What do you fear most?
The first week of March I received a message back from a former client who was with me for a very short while in 2018. We'll call her Tabitha for the sake of privacy.
I took a moment to review notes for this blast from the past. I can't remember everything I did last week, let alone six years ago! This was back when we were riding the fitness industry's trend of 3-week Transformation Challenges and 6-week Lean Down Challenges.
At the time, I thought it was the best thing in the world. But over the pre-pandemic years, I phased those offers out, for good reason: I was conditioning people to think they only needed to take care of their body for a short time.
These challengers lost an impressive amount of weight. Most lost between 15-25 lbs. in six weeks! That isn't including the increase in strength, mobility, energy, self-confidence, stamina, and everything else that comes from strategic training efforts.
I find that when I follow up with these people every year or so, I learn they went right back to square one after the challenge was over and they haven't been doing anything since.Years go by, as they always do, and many times I don't see folks getting better.
Tabitha was one of the few people that never ghosted me when I checked in on her. She would always let me know she's not active, she's eating junk, she's working a lot, etc.
Now, I know that's a superficial response, but I'm not one to pry if someone doesn't want to be honest and dive deeper into their situation. This time around, Tabitha finally opened up which was very exciting. She admitted the real reason she quit a few days into the challenge six years ago: fear of not being able to 'keep up' with the program.
That common mindset is created by everything that is wrong with the completely unregulated fitness industry. That's a rant for another time, though. I'll just say there is a big difference between group classes and personal training.
Anyways, Tabitha informed me that she's been in and out of all the reactive care you can think of since 2023. Her doctors asked her to be more physically active, and I tried my best to get her through the front doors as a starting point.
She never got back to me.
After following up one last time this past week, her daughter texted me back. I was shocked to learn she was transferred to hospice care with just a week to live in her early 60s.
It was terribly sad to see Tabitha was finally ready to overcome that paralyzing fear that held her back, but it was ultimately too little, too late. I'm still really bummed out about it.
If you have been gifted with a fully functioning body, you owe it to yourself to invest in it. No one knows when they'll take their last breath, but everyone should know they have all the power to extend that timeline.
The clock waits for no one. Regardless of how much time you think you have, don't waste a second putting self-imposed limitations on yourself and be aware of how truly capable you are to achieve great things in this lifetime.
