Do you remember the movie Groundhog Day?
With a young-ish Bill Murray? It’s a 90s classic where a snarky local weatherman (also named Phil) is assigned to cover Punxsutawney Phil’s emergence on February 2, an assignment he hates every year. As you might expect from a comedy-with-a-lesson style movie, a sneaky little time warp forces him to relive this day over and over and over again.
Groundhog Day is an hour and forty minutes long, and during that time, we see approximately 34 separate iterations of the time warp day. What you might not know is that, according to the director, the time warp actually goes on for at least ten years.
My God, can you imagine? Living the same day over and over again for TEN YEARS?!? Trying repeatedly to get unstuck, gain wisdom, change your life, get a different result, move on, feel happy and fulfilled?
What if I told you it’s possible you’ve been living that kind of time warp for a lot longer than ten years?
It might not look like Groundhog Day in Pennsylvania, but it might look a little like this:
This year is the year I’m going to get healthy!
This year is the year I’m going to lose ten (15, 30, 100, etc.) pounds!
This year is the year I’m going to start a morning routine!
This year is the year I’m going to exercise three times a week!
This year is the year I’m going to run a marathon (5k, triathlon, powerlifting competition, etc.)!
This year is the year I’m going to create a bunch of new habits!
This year is the year I’m going to quit sugar!
You get my point. January 1 often brings rallying cries and renewed energy for changing our lives after a sluggish November and December full of cookies and booze, and a lot of the time it’s directed at our bodies.
We’ve been told year after year that we need to exercise, eat healthfully, and lose weight. In a broad sense, that might be true. The problem isn’t necessarily in the concept. It’s in the execution.
The problem is that year after year, we buy the bullshit the diet and fitness industries sell us without thinking about why we want it in the first place. We put ourselves on restrictive diets – again. We put ourselves on strict exercise regimens – again. We focus on external goals we think we’re supposed to have – again. And we abandon all these things after a few weeks or months – again.
It’s not because the idea or the intention is misguided, it’s because the method, frankly, sucks.
We don’t fail at diets or exercise routines because we’re terrible, broken, lazy, hideous people. We fail at diets and exercise routines because they fail us.
The whole thing fails to take into account that the path to getting unstuck, gaining wisdom, changing your life, getting a different result, moving on, feeling happy and fulfilled might not actually include a diet or exercise program, weight loss or forcing ourselves into the narrow view society has for all bodies.
Each year we make these resolutions or start these programs, more than a day passes, so we don’t really realize we’re stuck in a time warp, but we are. I say it’s time we start living a new tomorrow. Health and fitness resolutions are great. I’m not anti-resolution, necessarily. But what if we just stretch that idea a little, beef it up a bit, mind both the motivation and the method?
What if, instead of resolving to lose weight this year, you resolved to listen to your body’s messages?
What if, instead of resolving to exercise more this year, you resolved to figure out what kind of movement you enjoy and how to fit it into your schedule?
What if, instead of resolving to start the perfect morning routine, you resolved to give yourself permission to sleep an extra thirty minutes?
What if, instead of resolving to quit sugar, you resolved to dig into your energy or hormone or mental or gut health stuff with a professional?
What if, instead of resolving to create a bunch of overwhelming new habits, you resolved to break the habit of being so hard on yourself all the time?
What if, instead of resolving to accomplish some arbitrary goal your friend or mom or Pinterest chose, you resolved to learn to trust yourself?
And what if you backed all those resolutions up with a process and support? Might give you a fighting chance at breaking out of the time warp, right?
Phil finally got beyond reliving Groundhog Day because he learned from his experiences and took the opportunity to look within, figure out how to live a meaningful life. You have the exact same opportunity this year. He was 43 years old and changed his life; it’s never too late to do things differently. I’m not saying it’ll happen in a day – remember, Phil’s process took at least ten years, and we’ve been stuck for that long too. But I am saying the four-month Fitness Unraveled program is a great place to start making progress toward living a new day.
Registration for the FU group starting January 25 opens today.
I hope you’ll join us.
In case you’re new here or haven’t quite been able to put a finger on it, FU is a four-month group coaching program of guided and supported self-discovery, with community, focused on cultivating body confidence and a more positive body image. It’s daily facilitated discussion with me and a group of like-minded women struggling with all the same things you are, it’s weekly private coaching with me, it’s monthly group calls, it’s a bit of reading.
And it’s a lot of uncovering all the shit that’s piled on through the years of time warp contributing to a not-so-great relationship with your body, unlearning that stuff, and gaining insight into what’s right for you and tools for how to feel better and build a good relationship with your body and fitness and self, forever.
I’m bucking convention (surprise, ha) and keeping registration open for the next three weeks. Technically, that means there’s no huge rush, but as we all know, three weeks will go by in a flash, especially in January. So, I can’t in good conscience tell you to just wait. If this feels like something you need to do, register right away. There are only 8 spots available.
I hope you’ll consider the what ifs for this. FU might just be your path for getting unstuck, gaining wisdom, changing your life, getting a different result, moving on, feeling happy and fulfilled this January.
It’s not Groundhog Day just yet.
Let’s end this time warp.
I want to be real clear and emphasize that I’m not implying we’re all a bunch of fools for buying this diet/fitness industry BS for years and years. Marketing (and capitalism?) is an unstoppable machine, and when you’ve got $70 BILLION behind you, any and all of us are easy prey. What I do mean to suggest is that, even when it’s hard to resist because we’ve been living the same January 1 for a lifetime, we have a choice in the matter. Fitness Unraveled is a good one.
If you have questions, email me or schedule a call below.