I’ve been seriously working on getting lean enough to have a 6-pack since I came back from Mardi Gras 15 months ago.
A few months before that, in December 2017, I weighed in at the heaviest I’ve ever been, and my clothes hadn’t been fitting as flatteringly as they used to for quite a while. (In spite of working out a lot and getting stronger and more muscle than I’d ever had…as they say, you can’t outrun or out-exercise your fork. Unless, maybe, if you’re a high-endurance athlete.)
As I’ve written about before, fitness has become a pretty empowering, though certainly not all-encompassing part of my personal-development-with-a-disability journey. And a 6-pack was one of the aesthetics that got me started down this path…even though part of me didn’t really think it was possible for me.
I started tracking almost all my food, calories, protein, and my weight using the MyFitnessPal app – hugely helpful, and I’m extremely grateful to its creators, and even got to the point of getting a nutritional scale and taking it with me on a company trip to New York and Romania this spring. I was committed…and eating at a caloric deficit does kind of suck, so by the start of this year, I just wanted to dial it in and be done with the leaning out phase sooner rather than later.
Last summer at a pool party at my house, a close friend of mine mentioned “…since you basically have a 6-pack,” in the middle of a conversation…probably about whether I was going to have a beer or stick to my LA vodka-soda diet.
I shrugged it off. He wasn’t very into fitness, and yeah I was definitely leaner, but I hadn’t even started to see my abs yet. “Ok, yeah, lol man,” was the thought in my head.
Fast forward to earlier this spring. I was starting to see my abs and the outline of my 6-pack, but it still seemed far, far off from the “Brad Pitt in Fight Club” body goal I’d written down with Brian and Dave when I first started working with them on creating my dream life years ago.
At some point in the midst of an event at our company headquarters, Brian said to me about having a 6-pack that “you’re basically there.”
I may have thanked him for noticing the progress, but again, I mostly shrugged it off as an exaggeration.
A few weeks later, I was watching March Madness (the NCAA Basketball tournament) with another close friend of mine and mentioned to her that “Brian says I’m ‘basically there,’ but I don’t think so.”
“I think you are,” she replied.
Yet again, I discounted it as her either not knowing what she was talking about or being generous with her support.
In Bucharest last month, Brian hit on it again during an internal company training we were doing for the coaches and me. This time, he really made a point of it, me not seeing my progress, and me still not being kind enough/loving myself enough.
The last part I knew he was right about. But it really felt like he and the other coaches didn’t know what they were talking about when it came to physiques. So I started to take it in and consciously let myself celebrate and appreciate the progress more and how I felt (deep down) about myself in general, too.
But still, a 6-pack? Not yet.
It wasn’t until I saw the most shredded friend I have a few days ago that I started to truly believe in the level of my own progress others were seeing.
When the topic turned to fitness and he mentioned how cut my arms are (that part, at least, I could see clearly), we got on to talking about abs, all the feedback I’ve gotten that seems a bit generous, and the fact that I’m a little frustrated that the scale was reading my lowest weight, like ever, and the legit 6-pack feels so far away still.
Then, he asked to see them.
Immediately, he and a female friend of his burst into laughter.
“Bro, are you kidding me? You’re ridiculously shredded. You’ve got a 6-pack. Do not lose any more weight,” was along the lines of what he said.
Now, he pointed out, it’s just about developing the 6-pack further since I have really high goals, but the abs are there way more than I’m giving myself credit for.
Ok, this guy definitely knows what he’s talking about. Cool!
On my way home, I relayed the interaction to another friend and how it took at least four different people for me to believe in my own progress.
His reply, “Yeah, I remember a while back you telling me you don’t have abs yet, and I just thought ‘Ok, Mike, whatever you say.’ ”
And that hit me even harder with just how much I discount my own progress and don’t see it like others do.
It’s actually very common in personal development for others to see your progress and/or start responding to you differently before you realize or believe you’ve changed. We see it almost constantly with clients at FEARLESS.
And this whole abs thing almost perfectly mirrors my progress on my confidence and connection skills. Women started responding to me better and I started having a better dating life at a MUCH faster rate than I felt I was really changing. People in general just started responding to me differently and I was making more things happen, and it sometimes felt like it all came out of nowhere. And positive feedback I get about growth when I’m in the student role – or just off-handedly from coaches and our models – I sometimes have a lot of trouble believing.
It’s just like, wow, the blind spots, being hard on myself, and not giving myself enough credit. In most areas of life. This experience really hits that home.
It’s good that happened, too, because this cutting (weight loss) phase really did need to end – I’d started getting really light-headed and feeling straight anemic the last week I’d been eating at a deficit, and I’m fairly certain that was, in fact, my body saying “Bro, we can’t keep losing weight. Feed me more now!!” So my lack of identifying where I was at was actually hurting my health at this point.
So as you’re working on yourself or any skill set and you don’t think you’re progressing much or you’re getting feedback that you don’t believe, just remember how limiting, and even destructive, our blind spots around our own progress and success can be.
