Sunday, January 22, 2017

The Big Picture



If you’ve ever listened to a podcast related to bodybuilding, fitness or nutrition you’ve noticed that the conversation inevitably veers into “extraneous details” territory, whereby the obvious big picture is lost to the participants who instead focus on minor or even unimportant details. Macronutrients. “Bad” foods. “Waste-of-time” exercises.

People resist the basics because they are so easy and uncomplicated — and unappealing: eat healthy and engage in your choice of challenging exercise. Period. How boring. People want something new. Something different. Something magical.

One review on Amazon.com for my book Reclaim Your Youth gives my work just one star with the critic’s justification that his expectation to be provided with something new concerning fitness and nutrition went unrealized. Never mind that nowhere do I claim I have new discoveries or information, much less promise that, the critic independently concluded that would be the case, and gave me one star for his unjustified expectations. In other words, “the author didn’t provide me with the brand-new never-before-revealed magical way to go about losing weight and getting fit that I just assumed he would, so I feel cheated.”

As the critic reveals, most people are highly resistant to the work that needs to be done to accomplish what they want. This goes for building a business or a bank account or a successful marriage as well as building a body. These things should all happen for them automatically, they believe, because that’s what they want. They somehow assume without any first hand knowledge whatsoever that these things happen for others, so why not them too?

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