Never tell your personal trainer...

"I've tried everything!" It's usually said with sincerity and desperation, but your personal trainer hears that as a challenge. New circuits, set/rep schemes, diet tweaks, and monumentally tortuous exercises are taking dark shape within my skull, every time I hear somebody announce they've "tried everything." If you had unrealistic expectations due to goals that were a physical impossibility that's a whole other issue, but, honestly, nobody has tried everything. I think it was Marianne Williamson who pointed out that Christ, Buddha, and many spiritually enlightened Masters are most often depicted in art with their palms up, and their arms open in a gesture of acceptance and forgiveness. Personal trainers, on the other hand, are usually depicted with their hands on their hips, or flexing, or their arms folded in front of them. The bossy, standoffish body language comes from somewhere. It comes from the strange relationship that develops when someone hires you to hold their feet to the fire, and push them toward their goals, yet every now and then they try to offload a bunch of excuses on you. And as Tom Venuto, one of my fitness role models, says, "You can have excuses or results, but you can't have both."

I believe in a holistic, or mind-body-spirit, approach to health. Sometimes exercise is fun, and sometimes it isn't. What's interesting, though, is that after you've pushed your limits consistently for awhile and gotten stronger and healthier the stuff that isn't fun somehow becomes fun. Eating a strict, healthy diet can be fun. Exercises that you once thought of as excruciating torture, can be fun. It's because after awhile the beautiful simplicity of it takes hold. You really do get what you give. Try that, next time you have the disempowering thought "I've tried everything."