fitness: the art of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable

If you do not know me I am not nearly as hardlined as perhaps the title of this rant says... or maybe I am... who knows lol. In either event here it is in a nutshell. Life does not get easier, nor does it get harder, simply get stronger or weaker. If you get stronger life appears to get easier, if you get weaker life appears to get harder. 

What makes me crazy about how fitness programs and nutrition programs being sold is they sell them on the concept that they're easy, pain free, effortless. This may be a hard pill to swallow but that is complete and utter non-sense. We get stronger by being challenged. Whether this is mentally, physically, or intellectually, we only improve by challenging ourselves. A challenge by definition means it comes with a degree of difficulty. 

Pain has garnered such a negative connotation. It has been made to be the evil nemesis of living a good life. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pain is an alarm. Sometimes the alarm notifies you that something is wrong like a flashing check engine light. In which case be grateful it went off in time to prevent any real damage from occurring. In other instances it's a result of a challenge to your homeostatic settings. These include things like if you begin to sweat, and you're not accustomed to sweating it is accompanied with an uncomfortable feeling, or if you've recently cut back on high calorie foods that then cause an uncomfortable feeling of hunger. These "pains" should be celebrated because that is the pain of change... but the result will eventually be pleasurable. If you can visualize the attainment of your goal and feel the pleasure from the anticipation of the reaching this goal each time your experience this "pain", it will eventually become a pain that hurts so good. One you will look forward to and that is how you become comfortable with being uncomfortable.