Where Do Babies Come From?

It’s no secret that I’m in good shape, but somehow, that fact always seems to work its way into conversation. Maybe it’s after someone jokes about eating too much Halloween candy and says, “What are you worried about? You don’t need to lose weight,” or when a tipsy guest at a pool party finally blurts out, “Damn, you’re jacked!” Either way, people always seem compelled to comment on my body.

The only thing I can equate it to is pregnancy. For whatever reason, when someone’s pregnant, everyone suddenly feels licensed to comment on how they look: “Wow, you look so pregnant!” or “You look great for eight months!”
But here’s the difference: no one wonders how you came to look so pregnant. Everyone, however, wants to know what you did to become so fit. And that’s usually the follow-up question: “See, I wanna look like that—what do you do?”

It sounds innocent enough, but honestly, it drives me crazy. Not because I’m an introvert who hates small talk—though I am—but because everyone who asks wants the results, not the reality. They’re looking for the cheat code, the hack, the shortcut. They think, If I just know the secret, I’ll look like that too.

But there is no secret. There’s no hack, no quick fix, no surface-level solution. What you see is the result of consistency, discipline, and work—day in and day out. It’s not a routine; it’s a lifestyle. It’s tracking calories, prioritizing protein, drinking enough water, getting quality sleep, and showing up. It’s logging every exercise, every rep, every set. It’s training not for 45 minutes or an hour, but until the work feels complete—whether that takes 60 minutes or two hours.

You don’t fit workouts into your life—you fit your life around your workouts. And you can’t do it because you “want to lose 30 pounds in two months.” You do it because you’re tired of saying, “I’ll start tomorrow.”

Until you understand that, it doesn’t matter whether I prefer free weights or machines, cardio or intervals. Because the truth is, it’s not about the program—it’s about the mindset.

This is called progressive overload, not instant overload, for a reason. It’s hard. It takes time. And if you somehow manage to “get shredded” in two months, you’ll end up fatigued, malnourished, and right back where you started.
So next time you see someone who’s fit and feel tempted to ask what they do, pause first. Think about what you do to look the way you do. Because if you aren’t honest with yourself first, that conversation is a waste of everyone’s time.

No one was born fit or shredded. Every one of us started by looking at someone else and wondering, What do they do? But we all eventually learn that the answer lies not in the workout, but in the moment—the moment we decided to stop living the way we were and start getting comfortable with discomfort.
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So instead of asking me what I do, ask me how I got here. How I learned to be comfortable being uncomfortable. That’s a conversation worth having. Because ultimately, we all know how to get stronger— just like we all know how to get pregnant.

-Christine Ravesi-Weinstein, NASM-CPT