Buzz
Making excuses to skip fitness is like an unavoidable public blunder. Whether you intend to or not, you'll likely make one. But by journaling your fitness journey and delving into the psychology behind those excuses, you can catch them early before they take hold.
Excuses come in all shapes and sizes, like telling ourselves we’ll start our diet tomorrow or waiting for the weather to warm up before we run. Many of these excuses arise from something called narrative bias. Your brain loves a good story, often bending the truth to create one. It may not have been too cold to run... your brain just spun a narrative to justify not going.
Fitness expert Tanner Baze recommends keeping detailed records of your workouts, meals, and emotions to fight against narrative bias:
When someone’s been dieting for 8 weeks with no results, it becomes incredibly hard to explain the lack of progress unless there's something concrete to look back on. But if food intake has been documented – that’s when things get interesting. You can review the data, assess what needs adjustment, and make changes accordingly.
Keeping a training or life journal lets me reflect and delve deeper into my own thoughts after each session. It helps me understand what I was feeling at that moment. Did the weights seem unusually heavy? Was I feeling tight or sore? Did I notice any signs of a potential injury? Gaining this perspective is incredibly valuable.
Image by Next TwentyEight.
