By Brian Foley from Activate Fitness

I was recently reminded of a blog I wrote almost five years ago about dieting around Christmas time and how it is important to enjoy life and find balance.

I spoke at length to someone about it and how this construct of exercise takes on varied meaning depending on a person’s life views and experiences.

Long story short, the gist of the blog was you only get typically less than one hundred Christmases so life is too short to be fretting about calories at this time of year.

A few weeks later someone sent me the writings of a local coach who wrote a retort to this saying such a “relaxed” approach was naïve and counterproductive to getting “results”.

As I approach almost 40 trips around the sun and countless hours of working with people on their own journey towards their own health and fitness goals, have my views changed and have I perhaps become less naïve?

Funny enough, no, not one bit. It’s amazing how time and experience can change your perspective on life and what exactly health and fitness means in the grander scheme of things.

As the conversation continued we spoke about people who are always looking for “the next thing” in health and fitness.

Yes, novelty and a change of scenery does help sometimes and if that is a reason to change things up then I think it can be a really positive thing.

But if someone is looking for “more” in fitness I can say from experience there is “no more” to fitness. The more is always and was always contained right within you.

The key is always consistency and contentment in yourself. I’ve tried so many forms of exercise and found different elements of joy in them all.

Not everyone is geared that way, and it really is a case of do what makes you happy, as what makes you happy will keep you consistent.

That young coach who spoke of naivety at the time probably looked at things like contentment and enjoyment as “nice to have” features of a programme that was geared at a “before and after” photo. What experience will teach them (or hopefully since has) is that contentment and enjoyment are the cornerstones of a successful exercise modality.

As the saying goes; “intensity adds, consistency multiplies”.