Motivation Monday: Frame Yourself as an Athlete

How your “frame” can redefine your identify, your purpose, and the course of your weight loss journey.

This week’s Motivation Monday brought to you by J.T. Matherly. (Some explicit content ahead.)

Frank Zappa was no stranger to controversy and criticism during his storied career as a musician and composer. His later compositions and forays into modern orchestral music drew controversy in the age-old debate over what constitutes “real” music. In his autobiography, “The Real Frank Zappa Book,” he opined on this subject, stating (emphasis his):

The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts, figuratively–because, without this humble appliance, you can’t know where The Art stops and The Real World begins.

You have to put a ‘box’ around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?

If John Cage, for instance, says, “I’m putting a contact microphone on my throat, and I’m going to drink carrot juice, and that’s my composition,” then his gurgling qualifies as his composition because he put a frame around it and said so. “Take it or leave it, I now will this to be music.” After that it’s a matter of taste. Without the frame-as-announced, it’s a guy swallowing carrot juice.

So, what does this exactly have to do with weight loss?

Weight loss requires consistent effort, a long-term game plan, mindfulness of action and intent, and a couple different flavors of perseverance and fortitude. It’s an art or craft on some level, individually tailored to be sure, but the success mostly manifests as changes in diet and exercise. The NWCR reveals that in their self-reported population of successful weight losers, 98% of all people modified their diets and 94% increased physical activity. Over a hundred episodes of Tips of the Scale have shown that there’s more than one way to skin a cat in either arena: vegan, paleo, vegetarian, ketogenic or just plain calorie-controlled diets in conjunction with walking, running, Zumba, yoga, pilates, weight training, or other forms of physical activity are literally the cornerstones of long-term weight loss success.

During my recent return episode I shared an experience that was a turning point in my fitness and weight loss process. About a year into losing weight, and after making some half-assed attempts to do the powerlifts on my own, I started looking around for legit coaching. In June of 2011 I walked into CrossFit Goodland (http://santabarbarastrength.com/) after emailing the owner and head coach, Nick Conn, about an Olympic weight lifting seminar they were hosting with coach Matt Major (https://www.facebook.com/majorathletics). While I didn’t walk away with a personal love for Olympic lifting, I remember talking to Nick, self-deprecatingly, about my almost-non existent athletic background before the first seminar. He looked me dead in the eye and said:

It took awhile for the gravity of those words to set in, but once it did, there was a new frame around what I was trying to do. He was right. From that moment on, I was an athlete. All the conditions were right:

TL;DR: For long-term success, consider re-framing your exercise goals. Train and be an athlete. And, in Nick’s words, “Make ridiculous goals and destroy them. If you can do it in the gym, you can apply this skill to any avenue in life and your potential is limitless.”