Help, I'm a beginner in fitness!

 My experience so far has been that as a beginner, you simply get screwed over. Maybe not even intentionally.

You might come across people who have been training for months or years, and you immediately start to compare yourself to them. Well, at least I did.

The first time I saw photos of a girl who runs a running tumblr, I immediately registered that she was still heavier than me, and my first thought was "aha, so I can run better than her then"; and I couldn't have been more wrong. I did not learn from this experience at the ripe age of fourteen, but decided to look at other fitblrs, and ended up somehow finding the Insanity program. We all know my most recent experience with it, I lost 20 entire kilograms of weight and gained 2 kilograms of muscle doing it. But I also mentioned my first experiences, which were total disappointments to me. Hell, the workouts warn you that if you acquired them in any other way but the official Beachbody site, they aren't going to be effective, they might burn you out, or they might not even work at all! They warn you that you should rely on their customer support and community.

I entirely ignored this message. At first I did that because I thought I knew better than some online fitness program (and I failed, because I didn't); but now later because I did know better than the fitness program. I know when to rest, I know how to take it easy, and I know how to not give up. Even with all these, life intervened, I got hurt, I missed some days, because, simply put, this program is hard.

I genuinely would like to warn beginners against jumping headfirst into programs like Insanity, or 75 Hard, or basically any "simple" program you hear of online. None of these take into account how every day in life is different. On some days you might have low blood pressure, joint pain, on other days you might be especially energized, or just plain angry - and all of these can and will influence the quality of the workout, both psychologically and physically.

Some say if you aren't hurt, you're not training hard enough, and at a certain level, that might be good advice, but not to beginners, who need to learn form, need to learn how their bodies react to exercise, and many more.

But hard days might not mean the same thing to a beginner, as it does to someone more in tune with their body. To me, a hard day might mean 'challenge' or 'rest', but when I was a beginner, it just meant "fuck this". We could say that names such as Insanity or 75 Hard should obviously make beginners consider their choices more carefully. But let's be honest, in these times, we rarely admit to being a beginner. In fact, we aim to make ourselves into experts in the shortest amount of time, or if that fails, we at least try and fail with all the confidence of what we assume an expert to be.

And giving up on any of your dreams or diminishing your confidence is most certainly not worth any money these programs will ask if you do decide to buy them legitimately, hoping for the sweet customer support. 

We can tell beginners to "listen to their body" but that, in a challenge of this intensity, will just lead to "my body says stop". We can tell beginners to push themselves, that "you continue until you die" "for beauty we must suffer", or "nothing worth having comes easy". This second option can easily lead to injury or burnout.

I really wish I had a solution to this. Even if this entire post was me pitching my newest coaching program, I'd be happier to try and sell a solution, than to just do what I actually am: to pop up with a problem, and then disappear.

I could say that my recommendation is to get a personal trainer or consult with a nutritionist, but many health coaches tend to choose the easy way to just grab some money. The way to learning how your body works and reacts, how much you can take and how much you need is most certainly not an easy one. First you need to trust yourself. Then, you need to trust yourself enough to recognize where you're lacking, and to learn to ask for help.

I, ironically, learned to trust myself through this newest installation of Insanity that I did. But I cannot even describe all the backwards progress I had to fight through, that I went through in the past ten or so years, trying and failing to lose weight.

You can do hard things. I'm not for a second saying that beginners are incapable! I just wish online fitness discourse were geared a lot more in their direction as well.