By Jena Goldberg
Special to GUIDON
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Did you ever start a program and quit it after you realized that you were doing more work than you were seeing results?

Unfortunately, this happens to the best of us. We get ourselves all hyped up about starting a new program and even make it to the gym for a few weeks in a row, but when we don’t see automatic results, we give up. It starts to seem useless to dedicate our precious time to the gym when the reward is so small.

Unfortunately, the events that follow are usually the same. We feel guilty once again for not following through and return to our old habits. We are usually left asking ourselves the same questions: What if? What if I’d kept going? What results would I have seen at three weeks, four weeks or even a year? What if I’d stayed away from the fast food I’d promised to remove from my diet?

It can seem overwhelming when we are aware that the answer to all of the above questions is yes, yes, and yes. As a matter of fact, that alone can make us feel like a complete failure and convince us to never give it a try again. But “what if” this time it really worked?

What if we ran or walked twice a week instead of trying to be a superhero for five? Sometimes we get so excited about the possibility of becoming more fit that we think we can rush the process by killing ourselves in the first two weeks. This can backfire, unfortunately. Doing too much too soon can leave us exhausted, frustrated and even injured if we’re not careful.

What if we stopped being so hard on ourselves? We are our own worst critic. What if we accepted the small flaws that we are not likely to change about ourselves and just concentrated on the things that we can fix, like the size of our jeans or the way our arms look in our favorite shirts? Small changes can be rewarding enough to make us want to stay committed to see the big changes.

What if we made it to the gym just twice a week for strength training? This small commitment can help us to not only tone our physiques but can lower our cholesterol, blood pressure, chances of bone loss, prevent obesity, and countless other diseases that our bodies are susceptible to. Another reason to get in a bit of strength training is so we can finally wear that smaller size. Muscle takes up less space than fat, so adding five pounds of muscle can help you look great in your clothes and burn more calories, since five pounds of muscle burns 30 calories at rest.

Many of us have committed to a new fitness plan only to have it fail. We have changed our eating habits, made it to the gym for weeks at a time, and even put in endless cardio in an attempt to finally win the battle of what’s weighing us down. Unfortunately, we have also thrown in the towel when our work hasn’t seemed to pay off soon enough and have found ourselves in a position worse than when we started in the months that follow.

What if we started a little slower this time? What if we realized that fitness is a lifetime commitment that will always have good days and bad and we just concentrated on what we could do better today? What if we did that every day and got a little better with each day that passed? Wouldn’t it feel amazing to finally do it, little by little, pound by pound and day by day? And how awesome would it be in a year to smile back at your results and think only, “what if I could help someone else?”

I encourage you to share the love of fitness with those around you on Fort Leonard Wood. This, in itself, can be more rewarding than any fitness goal you reach for yourself. What if we all helped one another instead of competing with each other?

(Editor’s note: Goldberg is a military spouse, mother, certified personal trainer, National Figure competitor and fitness writer. Her column appears bi-monthly.)