41. Separating Effort From Self-Worth In Fitness

A missed workout shouldn’t feel like a personal failure, yet for so many of us it does. We’re not just trying to build muscle, lose fat, or get stronger we’re chasing what those results represent: confidence in photos, a sense of control, the relief of feeling “enough.” When that happens, fitness quietly turns into a scoreboard for your self-worth, and consistency starts to feel like a test you can pass or fail. 

If you care about evidence-based wellness, mindset and long-term consistency, this one will give you a new way to think about self-trust and progress. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

I am happy we can share this journey of leveling up, together. Send me a text by clicking the link at the top of the description. I would love to hear from you :) See you next week! 

- Alita <3 

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This podcast is intended for general educational purposes only. The content discussed does not replace professional medical, nutritional, or fitness advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Individual needs and responses vary, especially with exercise and nutrition. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making significant lifestyle changes.

Transcript

Welcome And Show Purpose

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What's up? Welcome back to Vito with Alita. This is a podcast about evidence-based wellness for real life. I'm Alita and I'm here to talk about fitness, health, mindset, and building a strong and sustainable life. But doing so without extremes, guilt, or perfectionism. If you care about your health, but you also want a life that you can actually live, you're definitely in the right place. Now before we jump in, I just want to say thank you for being here. It genuinely means a lot that you choose to spend your time listening. And I don't take that lightly. If you've been enjoying the show, following the podcast really helps it grow and lets me know that you're enjoying what you're listening to. And it will actually help more people find these conversations, which means I can keep bringing you new episodes every single week. Alright, let's get into today's episode.

Are You Training Worth Or Body

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Today we are going to be exploring the question. An interesting one, actually, one I've thought about for quite a while. The question here is: are you training your body or your self-worth? This one, this episode, is a little more grounded in fitness, but not moving away from just like how to stay consistent, how to build discipline. I want to talk about something that I personally experience all the time, and I haven't been able to put a name on it. And it's this. Sometimes fitness just stops being fitness. It starts becoming a measurement of how you feel about yourself. No matter what stage of your fitness journey you are on, I've come to realize that sometimes, a lot of the time, the way I see myself or how I value myself is related to this how consistent can I be with my fitness. And let me maybe go into more depth, explain what I mean. I can make the assumption here that most people don't struggle with working out because they don't know what to do. You can find workouts anywhere. You know how much information is out there? You can find meal plans absolutely anywhere, you can find routines anywhere. But what I think we actually struggle with is what it means when we do not always follow through. Because sometimes missing a workout is not, is not just, oh, I missed a workout. I feel like it starts to shift into, well, I'm lazy, I'm falling off, I'm not disciplined enough, I can't stay consistent. And suddenly your one behavior becomes a reflection of identity. And we see this all the time. You fall off, and then you're like, well, might as well. And then you continue to just make things worse for yourself. And I think this is where fitness can actually get emotionally complicated. Because in theory, fitness itself is simple. Move your body, fuel your body, rest your body. Yeah, that's

When One Missed Day Feels Personal

SPEAKER_01 3:24

an oversimplification, but that's the summary of it. But in practice, as with many things, it becomes layered with all these expectations. We don't just want results, we want what the results actually represent. So what do you mean, Alita? What do you mean what they actually represent? Well, I want you to think about your current fitness goal. Not what it is on paper, but what it means to you. So this can look like away from just, you know, building muscle, losing fat, getting stronger. Like yes, but sometimes like that deeper level, it can look like feeling confident in photos, feeling like you are in control of your life, feeling like you are becoming that person, feeling like you're enough. And notice how I'm leading all of these statements with feeling. This is like the emotional side that I'm kind of trying to refer to here. None of those desires are wrong, but they change the emotional weight of fitness. Because now every workout is not just a workout to build muscle or lose fat or whatever. It becomes proof. Proof that you're doing okay, proof that you're improving, proof that you're showing up, proof that you're not falling behind. And when it becomes like this proof and this evidence, it can become pressure. A little caveat here. You do need that sort of evidence for yourself to show that you can show up for yourself, which is what self-trust is built on. You need that proof and that discipline because that's what's going to help you follow through on your goals. I think that sometimes in many instances you can have two truths simultaneously exist together. You can have that this proof is becoming pressure, but it's also necessary to build that self-trust and create that discipline and those habits for you to reach your goals. So let's go back to this idea of it becoming pressure and let's let's just sort of pause and resonate with that for a second. Because here, this is where we can maybe bring up that idea of discipline again, and we might think that discipline is the issue, but sometimes it's not actually discipline, it's the emotional weight. And this is where this idea of you can still have those two truths simultaneously exist, but just trying to figure out the distinction between what's going on here. So, what actually breaks consistency? Consistency doesn't usually break because people don't care. It actually breaks because you feel like you failed too many times, or you associate fitness with guilt. You are not able to separate your identity from your performance, or this all of nothing, or my my mistake, all or nothing type of thinking. So one mistake becomes this whole catastrophe. Well, I might as well give up. One imperfect week. Well, I'm back to square one. One bad workout, what was the point? I suck. And that mindset can be exhausting. So this is relates now to a psychology concept that I've read about, which explains this sort of emotional weight part very well.

Catexis And Emotional Weight

SPEAKER_01 7:00

And this is gonna be our word of the week, and it's Catexis. C A T H E X I S. It basically means that the emotional investment you place into something, whether that's an idea, a goal, a person, even an identity, and that emotional investment, that's kind of the key idea here. And we unknowingly invest all these emotions into our fitness journey. So we're not just invested in the behavior. We are emotionally invested in what it says about us. So when the fitness goes well, we feel good about ourselves. And when it doesn't, we don't just feel off track, we feel off as an entire person. And this can make sense in a way because we talk a lot about identity shifts and how you need to become somebody. If you want to keep working out and you want to stay consistent, a big part of that is truly thinking that you are a person that works out. But taking it a step too far is when you start to attach your self-worth to it. And I didn't realize, or I don't think I ever realized, how common this was until I've had reflecting on many conversations I've had with people around fitness. Fitness is one of the easiest places where we can attach our self-worth to. It's very visible, it's measurable, it's trackable, so it becomes really easy to turn into a scoreboard for your entire life. So, what do we do with that?

Separate Actions From Worth

SPEAKER_01 8:34

The answer here, in my opinion, is not to care less about fitness. I think here the important thing is to separate effort from identity. Let me explain. One, I think we need to separate our actions from our worth. Missing a workout is not a moral failure. Eating differently is not a regression of who you are as an entire person. Being inconsistent is not complete, is not like the only proof that you are undisciplined. It's just data about your routine, not your value as a person. Like your value as a person does not depend on these external factors, it's just inherent. You have value as a person whether you work out or not, or you missed a certain meal or not. Now, the second important thing is this shift from proof to practice. So instead of I need to work out to prove that I'm consistent, try something else. I work out because I'm practicing taking care of myself. That shift sounds really small, so I'll repeat it one more time. So the first kind of idea, I need to work out to prove I'm consistent. Instead, we can try, I work out because I'm practicing taking care of myself. Practice includes imperfection. When you go into something thinking you're practicing, you you are primed, or you kind of know or you expect to make mistakes. You know? So if you apply that to fitness, you can expect that you will not have perfect days. But proof or needing evidence or having to prove something doesn't allow that room to miss a day, miss a meal, miss something. So again, this is this idea of shifting from proof to practice. Third, we need to make fitness something that supports your life and not judges it. So I want you to ask yourself here does my fitness routine make my life bigger or smaller? Does it make it feel bigger or smaller? Does it add calm or pressure? Do I feel more grounded after it or more anxious? And those answers matter more than just, I don't know, the goal of I need to build more muscle. And this is where I think you need to be really honest with yourself. Because, for example, if I were to answer their second question, does it add calm or pressure? Honestly, it depends. If my schedule is super busy and I have a million things to do on my list, and then you're telling me I have to go work out, it might actually add pressure. And this is where this whole narrative of, okay, well, if I'm disciplined, I'm gonna do it no matter what. Yes and no. Consistency comes in the things that you are able to do all of the time, and it's better to do it in smaller amounts or in with less, I don't know if effort's the right word, but instead of having to go at 100% all of the time, you can go sometimes 20%, then 80%, then

Make Fitness Support Your Life

SPEAKER_01 11:53

60%, then 100, then rest, and then 20 repeat, but you're you're showing up more consistently. So this is where this idea of making fitness something that supports your life is important. If you know your entire day is going to be busy, so you know you have to build a system for yourself where working out in the morning is going to be the best case scenario. If you know that you hate running, don't make that your made your main mode of exercise. Work with your life with what you know with your preferences, not just with what you think is the most ideal, perfect way, or this like template that you may feel pressure to follow. That's not the goal here. So just to repeat, kind of what do we do with this when we want to shift from, or actually I should say, separate our effort from our identity? One, again, is to separate your actions from your worth. Two, shifting from proof to practice, and three, making fitness something that supports your life and not judging it. So I think a lot of people assume that they struggle with fitness because they lack discipline. That can be true. But I'm trying to offer an alternative sort of viewpoint to this. I actually think many people struggle because fitness has quietly become tied to identity. And when something becomes tied to identity, actions or every action carries that emotional weight. And it carries this weight it was never meant to hold. The distinction here is I am somebody that works out, and then I am somebody who cares for my health. Yes, that can be true, but it doesn't mean the opposite is true. So, oh, I missed a workout, I am a failure. Those two statements are still tied to identity, but the first one where you say, I am somebody who cares for my health, I am somebody who works out, allows that flexibility in that room. You're not taking it a step further where you're adding the emotional weight of, oh my God, I didn't follow through. Now my entire life is spiraling because I said I'm a person who works out, but I am actually not working out, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So maybe the goal isn't to detach from fitness, it's just to detach your worth, your inherent value, your value that nobody can change to fitness. You can still want progress, you can still have goals, and I really encourage that you do. You can still care, but you don't have to turn every step into a judgment of who you are. And that's sort of what I've been thinking about this week, and I hope it gave you something to reflect on too.

Closing Thoughts And How To Connect

SPEAKER_01 14:38

As always, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to the next one. Bye-bye. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate you being here. If something in the episode clicked for you, send it to a friend. Or you can reach out to me directly using the link in the description. I genuinely love hearing from you. And if you want more evidence-based wellness, you can connect with me via my Instagram. Again, that link will be in the description below. Take care of yourself this week, and I'll talk to you soon. See you on the next one. Bye bye.