Expectations!?

Many of us expect some return on our investments. We invest in our future, our retirement, our kids education and we spend lots of time researching where we want to go on vacation so we can get the most out of our time away, a mental health investment. Generally we expect successful investing to take a long time to achieve, many years in most cases. Yet we often expect the opposite when it comes to exercise and results, return on investment in yourself! It seems we are expecting a huge return on a short time investment. Two days this week, one the next, gone on business the following week but I’ll get 5 days in when I get home. Probably not. Then comes the big question...”Why am I not seeing results?”

Advertisers want you to believe that you can make serious changes to your body by taking a specific nutritional supplement or doing some new 11-minute workout twice a week. Reality is that we need to exercise and be good to our bodies every day to see results. Anyone reading this is thinking, “I don’t have time to workout everyday”, possibly true, but you do have time to take the stairs between floors instead of the elevator, you do have time to eat a chicken breast instead of a cheeseburger, you do have time to drink 8 glasses of water a day, and you do have time to park far from the front door of the grocery store so you have to walk farther instead of driving around for ten minutes to get the spot 10 feet away. It is the daily focus on our health that will provide great returns for our bodies. For those in the financial world you should see exercise working the same way as compounding interest. Your money would not grow as fast if the interest only compounded 6 or seven days a month.
Contributed by Keith Baier, CSCS
WRAC PERSONAL TRAINER AND STRENGTH COACH