It Was Never About My Body

I used to think this was about my body.

When I was younger, I trained to get the body I wanted. I got close. I’m not sure I ever got the “dream body” — and honestly, that dream was always relative to wherever my head was at the time. Then I found out I had thyroid issues, and it became about fixing that. I learned almost everything I know from that season.

But I went in wanting to be perfect. Because I believed if I could just be perfect, I could cure myself. If I could just be perfect, I could fix it.

And for a while, I was. There were ups and downs, but I saw the benefits, and I learned a lot about balance.

And then somewhere, I lost it.

It’s hard to explain. Maybe I was young. Maybe those were lessons I had to learn. But here’s what became clear: the perfect version was never going to last. Because life doesn’t run on perfect. There’s always a break. A hard week. A pause.

Anything built on a perfect streak is built to fall apart — because life will always come and break the streak.

So I stopped chasing perfect

I started doing the best I can. And I mean the actual best I can that day — not perfect. It’s the opposite of perfect. It’s unlearning perfect. Just doing what I can.

And that’s when everything changed.

The more I did the best I could — messy, imperfect, whatever the day allowed — the more progress I made. And the more joy I found in it. Where before it was a constant state of anxiety just to get myself to do anything, now there’s something steady underneath it.

Here’s what I’ve learned about progress: it ebbs and flows. Always. Some days I get a ton done and it feels like nothing moved. Some days I barely do anything and it turns out to be a huge leap.

So it’s not really about the great days or the crappy days. It’s about the foundation of the day. Every day — motivated or not — you just choose to take whatever small step you can.

And the key is figuring out what that small step actually is.

The small step is the whole thing

We’ve been taught the first step takes some immense effort — that to move toward a goal you have to summon all of this.

But it’s the opposite.

The small, tiny steps you’re actually okay with are the ones with the most power. Because you’ll come back to them. And when you come back and repeat them, there’s a reward in it — one you want to feel more of. You start to want to come back.

That’s the loop. Small step. Reward. Come back.

And underneath it, faith — the quiet faith that if you keep doing this, the results will come. And here’s the part that matters most: that faith can be pointed at anything.

Because the way you do one thing is how you do everything.

It was never really about fitness

I’ve watched this work in every part of my life. My fitness. My nutrition. My business. My lifelong effort to get more organized. All of it moves the same way — ebb and flow, small steps, coming back.

And when my approach to one goal was all-or-nothing, no balance? None of my goals survived it. Not one.

So in the end, this was never really about fitness.

It’s about the whole approach. To the body. To the work. To the life.

I want to feel good in my body for the rest of my life. For me that means energy, strength, feeling agile and mobile — and joy. Deep-seated joy, and the room to do the things that bring it out. That’s the goal. Not a look I hold for three weeks. A way of living I get to keep.

So if you’ve been circling back to this for years — if you’ve lost it and found it and lost it again — I want you to hear the thing it took me a long time to learn.

It’s not you. It’s the approach.

You don’t start over. You continue.

It’s not you. It’s the approach.

— Gwen

Strong. Steady. Sustainable.