All my life, I've been blessed with a fierce, demonic metabolism of destruction. My stomach was like the gates of oblivion, because evidently no matter how much food I devoured, I couldn't gain a pound. When I started weight lifting with my power-lifting friend, each pound was an epic struggle to pack on, and the slightest deviation from a strict diet would decimate all the gains. Like an ant, I could lift much more than my own weight, but I just could not become bigger.
Eventually, I gave up on lifting, and I vanished from the university gyms for half a year. And now I'm back at the gym, with renewed motivation and discipline. In fact, for the past 17 days, I've been working out every single day; I'm doing a thirty-day challenge to work out every single day, and by the looks of things, it'll likely go much longer than thirty days when all is said and done. So what put me back in the gym when my body, my very genetic makeup, refuses to allow me to become a giant?
What happened is I decided to accept that I'm not going to be a hulk, and I realized that my metabolism is a blessing, not a curse. I accepted my metabolism as simply being, I accepted that it's a part of me, and suddenly I realized that I had been on the wrong path all along when I was trying to grow.
Now I'm working on a different path: the Path of the Sixpack. I've recently become very passionate about getting ripped abs. I want to pack a deadly washboard beneath my shirt. Concealed weapon, baby.
But this isn't arbitrary. When I came to peace with my violent, monstrous, merciless metabolism, I realized that having huge arms isn't so congruent with who I am. I was rowing against the wind, not realizing that if I just opened sail and let the wind blow me along, I'd effortlessly arrive at places of far greater beauty than where I was heading before. There's no point in me trying to deny that my body is slender by nature. Instead, I should run with that slenderness, and take it to the pinnacle of its beauty: sixpack abs.
This is obviously just a special case of a much more general pattern. People strive for things which just aren't congruent with them. Most of the time, these struggles are futile.
Career is a great example. Society holds certain careers in high esteem, and some people are really pressured to enter those careers. Even if they can withstand the obstacles of professional school or trade school or whatever, noone will be happy or productive in a career that contradicts their core self.
In the dating world, society dictates to some extent what makes a mate desirable. How tragic would it be for a man to attach with a girl who society rates as a dime, when to him, she's not what he really wants.
Life isn't meant to be frustrating. If it's frustrating or discouraging, like when I was struggling to get bigger in the gym, that's a suggestion that something's amiss. Jet pilots try to fly with the jet stream, which makes their journey effortless. To pursue something that crosses against the fibers of one's core being, that's like a pilot trying to fly against the jet stream.
Once I got my workout priorities straightened out, lifting and running became, in some sense, effortless: they're still difficult physically, but mentally they're the easiest things in the world. I get up in the morning and it feels natural to go to the gym straight away. I'd feel uncomfortable skipping it! Heck, I get gym urges now late at night, when the gym isn't even open. I'm no longer working out for someone else's idea of how I ought to look, and now I "own" my own workout. Needless to say, I've never felt better or more in shape in my life (not even when I was power-lifting before, even though objectively I could lift more sheer pounds then).
So, too, is it with all things. The core self is like a gust of wind, constantly blowing. When we sail with it, it provides endless momentum toward our goals. It takes us to wondrous places (experiences) that we never even expected. Letting society, or parents, or our own egos, dictate some artificial path, is like sailing into long-charted waters, where every island is plundered and desolate. But moving congruently with our core selves, we're exploring uncharted seas, where every island is a treasure hoard.
Here are some other articles that I wrote:
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
30 Day Article-A-Day Challenge Completed!
Western Pimps Vs. Asian Idols
Why The Gym Is Good Even If You Do Manual Labor
Eventually, I gave up on lifting, and I vanished from the university gyms for half a year. And now I'm back at the gym, with renewed motivation and discipline. In fact, for the past 17 days, I've been working out every single day; I'm doing a thirty-day challenge to work out every single day, and by the looks of things, it'll likely go much longer than thirty days when all is said and done. So what put me back in the gym when my body, my very genetic makeup, refuses to allow me to become a giant?
What happened is I decided to accept that I'm not going to be a hulk, and I realized that my metabolism is a blessing, not a curse. I accepted my metabolism as simply being, I accepted that it's a part of me, and suddenly I realized that I had been on the wrong path all along when I was trying to grow.
Now I'm working on a different path: the Path of the Sixpack. I've recently become very passionate about getting ripped abs. I want to pack a deadly washboard beneath my shirt. Concealed weapon, baby.
But this isn't arbitrary. When I came to peace with my violent, monstrous, merciless metabolism, I realized that having huge arms isn't so congruent with who I am. I was rowing against the wind, not realizing that if I just opened sail and let the wind blow me along, I'd effortlessly arrive at places of far greater beauty than where I was heading before. There's no point in me trying to deny that my body is slender by nature. Instead, I should run with that slenderness, and take it to the pinnacle of its beauty: sixpack abs.
This is obviously just a special case of a much more general pattern. People strive for things which just aren't congruent with them. Most of the time, these struggles are futile.
Career is a great example. Society holds certain careers in high esteem, and some people are really pressured to enter those careers. Even if they can withstand the obstacles of professional school or trade school or whatever, noone will be happy or productive in a career that contradicts their core self.
In the dating world, society dictates to some extent what makes a mate desirable. How tragic would it be for a man to attach with a girl who society rates as a dime, when to him, she's not what he really wants.
Life isn't meant to be frustrating. If it's frustrating or discouraging, like when I was struggling to get bigger in the gym, that's a suggestion that something's amiss. Jet pilots try to fly with the jet stream, which makes their journey effortless. To pursue something that crosses against the fibers of one's core being, that's like a pilot trying to fly against the jet stream.
Once I got my workout priorities straightened out, lifting and running became, in some sense, effortless: they're still difficult physically, but mentally they're the easiest things in the world. I get up in the morning and it feels natural to go to the gym straight away. I'd feel uncomfortable skipping it! Heck, I get gym urges now late at night, when the gym isn't even open. I'm no longer working out for someone else's idea of how I ought to look, and now I "own" my own workout. Needless to say, I've never felt better or more in shape in my life (not even when I was power-lifting before, even though objectively I could lift more sheer pounds then).
So, too, is it with all things. The core self is like a gust of wind, constantly blowing. When we sail with it, it provides endless momentum toward our goals. It takes us to wondrous places (experiences) that we never even expected. Letting society, or parents, or our own egos, dictate some artificial path, is like sailing into long-charted waters, where every island is plundered and desolate. But moving congruently with our core selves, we're exploring uncharted seas, where every island is a treasure hoard.
Here are some other articles that I wrote:
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
30 Day Article-A-Day Challenge Completed!
Western Pimps Vs. Asian Idols
Why The Gym Is Good Even If You Do Manual Labor
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2 comments:
What a suburb article! This is exactly the message that I try to get across at my own blog. Life was meant to be easy! Great post.
How much additional protein were you consuming when you were trying to gain? I have a similar build/metabolism and only finally started gaining when I began supplementing my protein intake. To achieve the recommended 1-1.5 grams per pound of lean body mass per day, I bought Just Protein powder from ironmind.com and drank 1/2-cup shakes in the morning (after workout) and evening. That gave me the extra 72g I needed to start increasing mass - something I could never do before no matter how much I seemed to eat. Before it was too tough to get such a high ratio of protein to calories.
Of course our genetics limit our ultimate size, but I'm not looking to get super huge anyway. I'm noticeably filling out and enjoying the extra strength and energy of regularly working out. The women in my life aren't exactly complaining about it either ;)
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