The Long Run: How I Made Fitness a Lifestyle (For Real) - Ft Coach Nate
I know you’ve heard me say it a hundred times—fitness as a lifestyle.
You’ve heard it in workouts. You’ve heard it in our coaching. You’ve probably heard it in your head when you’re about to skip training and you suddenly remember my voice like an unwanted notification: “fitness as a Lifestyle, not a cage!”
So let me do something different.
Walk with me. Let me show you how I made it true for me—not in a “perfect transformation montage” way… but in the real-life way. The messy way. The “highs and lows” way. The way someone somewhere is going through right now.
When movement used to be automatic
I grew up in sports: hockey, boardercross, competitive snowboarding, skiing—movement was just… life. There was structure. There were coaches. There was built-in accountability.
Then adult life happened.
Full-time work happened. Stress happened. Responsibility happened. And slowly, that built-in system disappeared. I went from skiing five times a week to being lucky if I got out twice.
If you’ve ever gone from an active life to a busy life, you already know what comes next:
Your fitness drops.
Your performance drops.
Recovery takes longer.
And you start feeling bad about yourself… which makes you move even less.
That’s the cycle.
The low point: losing the outlet, losing myself
At my heaviest, I was around 230 pounds.
I ate whatever was easiest. I slept poorly. I was active in the way most adults are active: walking aisles, carrying life, calling it “enough.”
And without a physical outlet, my mind didn’t calm down—it sped up. I struggled with depression, which made me less active, which made me feel worse, which made me even less active.
Here’s what I wish someone told me earlier:
Feeling mentally heavy when your body stops moving isn’t “weakness.” It’s human.
There’s strong research showing exercise can reduce depressive symptoms, and a major evidence review published in The BMJ (2024) found exercise is an effective treatment for depression—highlighting walking/jogging, strength training, and yoga among the most effective options. (BMJ)
I didn’t know the research then.
I just knew I didn’t feel like myself.
So I told myself a lie that sounds like protection but actually keeps you stuck:
“Fitness isn’t that important to me.”
Motivation is overrated. Momentum is everything.
Eventually, I realized motivation is misunderstood.
I think of it like Newton’s first law: an object at rest stays at rest; an object in motion stays in motion.
I was at rest.
And when rest becomes your normal, starting feels like dragging a car uphill with a rope. So you wait for motivation… and you wait… and you wait…
What I needed wasn’t motivation.
I needed momentum.
This part matters because people think consistency is supposed to feel easy quickly. It’s not. Habit formation takes time.
One well-known habit study (Lally et al., 2010) found habits can take weeks to months to become more automatic—often cited around 66 days on average, with big variation person to person. (Wiley Online Library)
That means if you’re on day 12 thinking, “Why isn’t this who I am yet?”
Relax. You’re not broken. You’re early.
I worked hard… but I wasn’t progressing
When I finally decided fitness mattered, I did what a lot of people do:
I went all-in with zero structure.
I biked absurd distances because I thought “more” meant better.
I ran until my shins were wrecked.
I went to the gym and did random high-rep stuff because it “felt productive.”
I was working hard, but I wasn’t improving.
Because hard work isn’t the same as smart work.
Progress needs a system:
a plan you can repeat
progression you can track
recovery you respect
and goals that make sense for your life
This is also why so many people start and disappear—not because they don’t care, but because they’re relying on motivation and random workouts.
In fact, research on fitness clubs notes dropout/withdrawal rates around 40–65% within the first six months. (PMC)
So if you’ve ever felt like “I can’t stick to anything,” you’re not alone. The environment is literally designed to sell intensity—not sustainability.
The turning point: building a system that fit my life
My real shift happened when I stopped asking:
“How do I get motivated?”
…and started asking:
“How do I make this easier to repeat?”
That meant reducing friction:
choosing training times that worked with my schedule
keeping sessions realistic instead of heroic
building a plan around my goals (fat loss, strength, endurance)
tracking progress so I could see the truth—even when I didn’t feel it
This is where the whole “fitness as a lifestyle” thing became real. Not because I became a different person overnight… but because I built a routine that didn’t collapse the moment life got busy.
And that’s honestly the core of what we do at CraftFit.
CraftFit’s philosophy is to turn evidence into action you can actually live with—combining strength and cardiovascular fitness, joint-friendly progression, recovery rituals, and plans that scale to real schedules (from three 30-minute sessions to six 60-minute sessions).
Because “perfect” doesn’t last.
Repeatable lasts.
The CraftFit piece: structure that keeps you in motion
One of the biggest reasons people fall off is they’re guessing:
guessing what to train
guessing if it’s working
guessing how hard to push
guessing when to rest
CraftFit removes the guesswork.
We start by understanding your lifestyle and your “why”—sleep, stress, schedule, and what actually drives you (mental health, confidence, energy, longevity, community).
Then we use a clear framework:
choose a schedule you can live with (3, 4, or 5 days)
follow a phased plan that builds you up safely over time (On-Ramp → Tissue → Hypertrophy → Intensification → Test/Deload)
progress safely (add reps first, then small load increases; most sets stop with reps still in reserve)
and adjust weekly based on real life (sleep, stress, performance)
And we don’t call it “just a session.” We treat coaching like a clinic—assessment, form correction, activation drills, and weekly recalibration so your training evolves fast, without chaos.
That’s how you stay in motion.
The high point: fitness became freedom
Over time, with discipline and patience, I went from 230 pounds to 170.