Working out is for you, not Spring Break

Strong is when you've run out of weak. Pleasure is when you've had enough pain. Success is when you've had enough failure.

If this is your first time reading the column, I don't care if you think you're fat, skinny, fit or already perfect, if you don't want to improve yourself, if you aren't willing to work hard to see gains, if you are looking for some easy advice, then this is not the place for you.

We all have our own standards, goals and benchmarks to meet, and if you want to improve yourself, regardless of the level that you're on, then it is always hard to do. This column can either be your weekly casual read or your weekly guide to building a better and healthier lifestyle. The choice is yours.

It's no question that being in good shape puts a smile on your face, but it won't last if you can't put a smile in your mind.

What does this mean? Think about how many people try to desperately lose belly fat the week before spring break by going all out at the gym and often starving themselves. The enthusiasm is great and the hard effort even better, but the undeniable fact is that most health gains we make during a short amount of time only lasts for a corresponding short amount of time.

Putting yourself through a week of shock-exercise can induce it to change but to keep that change, you need to keep up the shock. To understand this phenomenon, consider curbing your daily appetite by eating a few pieces of fruit and yogurt for basic energy and drinking large amounts of water to keep your stomach feeling full.

Sure, you'll feel good about the progress, and you might even convince yourself that you feel the fat burning away, but at the end of the day, you are starving, drained, and want nothing else but a huge meal to put you to sleep.

More often than not, we give into eating a handful of random snacks after all those painful hours. The result: your brain thinks food will be scarce and anything consumed at night replaces anything you burned throughout the day. And conversely, albeit through a much more laborious process, tiny improvements in fitness achieved through months-on-end will be life-changing. It's much like studying for a test the week before as opposed to the night before. You'll be okay for the test after an all-nighter, but a week later you won't remember a thing. Lesson learned: nothing comes easily.

As important as hard work is, it's absolutely critical to have a higher purpose, something to keep you going. If you're working out to impress someone, to fit someone else's expectations, or trying to fit in for others' acceptance, let me be the first to tell you it won't be worth it. Motivation for bettering your health rooted in something or someone else won't last because it's dependent on that other entity existing. If you can't find a true passion in exercise, at least try to find aspects that satisfy you for your own sake. If you don't have a self-driven motive, it gets so hard on a personal level that any rational person would give up.

So before we move into workouts, into diet plans, and into any sort of daily routine, if you don't have the drive then you won't be likely to continue beyond a few weeks.

My challenge to you is to sit down for 10 minutes and write all of the reasons why you want to get into the best shape of your life. Think about the intangible things that get you going. It's not just another obligation on your daily schedule; it's not just some thing you have to do as part of your college curriculum because everyone in your dorm is going. It's a lifestyle, a lifestyle that you should begin developing at a young age and keep. It's always hard to start, but I promise you it'll be worth it in the long run.

Have the courage to start and the self-control to continue. Athletes are some of the happiest and most inspiring people in the world for a reason. After years of enduring physical pain and possessing the mental capacity to push through continued suffering, sports stars (although on a more extreme scale) know the long road ahead of them and the value of personal gain that lies at the end of it.

You don't have to make the decision to become a marathon runner, and you don't have to settle on training for the triathlon, but to seize even a fraction of a professional athlete's vigor will push you through the first few months of adapting to a new routine.

Aspire to be better. It doesn't matter if you are completely new, somewhat new or well into it. A continuous exercise plan and end goal can and will help you balance not only your diet and physical beauty but also stress and hormone levels on a physiological level.

If you can start with the right approach and the right attitude, you will lean out your abs, bulk up your shoulders, slender out your legs or whatever else you want to balance out your appearance. But you, not anyone else, have to convince yourself that you're willing to put in the work for it, that your willpower is stronger than your desire to quit and that your gains tomorrow outweigh anything today.

Remember, suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret.