Getting Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable
I’ve said before that I think we do a lot wrong in the Marine Corps when it comes to training. But even with doing so much wrong, it’s rather amazing the results we tend to produce. I think the simple answer is that, on average, we are much more comfortable with being uncomfortable than the average person.
I get a lot of questions about diet, and I honestly try to avoid them when I’m not dealing with a client. Clients who I’m working with tend to do what I say and see results. Friends and family typically just want a cheat code. I was in the supermarket the other day in a tank top. As I was shopping, a man approached me and asked me if I had any advice for getting lean. This took me by surprise because I was bulking at the time and feeling rather heavy and bloated. I think the combination of my storing almost no fat on my arms and the fact that I have a rather large military symbol on my shoulder made him think I must at least have some secrets to share. I told him that it’s pretty simple, but not easy. You have to consume fewer calories than you burn. He looked at me with such skepticism that I’m pretty sure he thought I was purposefully hiding something from him. I don’t remember his exact words, but his response was something like “Come on, man. You are in the military, you must know some secret.” I actually laughed at this, because most of the Marines I knew on active duty ate absolute garbage, drank like fish, and simply did so much work/training/running/lifting that they counterbalanced their horrific diets. The “secret” was that they just expended so many calories that their diet didn’t matter that much in terms of weight gain (although health is a different matter). If you got fatter than you wanted, you simply restricted your calories and were hungry for a while. No big deal.
I also tend to get asked a lot about how Marines get so jacked. Once again, people are generally looking for the cheat code on how to build muscle. In practice, Marines do all the same stuff everyone else does when they’re trying to get big and strong. They lift weights and they do calisthenics. In fact, most of the really jacked guys do their own thing in their time off. It certainly isn’t the Marine Corps or Unit Physical Training that is getting them really jacked.
So what is it then? Why are Marines known for being so fit? I think the answer actually does lie in our training. As I said, the training itself is probably counterproductive to a lot of our goals. Most Unit PT just adds some extra calisthenics that are generally easy for the Marines who work out on their own. I was actually in the worst shape of my adult life when I was doing Unit PT every day at The Basic School. It was just added junk volume and stress that my body didn’t need. The workouts were haphazard and, since every one of them was a competition, you couldn’t push yourself on your off time for fear that you’d be useless the next day. What the Marine Corps training taught us, however, was to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. You get so used to being exhausted, too cold, too hot, wet, in pain, and just generally uncomfortable that you learn to endure the discomfort that comes with any physical change. You push yourself harder in the gym, you ignore hunger easier, and you generally are able to embrace the necessary steps to improve yourself.
It’s important to realize, however, that this ability is nowhere near exclusive to the Marines or the military in general. Anyone can become comfortable with being uncomfortable, and the biggest part is simply acknowledging that discomfort is often a good thing. Most of the people who I know who struggle with dieting are people who are constantly trying to outsmart their diet. They want to lose weight without actually being hungry and uncomfortable. There are ways to make it slightly easier, but if you’re consuming less calories than you are burning, hunger is usually a big part of it. That’s ok. Let hunger be your friend. Similarly, a lot of guys who struggle with fitness are looking for the easy way out. There are, once again, ways to make progress easier, but once you really embrace the effort and soreness, those feelings no longer really bother you.