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Dear Jacky, 

This letter hangs somewhere in the gray space between self-awareness and fitness and the first order of business is to acknowledge I have no authority to be speaking on fitness. The scale would agree that I love chocolate chip cookies and tacos far too much to be giving any advice on that but I do want to talk about the importance of your health. My body is pretty stubborn, I can go paleo for a whole month and everyone around me will lose weight and I won’t. I can cut out soda and nothing happens, I’ve cut out alcohol for an entire month and nothing happens. I’ve cut sweets and carbs and all the things and absolutely nothing happens. I’ve counted calories. I’ve drank more water, I’ve done all the things. One time I even followed a meal plan from my fitness trainer for two months and I didn’t cheat…like at all…and nothing happened. The only time I’ve lost a sizable amount of weight was because I felt really sick a lot which isn’t sustainable or healthy or a way in which I wanted to lose weight. If you’ve ever been in this boat, you know it’s extremely unmotivating to do all the things to lose weight and nothing happens. It’s even more annoying when people start giving their unsolicited advice. The fact of the matter is, I know my body better than anyone else does and I know exactly what I eat and how much I work out and all the things better than anyone else and you know those things for yourself better than anyone else does also unless they’re a doctor, nutritionist, trainer or something of the sort and you’ve asked for their input.

What I can speak on is how I had to change my mindset about working out. I can’t see working out as a means to lose weight or something I do because I’m going to see progress on the scale because most of the time I won’t. I have to see working out as something else. There’s lots of good reasons to work out besides the number on the scale. It improves your health. It’s a stress reliever. It’s an act of discipline. But even these things don’t make me feel that motivated about it. I started realizing the things that motivate me to workout have nothing to do with working out. There are points in time I’ve gotten pretty fit and consistently shown up to work out. So I started thinking, what do those times have in common that the other times don’t. I think this is a step in the direction of self-awareness. If you’re wanting to improve your health and get fitter but can’t find the motivation also, I want you to think about this for yourself. I started thinking about this and I know that I am way more inclined to workout if I have friends doing the same. I’ve even been known to show up at 5:15am as long as a friend is there to meet me. The only thing stronger than the urge to hit snooze on the alarm clock is my sense of loyalty to show up and be a good friend. I am not a morning person. It is a true act of God and a small miracle for me to get out of bed at an insane hour to do something I mostly hate but I love something about group misery. It goes all the way back to conditioning for soccer starting in 7th grade. We would spend the whole hour and half running (I hate running so much) and doing sprints and sit ups and push ups and running the stairs of the football stadium when it was sleeting (my hair literally froze) and planks (planks are an invention straight from hell I’m certain) but the fact I was doing it alongside my teammates made it motivating. It meant we were getting better together. I also enjoy saying lots of curse words and making hilarious remarks under my breath so my peers are left laughing between our moaning and groaning but so the instructor can’t hear me. 

You need to know who you are, what motivates you and then plan for who you are.

Molly INclÁn

Yes, group misery motivates me. I’ve loved it forever, in college I did a bootcamp where we would run parking garages and do sit ups and push ups and I would attempt pull ups (never going to happen for me…I’ve accepted it). As an adult I joined another gym and I knew all the people at the front desk and the instructors and over time my friend group grew our workout gang to over a third of every class. We would go out to eat once a week but if you didn’t go to workout you weren’t invited and we never decided until class was over. So basically you better go workout with the group every day or you were going to miss out on some really great food and friendship. I even did a sprint triathlon all because I sat on a plane next to a girl I’d never met (who later became a friend) and somehow she convinced me I should do a sprint triathlon with her. I’m super motivated by social interaction. If my friends are there then I’m there…even if I’m not particularly interested in the activity. I enjoy seeing my friends and if that translates to working out then awesome. When I took kickboxing in grad school, I would always look forward to seeing my friend who was in the class also and the days she wasn’t there were far less enjoyable. I used to lift weights a few times a week alternating between personal trainers and I enjoyed their personalities and they would always have me laughing so I enjoyed showing up.

I also know that I am not self-accountable when it comes to working out. I will never come home from work and throw on gym clothes and make up my own routine or even use an app to guide me to do a “free workout”. It’s just not going to happen. My brother is really great at that. He says he feels guilty if he doesn’t work out…wish I did but I don’t (insert laughter). Even with the best of intentions, I will tell myself I will go right after work, then I’ll go home for a minute then go, then I’ll just eat dinner and then go, then I’ll just relax a little bit and go at 9pm and before you know it I’ll just go tomorrow and the cycle repeats itself for 4 months and I never go. For me, I’ve got to have a set class time to show up to or an appointment with a trainer or a friend who is waiting on me. It’s just who I am. Wish I was better and more disciplined and kept myself accountable but I don’t and this is where self-awareness comes in. You need to know who you are, what motivates you and then plan for who you are. 

I am very motivated by goals though. I worked out every week for over a year because I set that as my New Year’s Resolution. I logged over 100 workouts in a year and kept the tally in my Instagram bio. Back in college, I used to log my weight and a checkmark on my desk calendar every week which showed me the correlation between working out consistently and the scale which motivated me. I would put checkmarks on the sprint triathlon training plan to make sure I completed each thing each week to ensure I could finish it…and I did. I finished in 2nd place for my age group. I am not a fitness guru and there is no way I made it there other than pure determination.

Be honest with yourself about who you are, figure out how to tap into that, how to set up roadblocks when you start to veer off course and how to set yourself up to be everything you desire

Molly InclÁn

So when I decided to list out what I know has to happen for me to workout regularly I said 1. It has to be fun or feel like I’m learning something new 2. It has to have a community aspect to it where I make friends 3. It has to have a set time that I have to show up 4. There has to be some group misery and competition. So I went and found a boxing gym. It takes me at least 40 minutes but with traffic sometimes over an hour to drive to this gym. I have so many reasons to not go but I do go because it hits all the check marks. It’s really fun! I’ve met cool people. It has set class times. It is really hard but I feel like I’m developing a cool skill/hobby. Most of the people in the gym could do some serious damage if you were on the wrong side of their fist. Like they are bad*** (sorry mom but it’s the only word that fits). I feel fierce and strong and I hope one day I can be half the fighter they are. As a bonus after I signed up, I realized you get a heart rate monitor and there’s a leaderboard and in the app they rank you against everyone in the gym and there are levels dependent on how many calories you’ve burned for the month and it tells you fun facts about the benefits of the level you’re on. It sounds silly but it is so motivating to me. I work so hard to prove to myself I can be #1 on the leaderboard. Every time I am, I text my family group text to let them know I was #1 against a lot of really strong guys. I’m sure it gets annoying but I don’t care…I don’t have the genetics of a racehorse…I mean my siblings do they all were Division I athletes…so for me to be #1 is pure heart and determination. I wasn’t born an athlete. My dad suggests perhaps I work the hardest because I’m the most unfit person there…therefore my heart rate is the highest…he may not be wrong but I’ll choose to believe what I want to believe (insert laughter and smile). 

The point is at 30 something, I know me, the good parts, the bad parts and I’m just okay being honest with myself. We’re going to talk about the power of self-awareness a whole lot more but self-awareness is the cornerstone of making a plan that works. I hope you find more in fitness than the counting of calories or the number on the scale. I hope you find something that motivates you and inspires you. I hope you look in the mirror and you feel like a really strong, really fierce, kinda bad*** man or woman and you smile because you are after more than a smaller pants size, you’re after the process, the confidence and that little bounce in your step when you know you can take on the world. Be honest with yourself about who you are, figure out how to tap into that, how to set up roadblocks when you start to veer off course and how to set yourself up to be everything you desire.

May you always have a strong left hook,

Molly