For a long time, fitness felt harder to me than it should have. And that’s strange to admit, because this is literally my job. I share workouts. I post meal ideas. I answer questions about training every day. From the outside, it probably looks very put together.

It didn’t feel that way on the inside.

I knew what to do. That was never the issue. I knew how to train, how to eat, how to structure a week. But knowing didn’t make it lighter. If anything, it sometimes made it heavier. There was always another option, another tweak, another way I could be doing it “better.”

When fitness is part of your identity, it follows you everywhere. Every meal feels like a decision. Every missed session feels louder than it should. Even on rest days, it doesn’t fully switch off. You’re still aware of it in the background

I’d finish a workout and immediately think about how it would look on my feed. Not in a fake way. Just automatically. Was this a good session. Would I recommend this to someone else. Should I have pushed harder since I’m supposed to know what I’m doing.

That constant layer of awareness adds weight. Not physical weight. Mental weight.

Posting tips and plans didn’t help with that. Sometimes it made it worse. When you tell other people to keep it simple, you feel pressure to live up to that yourself. When you say “this works,” you start watching your own body more closely to make sure it’s still true.

What surprised me most is that the training was never the exhausting part. The exhausting part was carrying fitness around all day in my head. Thinking about food before I was hungry. Thinking about recovery before I was tired. Thinking about progress before anything had time to happen.

Over time, what helped wasn’t a new plan or smarter programming. It was letting my own stuff be less content-worthy. Some sessions were just sessions. Some meals were just meals. Not everything needed to be reviewed, shared, or turned into a lesson.

Fitness started to feel lighter when it stopped needing to perform, even privately.

I still care. I still train. I still post. But I don’t treat every day like proof of competence anymore. The work didn’t change much. The pressure around it did.

That’s usually the part no one talks about when fitness feels hard. Especially if you’re the person who’s supposed to have it figured out.