By Denise Quentin, BA, CPT
We live in a world that has never been more accessible and quick in giving us the things we want but does it mean we are happy with the results? Let’s start with an example: You run out of dog food in the morning and on your way to work, you place an Amazon order via the app. Shortly after you receive notice that it has been shipped arriving at your door around 5-6 pm which is perfect cause that’s the time you come home from work! This entire process could not be any more convenient.
Now, let’s think about your workouts, your goals, and how you approach your health and fitness journey. Since everything else has been getting quicker and easier to access, we would like the same scenario to happen when it comes to losing weight, gaining strength, or finally learning that skill we’ve been wanting to master. The bland truth is that our bodies don’t work like this. Our bodies can adapt to stimuli over time but not overnight. If you put your body through a consistent strength training routine, your muscle fibers are getting slightly injured by undergoing trauma as a result of training. To start the repair process, your body sends satellite cells straight to the injured muscle fibers about 2 to 4 hours after a workout. These cells will fuse so that the muscle fiber can grow and form new blood capillaries to ensure proper blood and oxygen supply. While the repair process starts soon after your workout, you won’t be able to see any growth or strength gain just yet. This can take anywhere from 4 to 16 weeks depending on consistency, intensity, and frequency of training.
It is important to understand that our bodies are not machines, unlike an Amazon factory. We cannot press a button to finally master the skill we’ve been wanting to do. We have to work for it. That’s the point where it gets challenging and where a lot of our society gives up. To master a skill, it takes an average of 10,000 hours of determined work according to a study from Florida State University. 10,000 hours is over a year of hard practice. Doing 5 min one day, and 10 min another day won’t be as effective as you might like. So what’s the point of continuing? There are many reasons to continue; it gives you a sense of purpose and control over your life, you will feel accomplished once you mastered the skill, and it will motivate you to work towards different goals because you already mastered one. Results are not always seen immediately and you might have to go the extra mile to get there but the effort will be rewarded. Furthermore, it is crucial to stick to one skill or goal at a time. If you work on too many things at once, you are putting more stimuli on your body and it can get confused. So, if learning one skill takes about 10,000 hours, adding a second one at the same time will take you double the time resulting in about 20,000 hours to master both skills. Again, it might work like this for Amazon products, but we have to be more patient with our bodies to give them the ability to fully adapt.
The bottom line is that our fitness results can’t come as fast as our Amazon package. Don’t listen to fitness influencers on social media who promise you to lose 20 lbs in 2 weeks. A healthy weight loss should be about 1 lb per week. According to this, losing 10 lbs would take you about 10 weeks as long as you focus on proper foods, eating in a caloric deficit, and staying on a consistent workout schedule. But keep in mind that everyone is different as well. Keep in mind that your unique body can respond differently and that it may take you longer to lose that weight. Don’t get discouraged because you’re not seeing results right away. A lot of people grow more on the way to reaching their goals than when finally reaching the goal. Enjoy the journey you put your body on and embrace the small changes you notice over time.