I’m a big fan of the idea of getting better everyday.
When it comes to training, this is easy to track. I try to match or beat whatever I did last time. An extra rep with the same weight, a heavier weight than before, an extra round of conditioning work—these small improvements add up over time, so that months and years from now, I am significantly stronger or look better than I do today.
This idea of getting better everyday works in other areas, too. I try to be a better teacher than yesterday, a better writer, a better trainer.
But there are some times when constantly getting better isn’t the best idea.
When you are facing enormous stress, when you cannot get access to the tools needed to improve, or when your body and brain need a mental break from continuous effort, it’s OK to maintain. After a fat loss phase, for example, your metabolism has slowed down to adjust to lower calories, your stress hormones start getting in the way, and your body needs to take a break—so you have to maintain instead of pushing harder to lose more fat. After a break, when your metabolism is firing high again and your brain is ready, you can return to fat loss.
A similar concept applies now, during this pandemic, for many of us. With no gym access, with overwhelming uncertainty about work and school, with stress in general from a global pandemic, it’s reasonable to make maintenance your goal. Maintain your fitness, maintain your physique, maintain your strength and muscle.
But that’s not the rhetoric floating around social media right now. Instead, everything is either about using this time to become a better person or using this time to act like a slug and eat all the foods. There’s no in-between, no one saying it’s OK to just maintain—and I think this stems from our ideas about what maintaining means.
We think maintaining means being average.
Really, though, maintaining during this crisis takes 100% effort. Maintaining your muscle, fitness, and physique with no gym takes good programming, consistent effort, self-motivation, the ability to hold yourself accountable, and creativity.
There’s nothing average about any of that.
The same goes for your nutrition. Sure, there aren’t as many social occasions riddled with food to tempt you away from your healthy eating habits. But emotional eating is a thing. A BIG THING. And very few people are immune to it, especially in their own homes, especially when they have more time on their hands, and especially when food is abundant.
There’s nothing average about overcoming that.
I’m admittedly privileged when it comes to this. I have gym access. I have a decent home gym in my basement. I have years of training habits and nutritional practice, so when life gets messy, weird, uncomfortable, or hard, I know how to keep getting better every day despite life. So I am one of the people using this time to make myself better.
But if you cannot do what I can, you don’t need to fall into the camp of folks who’ve decided to give up. Eating carrot cake with your hands isn’t the only other option.
You can maintain. If you maintain, you’ll come out of this pandemic unscathed, you’ll be able to get back to your normal routine quickly, and you’ll practice the healthy decisions that will make your future self more likely to make good decisions later on.
Maintaining gives you a place to start when this crisis is over.
You’ll be able to jump right back into getting better everyday.
And you won’t have to waste time scraping cake out from under your fingernails first.
About the author
Kristen Perillo
Kristen Perillo is a teacher by day, trainer and nutrition coach by night. She's also a Star Wars nerd, writer, dog (and cat) mom, peanut butter junkie, and Seinfeld devotee. Fitness has done nothing but make her life better, and she is privileged to show other people that it will do the same for them.
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