Keep it real. It’s sounds like some kind of cool-kid lingo but it’s actually something we should all be living by.
Being healthy shouldn’t be all about extreme weight-loss regimes or crazy fitness challenges. It’s shouldn’t be all about achieving bikini bodies for summer. It shouldn’t be all about feeling pressured to look a certain way or participate in a certain programme.
Being healthy is not about extremes. It’s not about this way or the highway. It’s not about all or nothing. It’s not about one box ticks all. And it’s certainly not about what anyone else is doing.
Being healthy is about achieving a level of health and vitality that’ll boost your quality of life both now and in the future. Being healthy is about living a well-rounded, balanced, everything-in-moderation lifestyle that keeps you content, happy, and energised. Being healthy is about the doing all the things that you WANT and LOVE to do whilst knowing that they are taking you to a place of greater mental and physical happiness.
But underlying all of this is the need to keep it real.
With media hype, celebrity testimonials, and an overkill of new products all claiming to be ‘the one’ it makes it so easy to fall for their sensationalised claims of magnificence. So often we succumb to the cleverness of some big companies marketing campaign, find ourselves following some trendy new plan for a month or two, and then we re-enter the real world. And that’s when all the old habits slip back in.
One of my underlying philosophies in terms of my approach to health is that it needs to be sustainable, it needs to be something you can sustain long-term. There is no such thing as a long-term quick-fix.
Ultimately, it needs to be real. And not just that, it needs to be real for YOU.
To embark on something that has appeal yet only promotes short term results is only going to end in disappointment at some point down the track – there is no easy, fast-track solution to get those results that you long for. It’s about lifestyle, it’s about moderation, and it’s about getting real. By all means get stuck into a new motivational challenge, BUT, be clear from the outset what you hope to gain from it. As well as the results that the challenge promises you, to avoid heartbreak and discontent, it’s essential you identify the elements you wish to cement into your life; the changes that you want to make for good. This is the way you can keep it real, and this is the way you can aim to sustain it.
Deprivation or restriction is not healthy. Obsession and possession is not healthy. Keeping it real enables you to enjoy a glass of wine during a social gathering, and allows pure, unrelenting indulgement of that delectable dessert. Keeping it real accepts that when you go on holiday your ordinary fitness regime might take a backseat – or perhaps just a different seat. Keeping it real acknowledges that you are allowed to overeat crackers and cheese sometimes – because after all, you are just human. Keeping it real enables you to live free of pressures to be 100% good all of the time. Because it’s what we do consistently, most of the time that counts; not what we do sometimes.
- Corinne Austin
- Movement and Wellness Motivator
- corinne@fitfixnz.co.nz
