Truth #9 – Fitness is a long-term investment.

In Habakkuk 3:19a-c (NIV), the prophet said:

The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes me feel like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.

We must always consider fitness — the neuromuscular, cardiopulmonary, and metabolic conditioning that results from a consistent exercise regimen — to be a long-term investment in our future. We’re being good stewards of the mortal bodies God has given us, so we can be strong, feel swift like a deer’s feet, and reach the great heights.

However, that doesn’t necessarily happen instantly.

Like a long-term financial investment, sometimes you don’t see any gains in the short-term. If I put money away in a simple bond, I shouldn’t be bothered by its lack of results before it matures. If I bail out early in frustration, I’ve defeated the purpose of the investment. Likewise, when we fail to see results as quickly as we’d like in our fitness, we can’t quit.

If we are frustrated, it’s an indication of something being wrong with our mindset rather than something being wrong with our fitness. We’re likely losing sight of our healthy goal (see Truth #6). Many people might have greater success if they just stopped quitting due to unhealthy goals not being met.

On the other hand, sometimes we do see short-term gains on our long-term investment. We see a little weight loss, a little muscle tone, or an increased energy level. We feel happy to see progress, which is fine so long as we don’t get so caught up in our excitement that we begin to crave or need to see such progress. After all, a well-performing mutual fund still has ups and downs — there’s no harm in enjoying the ups if the downs don’t devastate us.

However, we must still keep in mind the term on this investment. If we cash out early because we’re satisfied with our gains so far, we’re robbing our future self’s riches by stealing a few pennies today. Resist the urge to “quit while you’re ahead”— that’s a short-term mindset and is poison to a real lifestyle change (see Truth #5).

If we don’t bail out in frustration or cash out in impatient greed, we can enjoy what gains we do make while they accumulate with compound interest.

It’s ridiculous how much you can gain out of these long-term investments of small but regular amounts of mental and physical discipline over time. If you can name it, it likely benefits from a long-term lifestyle of fitness. And I’m not talking about shallow stuff like aesthetics. I mean quality (and quantity) of life. It seems like every day another study comes out linking fitness to improved life.

Fitness reduces stress along with risk for Alzheimer’s, dementia, diabetes, many cancers, erectile dysfunction, and the number one killer of Americans: heart disease.

Fitness increases longevity, libido, synaptic efficiency, and emotional stability.

Fitness has been linked to improved cognitive function, sexual satisfaction, mood, and hormonal balance.

Talk about compound interest! But these results come over time, resulting from a healthy lifestyle of stewarding what God has created (see Truth #4) one day at a time (see Truth #8). Fitness is a long-term investment.

Originally posted 2016-02-26 08:00:28.