Stop Your Bellyaching And Start Training

I love my son. I really do.

I’m proud as hell of the kid, too. He’s smart, he’s funny, he’s got a lot going for him in this world.

However, I have to be honest, too. He’s lazy as hell.

It’s frustrating, too, because he’s like a lot of people in his generation. He doesn’t like being overweight, but he’s willing to do absolutely nothing to change it. Nothing at all.

At this point, I’ve lost about 30 lbs. That’s nothing to sneeze at, and it means I may know a thing or two about getting the weight off. At least at the start. Especially since at this point about six or seven years ago, I did it then too.

But nope.

So many of his generation want to bellyache about their lot in life instead of getting off their asses and start training.

When I was a kid, I was scrawny as hell. Information came out of books, and it wasn’t easy to find the right books to learn how to strength train. Most books I could find had to do with bodybuilding, so that’s what I started doing.

Once I found out any student could use the weight room, I started lifting there with the football team. I was the geeky kid and I caught a bit of hell from the team, but it wasn’t too bad. Especially after I dropped a bar on my face and still showed up again the next day.

I lifted like crazy, but I never made any gains, so I stopped. My life fell apart through the years and so did my body.

Now, though, I’ve got my crap more or less together and I have a son who seems to be bothered by his weight, but has no interest in doing anything about it.

So to him and his generation, I’m simply going to say, “Stop your bellyaching and start training!”

You see, the world doesn’t owe you a damn thing. The world doesn’t care if you’re tired or if you’re sore or if you’re hungry. It’s up to you to do something about all of those, just like it’s up to you do something about the fact that you don’t like the way you look at the beach.

Complaining and feeling bad about it won’t change a damn thing. I personally believe this realization is what is giving rise to the fat acceptance movement, which I don’t consider a rational response considering the known health issues connected to obesity.

So what does that leave? It leaves shutting up and doing something about it.

Look, for years, I joked about my weight. I’d say, “I’m in shape. Round is a shape,” or “I have the body of a superhero, just in my case it’s Baymax.” I used humor as a shield because I felt awful about what I had become.

I was an athlete in high school. I played basketball and ran track. I wasn’t particularly good at basketball, and I never put enough work into track to be good, but I was still an athlete. What the hell happened?

What I didn’t do was complain about it. I felt bad about it, but you know what I did? I did something about it.

At the risk of sounding old, kids today have it easy. This is especially true if you’re wanting to get your butt in better condition. There is a plethora of information right at your fingertips. You don’t have to grab every bodybuilding magazine you can find because that’s about all there is. You’re not stuck with the few books at your local bookstore and whatever you can find at the library. There’s virtually no end to the information you can find today.

Even better, though, there’s no end to stuff you can find for free.

For example, YouTube has thousands of channels on all different topics, including calisthenics, jumping rope and yoga, all of which can be useful ways to train and require minimal or no startup costs.

Google can lead you to blogs on food and nutrition, to legions of healthy recipes that I have little doubt parents would encourage you to learn. One of the best fitness tools out there, MyFitnessPal is a free site that you can also get on your smartphones.

Honestly, there are few excuses out there.

“But Mom won’t let me do my own food!”

Then use what she provides, just limit the intake to try and meet your nutritional requirements. It’s not rocket science. It’s pretty much what I do, actually.

You see, when I started this journey all those months back, I knew what happened before. I’d eaten clean for months and lost all that weight, but when I couldn’t really afford to eat like that anymore, I fell apart. I didn’t know what to do.

This time, I just eat the same foods I preferred before. I just eat them in more carefully measures portions. That way I can keep going no matter what happens.

“But I’m too busy to train.”

No, you’re not.

Look, I keep hearing this, but the fact of the matter is that if you’re able to binge watch anything, you’re not too busy to take an hour out of your day to train. Especially if you’re not doing it every day but every other day or something similar.

The problem is that we like to think of our time as structured even when that structure is “screw off and play video games.” If you take just an hour of that day and refocus it toward training, you’ll soon feel a whole lot better.

“I don’t want to train.”

Now, this? This is one I actually believe. It’s a legit excuse not to train.

Look, I’m not big on telling people they have to do something and they have to do it a certain way. It’s just not in my nature. If you don’t want to train, I’m not going to try and make you. I’m not going to guilt you into doing it or shame you into it.

I haven’t done that with my son, so why would I do it with anyone else?

But I will say if this is you, then don’t complain about your lot in life. Don’t complain about how you’re overweight and no one loves you. Don’t complain about feeling bad all the time or hurting all the time or anything of the sort. Stop complaining because I won’t feel any pity for you.

You have the entire world at your fingers. Use it and get better or stop your griping. Plain and simple.

If you don’t like your lot in life, change it. It may not be easy to do so, but it is simple to do so. You just have to start and then not quit.