You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Get Amazing Results

I don’t remember where I first heard this, but in fitness it rings painfully true:

Most people overestimate what can be accomplished in five months—and grossly underestimate what can be accomplished in five years.

Shannon and I hear this all the time.

When we talk with strangers or new acquaintances about fitness or physique, there’s almost always an assumption baked into the conversation:

• You must be obsessed

• You must train for hours a day

• You must track everything you eat

People are usually shocked—or skeptical—when they find out the truth.

We train less than an hour a day, about five days a week.
We don’t track macros.
We occasionally eat out.
We don’t stress over food—nothing is off limits.
And yes, we enjoy a glass or two of wine a couple nights a week.

What they fail to grasp is that this isn’t obsession.

It’s consistency, applied over decades.

This isn’t the result of a challenge, a reset, or a burst of motivation.
It’s the result of decades of staying committed to a healthy lifestyle.

And that’s where most people get tripped up.

The Myth of Perfection

Somewhere along the way, fitness got confused with perfection.

Perfect workouts.
Perfect nutrition.
Perfect consistency.
Perfect discipline.

Social media didn’t invent this idea—magazine covers were selling it long before Instagram existed—but it did pour gasoline on it. Extreme transformations, dramatic before-and-afters, and “no excuses” messaging dominate our feeds. The algorithm doesn’t reward sustainability; it rewards spectacle.

Many people internalize a version of this belief:

“If I’m not doing it to this extreme, it won’t produce great results—and it’s not worth doing.”

Perfection turns fitness into something that only works when life is calm, schedules are clear, stress is low, and motivation is high.

The moment real life shows up—work deadlines, travel, family obligations, poor sleep—the whole system collapses.

One missed workout becomes guilt.
One indulgent meal becomes failure.

If your plan requires perfection, it’s not a long-term plan.

Why Perfection Actually Holds People Back

Thirty-day challenges.
Guaranteed results or your money back.
Six weeks to a six-pack.

These strategies are optimized for speed, not sustainability.

They promise visible results now, but they require extreme focus and effort—approaches most people have no realistic chance of maintaining long-term.

Even when someone can execute perfectly, they don’t build habits that continue to return results once the challenge ends. Execution without sustainability doesn’t compound.

What actually works—though it’s far less exciting—are pretty good habits, repeated consistently over a long period of time.

That’s not flashy.
It won’t get many likes on social media.
And it wouldn’t sell a challenge.

But it works.

The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

You’ve probably heard the saying: you can’t out-train a bad diet.

It’s true.

But there’s a broader truth we need to embrace: we are an interconnected system.

Exercise, nutrition, hydration, sleep, and stress management don’t function independently. Each one sets the ceiling for the others.

Chasing perfection in one area while neglecting the rest leads to frustration. People end up working harder, adding more effort, and still scratching their heads when results don’t match the work they’re putting in.

Here’s a useful thought experiment.

If you graded yourself in these five areas, what would it look like?

Someone who earns a B across all five will consistently outperform someone with an A, two Cs, a D, and an F.

Not only will their results be better—but they’ll be far easier to sustain long-term.

That’s the difference between progress that compounds and effort that eventually collapses.

Why This Matters Over Five Years

Over a short timeline, you can cheat the system.

You can:

• Train hard on poor sleep

• Diet aggressively under high stress

• Rely on willpower to override physiology

And sometimes it works—for a while.

Over a longer timeline—say five years—those strategies always fail.

The people who look “effortlessly fit” aren’t lucky. They’ve simply learned how to keep the whole system functioning well enough, for long enough.

Their training matches their recovery.
Their nutrition matches their lifestyle.
Their effort matches their capacity.

That’s what allows small, consistent inputs to compound.

Over five years, a few bad workouts, occasional indulgences, a missed week due to sickness, or a rough season of life barely registers.

Your Challenge

Here’s my challenge to you.

Take an honest inventory of your habits and behaviors. Assess where you’re doing well and where you can improve. Give yourself a letter grade in each of the following areas:

• Exercise

• Nutrition

• Hydration

• Sleep

• Stress

Then look for the opportunities where small improvements would provide the strongest return on investment.

Pick two or three areas to focus on and work to bring them up to the standard you’ve set for yourself. This isn’t about extremes or perfection—it’s about defining what good enough looks like and sustaining it.

If you adopt a growth mindset and regularly self-assess your behaviors—always looking for small, meaningful improvements—your results will be undeniable.

This belief—that aligned inputs, applied consistently over long timelines, produce extraordinary outcomes—is the foundation of how we coach at CrossFit NorthGate.

If you want help assessing, goal-setting, and building a plan that actually works for the long haul, email [email protected]. We’ll create something sustainable—something that fits your life, not something that burns you out.

In health,
Coach Parker