Realizing Why Being Fit is Not Enough

I want to share why personal development, health, and fitness are so important to me.

Today I am a successful personal trainer, yoga instructor, and health coach. I look and feel the best I ever have, I maintain good mental health, I am confident, strong, and full of energy each day. I don’t say this to blow my own horn. I say it because it didn’t use to be this way. I'm going to let you all in on some pretty personal shit, but I’m happy to do this because I hope it will help others to make positive moves in their lives even if they feel powerless or unable to make those changes they want to make.

My early life

I was that extremely awkward, neurotic skinny fat teenager who struggled massively with self-esteem and confidence issues. Ask anyone I grew up with, I was a loser, maybe a likable loser, but a loser nonetheless. For Harry Potter fans out there, I was essentially Neville Longbottom from the first few books, bad at pretty much everything, super un-coordinated and clumsy, and couldn’t seem to do anything right.

“I was essentially Neville Longbottom from the first few books of Harry Potter, bad at pretty much everything”

I won’t lie. Like a lot of people in their school years, I was pretty miserable. I have ADHD and I'm dyslexic. This meant I struggled a lot in the classroom, It would take me three times as long to understand what was being taught and I never got any work done. I wasn’t any good at sports either; in fact, I was awful, I was that kid who was always picked last, and to be fair, for a pretty good reason.

School was one of the most miserable times in my life, I would regularly feel like life was hopeless for me. That I was trapped, inadequate and incompetent. It's sad to say but I would consider suicide almost every day for a long time.

You can also forget Girlfriends. This was not happening for me, I was so awkward, loud, and just weird for this to be a possibility.

“School was one of the most miserable times in my life”

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, however. My parents tried their best with me and pushed me to learn an instrument to try and help my coordination and brain development which was badly needed. This did have a massive effect on me and I started playing in bands in my later school life, which was the first time I had felt good about something. For a while there I thought I might become a professional musician one day.

By the time I left high school, I had no grades to speak of, extremely low self-esteem, and no direction in life. The one thing that I enjoyed was just getting drunk, stoned, and generally fucked up on drugs with friends. At least here you could enjoy a sense of connection and a distraction from everything. Finally, I felt good, at least for a little while.

The big change happened when I decided to do something radical. Life in a small town in Scotland was not going well for me so far. So I made a snap decision to go traveling to Australia. I said I would go away for a month and I stayed away for 3 years.

Here I got my first inspiration to take a positive step forward in my life. Everyone was so fit and healthy here and I was still a skinny fat dorky kid (side note, I’m still dorky). I knew something needed to change, I was sick and tired of feeling inadequate next to other men and insecure around women.

The beginning of my transformation

So I got into shape. I bought a gym membership and hired a Personal Trainer. He taught me how to train from the ground up and I was starting at the very bottom. We organized my diet and I dedicated myself to learning as much as I could about losing fat and gaining muscle. After just a few months, the change was massive! I was just starting my fitness journey, but I was hooked and it had now become a permanent fixture in my life. I can't emphasize enough how much I changed as a person once I started training regularly and started to like my body more.

“I can't emphasize enough how much I changed as a person once I started training regularly and started to like my body more.” 

Everyone is different, but for me being flabby and out of shape was a big source of negative self-esteem, and now I liked what I saw in the mirror.

You can say it doesn’t matter what you look like and on some levels that’s true. However, there is no denying that people do act differently around you when you take care of yourself. To start with, girls were a lot more interested in me and other men automatically gave me more respect. Now, this is superficial, true, but to say it's not important at all, is to just ignore part of our animal nature.

Getting fit changed my life, gave me control, and grew my self-respect.

After 4 years of training, I decided to become a Personal Trainer, I wanted to start helping other people to make a big change in their life also. I wanted to show people that if I could turn it around and it get fit and strong then they could too.

But…… just being in good shape wasn’t going to be enough to fix this brain.

I might have gotten into good shape, but I wasn't necessarily healthy. I was pretty unhealthy. I never did kick that same habit of getting super-duper fucked up on drugs and alcohol every weekend and sometimes throughout the week too. Sleep was just something I would squeeze in when I could and I could happily run on multiple coffees every day, strong ones, with plenty of extra espresso shots in them.

“I might have gotten into good shape, but I wasn't necessarily healthy”

So…. as a result, each week was still a struggle. There was still Anxiety….. lots of it. Bunches and bunches of it. It was horrible sometimes.

So I was “fit” and even training people - which was still a big improvement from where I started - but I was far from good. High anxiety and depression were still big problems. I struggled to function at usual everyday life stuff. My ADHD mind couldn’t let me just sit still without feeling extreme agitation and frustration. I would often sit down to write an email and by the time I had finished my heart would be pounding in my chest, I would have cold sweat dripping down my side and I would need a beer to unwind. That was just an email.

Realizing why being fit is not enough

Now I’m not telling you all this to feel sorry for me, so please don’t feel bad. I just want to set the stage for understanding where I was within myself. Depressed, high anxiety struggles to function and deals with my problems with substance abuse. All these things are pretty tightly intertwined and make each other worse.

So this is when Practising Yoga and meditation came into my life. I knew my life was in desperate need of a shake-up and so I was looking for something to help me.

I won’t pretend that I just started yoga and meditation and suddenly I was just all better, but it was the key thing that started to change. I had had no idea before, that being anxious was a symptom of your nervous system just being on overdrive the whole time. I had left the fight or flight button switched permanently on. So I was going haywire.

Yoga, Meditation, eating well, and everything in between

Before I move on, for anyone reading this, If you struggle with any of these same problems of anxiety, depression, or substance abuse, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to get professional medical help and I will link to some resources down below. There is no shame in it and it was a crucial part of my progress. Meditation and Yoga taught me to relax my nervous system, calm my mind and generally just slow the fuck down.

“Meditation and Yoga taught me to relax my nervous system, calm my mind and generally just slow the fuck down. “

I won’t bullshit you, it wasn’t a quick fix. It took a few years, lots of off-and-on practice, help from counselors, and even a short stint on antidepressants before I was finally more in control of my emotions and my mind. I will say, however, that doing daily yoga became the grounding rock I needed.

I had a slight stigma against yoga when I was younger. It had seemed to be too much woo-woo for me to get into. Chakras, spirit energy, and Sanskrit chanting were all just a bit much, to begin with. It turned me off as I found it all pretty cringe. My father says this is probably due to my Scottish borders Presbyterian upbringing. Whatever that means. But the truth is, Yoga can be whatever you want it to be, If all you ever do is focus on moving and breathing then that is amazing.

To be honest, I still can’t speak to the other aspects of yoga very much, I don’t know if chakras are a thing, but I also don't see any harm in using these as a way to understand or visualize where our bodies store tension and stress. This does help because what I can speak to the efficacy of is how learning how to tune into your body, allows you to release tension and pain from those areas. In yoga we use our breath to explore our body, we inhale deeply and send our breath throughout our body, finding new space and finding new activation. You must be fully present and aware to let things go and release. Yoga is never passive. It is always active, even in the resting postures.

Learning yoga, getting control of my anxiety, and generally, haywire personality was a challenge. Change is always hard, at least at first. but the challenge is what allows us to grow and develop.

I have continued to add other great tools to my tool kit along the way also. Coldwater therapy made famous by the legendary Wim Hoff has also been great for reducing the body's inflammation and relaxing the nervous system down, and it has become a morning ritual of mine to have a 3 minute cold shower before I start the day.

Learning what foods actively aggravate or inflame me more and cutting them from my diet also helped my depression and ADHD, I had no idea how much some foods could affect these things. Bit by bit I have identified the problems in my life after years of struggle and confusion, and now I can happily say that I am in the best place I’ve ever been. Sure, life is always going to be a struggle from time to time, but that is just life.

My true passion now is to help guide others through their journeys and show other people how to overcome these same obstacles.