Redefining goals

What are your goals?

Most people get into the gym because they want to look better. This could mean losing weight, getting super lean or gaining muscle.

So when their journey starts, they are asked to pick a goal from these three:

Lose weight
Build muscle
Gain strength (often consfused with building muscle)

It makes perfect sense to start with what you want. Your decision is going to dictate how you work out and what your eating habits are going to be.

These goals are driven by vanity and their purpose is largely to impress the people around you instead of making your life better. They make it seem that the packaging (looks) is all that matters.

The fitness industry managed to convince people to believe in a couple of fallacies. It managed to convince WOMEN that being skinny is healthy and it managed to convince MEN that they need to stuff their face with food all day in order to build muscle. This way we ended up with a lot of people that look ‘good’ but they don’t feel good. These people live a dangerous lifestyle, believing that it is healthy.

Let me propose something different. Something so basic that nobody talks about.

Nobody talks about health, energy and skills (what you are able to do). These are the things that you should be aiming for. First of all - you should be in good health because if you aren’t, you wouldn’t be able to do anything else but try go regain your health. You wouldn’t be able to work or do whatever. It is in the best interest of the people around you that you are healthy, because only then you can provide value.

You should be full of energy so that you can complete all your daily tasks. It’s not that you don’t have enough time. You might have time but if you don’t have the energy, you wouldn’t be able to use this time fully. It’s not normal for young people to feel drained all the time, to lack sex drive and prefer to sit inside. (See The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal).

What’s interesting is that if you start living a lifestyle according to these goals, you are also going to look good and feel strong because these are the side effects.