Hobbies Over Habits — A Better Fitness Strategy
Most of my life I’ve been overweight or at least a few pounds over my ideal BMI and fitness level. While I, like many people this day and age, continue to struggle with being overweight and finding effective strategies and methods I’m able to stick with to experience positive changes, I look back on the few times in my life that I had been fit and try to dissect what was happening that allowed that to happen and how do I replicate it?
Recently, I’ve been working hard at a new job, after having been unemployed for several months due to the pandemic where I spent a good majority of my free time focusing on health and fitness. Now that I’m back to work, I’ve since slipped back into old habits now that most of my mental and creative energy is spent on my work. Now that I’m past the initial excitement that comes with a new job, I am forced to ask myself a critical question: Why am I not able to continue to focus on health and fitness even though it is such an important part of my values and is something that is so within my control?
This thought has pushed me down a rabbit hole where I am forced to question myself and what it is that makes me tick, and that I believe, applies to others as well. When taking that long hard look in the mirror, I had to address the reality of how I spend my time on and off the clock. I have the privilege of working remotely, which I’m grateful appears to be occurring more and more for more people in the wake of COVID, and because of this, my day isn’t as rigid as those who are duty-bound to the grind of working in an office. This opens up the opportunity to take breaks when I want and make use of my space differently than those in an office. For example, I can take a 20-minute break from sitting at my desk to get up and do a workout, which would not only keep me in shape but would actually increase my energy levels throughout the day and allow me to be more productive overall. Instead, I’m no exception to temptation and am not always the best at spending my time productively. Right next to my workout equipment is my Xbox and a large TV that sits at the forefront of my vision, begging for just one more round of Call of Duty Warzone, which if you’re familiar with the game, can be around 20 to 30 minutes per game depending on how good you are, and I’ve put the hours in to be in the running. While I don’t always cave to the temptation of gaming, I still have to question why is it I’m so keen on playing games instead of doing something that will have a positive impact on my life in my spare time? I don’t think the answer is as simple as people think. When it comes to working out, yes, there is an initial period of feeling like you have a long, painful journey ahead to achieve the results we seek. However, I don’t think that’s really the biggest pitfall in sticking with it.
What I believe is the decisive and critical factor in why we don’t keep up with fitness in our spare time, is because we simply have not made it into a hobby. Now let me differentiate between what a lot of self-help gurus, articles, and books preach about habits versus what I consider to be an even more crucial component: a hobby. Look at any successful athlete, musician, YouTuber, animator, actor, you name them. What do you think all of those people have in common? It’s not the fact that they’re all professionals in their chosen fields; that is the most evident and obvious fact. What allowed them to get to that level in the first place? They did it in their spare time, whether for the joy of the craft or a desire to succeed in the craft, but never the less, they did it as a hobby.
Now I don’t think everyone should be trying to make a career out of their hobbies. In fact, I think this makes people too top-heavy in certain areas of life which makes it difficult when for them when confronted with having to cope with change. But rather than spending your free time making hobbies of things that yield no tangible return such as playing video games or watching TV (unless you’re a pro gamer or are jotting down recipes from a cooking channel), you should be spending your free time making hobbies out of things that actually benefit you in some way. Now for me and I think for most people especially with the advent of working from home as the new norm, this should be fitness.
Fitness is one of the key areas in all of our lives that only benefits us. We should be finding fun ways to get outside and get active, not only for our own health but for those around us as well. If we are driven to get out and go for a hike, then others within our circles with less motivation and willpower will be more inclined to follow suit. Now I don’t necessarily believe that our hobbies should even be fun all of the time. We’re typically spending our free time doing things whether we find them fun or not. Does scrolling through your Instagram feed for hours a day really give you pleasure? Or does seeing all of the fit, attractive people with 300 likes per post fill you with a feeling of jealousy or contempt? I admittedly fall into the latter. A lot of us fall victim to the same vices and lack of discipline, but when we confront this fact, we can work to come up with some tried and true strategies to overcome these pitfalls and achieve our long-lasting goals.
If you find that you are wasting your spare time on things that are not worthwhile, find a new hobby that does provide a reward. I have a friend who is a great example of this. He has been hustling making youtube videos covering all sorts of content in the past, from animations to trick shot videos, to painting timelapse videos, but he never seemed to quite find his niche. He’s since picked up mountain biking as a fun hobby and combined it with his desire to create content to share online and now creates more consistent videos around this newfound passion. In the course of a couple of months, he hits jumps I couldn’t imagine myself hitting with even a year of practice. His deliberate, consistent drive and desire to make content paired with his newfound hobby has enabled him to make progress in fitness and his creative goals faster than ever before. This is a testament to my theory that when you turn something healthy and productive into a hobby; something you do in your spare time for fun and pleasure, then you will see faster and more consistent results than if you felt you had to do it. For example, if you signed up for a gym membership and felt that just because you spent money on the membership, that you have to go. I don’t believe this is a long-term successful strategy and have since canceled my own gym membership because of this. It may work for some, but I need a stronger force to enable me to stick to something other than fear of financial loss. That force has to be the thing I do in my spare time whether for joy or a desire for achievement.
I hope this article was helpful and gave you the inspiration to look closer at how you are spending your free time and to seek out new strategies to achieve fitness more sustainably. I wish you the best of luck on all your health, fitness, and life goals.
Written by Jacob Lovett
