Fitness professionals, by nature of their work, tend to revolve their lifestyles around fitness. They look after their health, they engage in regular exercise and they probably make sure they eat many fruits and vegetables. Then there are those people who shudder at the word ‘exercise’. They have sedentary jobs, then come home from work to sit on the couch whilst eating a warmed up frozen meal with the only thing reminiscent of a vegetable being the marinara sauce.
What I have described here are two extremes; two opposite ends of the spectrum and most of us would fall somewhere inbetween.
If you follow any ‘fitspo’ online, you will more than likely have encountered at least one post where they discuss ‘balance’. It is often described as something to strive for and tends to be showcased as an achievement; that someone has found ‘balance’. They tend to reference prior experiences or a prior lifestyle as being extremist and isolating and now that they have relaxed, they are ‘balanced’ or ‘live a balanced lifestyle’.
But are they really ‘balanced’ or ‘living a balanced lifestyle’?
Social media gets a bad rep for people just showcasing their highs and for not being a well-rounded, encompassing picture of someone’s life (I personally like this, i don’t want to see evidence of everyone’s unwashed dishes). What I actually think is more of an issue with social media is that it is (all too often) abused as mechanism for projecting a false identity. Take someone preaching ‘balance’. What do their prior postings show? Have they actually changed their lifestyle? Or have they (which i sadly find to be the case more often) not gone to the gym one day and used that isolated behaviour to define themselves as balanced?
Say they have been gradually changing their lifestyle from a relentless 7 day a week gym goer to 3 times a week with weekly pizzas. Does this mean they are ‘balanced’ now? In all honesty, you have no idea from words alone. What about their mindset as they were eating pizza? What were they thinking about? If all they were considering was the extra hour of cardio they were going to do tomorrow, then this isn’t balanced at all. Balanced nutritionally maybe, but not balanced mentally. And if you aren’t balanced in all aspects of your life, can you really claim a balanced lifestyle?
How do we define balance anyway? To me, I live a balanced life in many respects – I tend to have sufficient time to accomplish everything I want to. For me, this involves a couple of hours engaging in physical activity each day. It involves walking my dog a good few miles each day. It involves waking up at 5am so I have time to spend 20 mins doing my make-up and cooking a breakfast. To me, this is balanced. To someone else, this is over-kill.
I don’t claim I am ‘properly balanced’, as, like a swinging pendulum, balance is temporary, achieved for a split second. I am not opposed to the word, or to people preaching balance, but I am asking that you consider that someone else’s balance is not yours. How you define balance is different to how your best friend does. And, like with everything online, take the good from what you read to positively influence you, but don’t let it consume you. Someone else’s choices do not define you, whether these be ‘balanced’ or otherwise.
-Benchpressingbaubles, x
Benchpressing Baubles 