Beyond the obvious reasons that quitting eliminates you from the competition, why would anyone ever be tempted to quit anything? We all want to win in life, right? We want what we do to create an improvement for us and others around us. We do things, like workout, in order to be more fit. We do life in an attempt to win, or at least not lose. So why is quitting such a temptation? Here’s a few reasons that come to mind:

1. It’s hard to keep in the fight day after day. There is a small part in all of us that wants life to be easy. We’ve all been taught that nothing in life is free, but in fact, lots of us have gotten by without too much extra effort. When we are faced with a difficult situation, we are often ill-equipped to know how to sustain the work for very long. We are especially tempted to quit if we don’t see any changes. If the scale doesn’t go in the right direction, or our clothes don’t start fitting differently or we don’t improve our performance, we get frustrated and discouraged.

   This is why we quit…we don’t see change. It’s also why scam artist succeed! We get emotionally played that the reason things didn’t improve is because the system we were using is broken. We get stooped into believing that is should be easier, or at least less effortful and faster, so we fall for the idea that the quick fix will work. When our efforts to change don’t get us what we want, we tend to think there’s a catch. But really, we just quit too soon.

2. We don’t recognize the changes that are happening because they are subtle. Change is never fast, and if it is, it’s usually destructive. We need fortitude and a firm belief that our efforts to change (or at the least not digress) are producing positive results without any external signal. This requires faith; a firm-footed stability that what we believe is true. We know that movement is good, no matter what the result of our moving is, it is always helpful because we feel better afterwards. We have muscle on a skeleton that requires movement to stay healthy. If we ever stop moving, that muscle goes away and everything is harder. So, we can all rest assured that moving is crucial to living well.

   Secondly, the food we eat is either turned into energy or becomes waste. There’s no inbetween. We also know that food grown in the ground and from animals houses the nutrition our bodies need to survive. Again, we know that when we don’t eat nutritiously, our bodies get sick.

   Based on these two truths, we know that exercise and a nutritious diet will never let us down, so we should never quit doing them, no matter what the results of that work are. We never quit. Ever.

3. We know there can only be one winner in life. This may seem blatantly obvious, but when the only competition that truly matters is the one with ourselves, we will always be the winner. You’ve no doubt read the mantras like “Fitness is about being better than yesterday, not better than someone else.” or “Your only competition is against yourself.” and maybe the best one, “We’re only one day away from the finish line.” While these may seem trite when you’re struggling with motivation to stay with your healthy plan, they are true. The only one who loses when we quit is ourselves. So don’t do it.

No matter what is going on in our lives, we will always get ahead when we keep taking care of our health. And if you’ve ever been faced with a health crisis where the future becomes uncertain, the ONLY thing that you want is to be able to live normally, exercise, eat healthy and long; the important things become very clear. While exercise and healthy food isn’t the panacea, it will take us a long way towards better whenever we do face something out of the blue concerning our health. We must not stop doing all we know to do just because it’s not easy or always enjoyable, takes time and energy. We must keep fighting for our fitness.

And lastly, if you are doing all you know to do and nothing is changing, get some help! Your fitness and your healthy, long life is worth the work and time it takes to be the winner.