faithful trek into my local YMCA and about halfway through my workout I reached some conclusions on Love and Friendships - usually the topic that dominates my thoughts. So I started to think about health and general body maintenance.

Yesterday I played some pickup football with friends and acquaintances... despite now fighting with my knee I was pleased with how well I'd performed. I've never been an extremely athletic fellow, but the month or so I've spent focusing on improving my eating habits and aerobic exercise have helped a lot. I'm still not the greatest guy on the field, but I'm holding my own. It felt good to start to excel at football. I was always better at rugby and I'm curious to see if my improvements have helped my rugby game in the same way. Either way I noticed that I'm feeling a lot better -- apparently I look better as well. I have a weird memory or body image viewer, I can only see the most drastic of physical changes in myself and others (you can imagine the problems that poses with girlfriends), but others have commented that I look more fit.

I don't know what drove me to embrace a healthier lifestyle but I have some thoughts on my experience. I'm curious if they translate outside of fitness.

1. 95% of results lie in the obvious. There's no secret to it, exercise and good eating are plenty. You don't even have to be exact in your methods (unless you have an extremely high and hard to reach goal). Seems to be true in life (secret to success: 1. Write down what you know needs to get done. 2. Do it.)
2. It takes a little while to get, but positive feedback comes. It took me (19 year old male) about 2 weeks of intensive training to notice a difference in how I felt when physically exerting myself. I could run farther and breathe easier. Each timeline is different but I think everything takes primary investment before you get positive feedback.
3. You have to want it. I notice that similar to education, business, whatever -- you usually can't accurately rate you're own potential. You can't know your potential until you reach it. The only way to perform better is to go after that next level. Cost-benefit analysis isn't what you want in this situation. You want pure heart (drive, passion, call it what you will) to win or go down having given it your all. Otherwise you will talk yourself into mediocrity.
4. Motivation is key. I enjoy going to the gym. I actually love going to the gym, I can think about a lot of stuff that I simply can't think about in other settings. I also think about these heavy topics outside of the gym, usually in the morning or at night -- but the gym gives me time to think more, to expand on previous ideas and form connections. Blood-pumping mid-day short-burst sessions allow for much more effective thinking then seemingly-endless, fuzy sessions right before or after sleeping. I also sleep better if I can clear my head mid-day instead of having my thoughts build up. That makes my trip to the gym a pleasure not an inconvenience, that's my motivation. In life most of the difficulty is finding the motivation. There will always be tasks you don't want to do (that last 10 minutes on the treadmill when my knee is on fire), but if you look for the silver lining there is usually good in the bad.

Maybe I'm stretching to apply those to non-fitness settings, but there is at least some correlation.