It has been an interesting 24 hours in terms of my fitness
life. I had this nagging feeling all day
yesterday like I just did NOT want to go to the gym. This is a very weird feeling for me considering
mostly not going to the gym is not an option for me. BUT for some crazy reason I couldn’t really
put my finger on last night I just couldn’t stomach the thought of walking into
the gym. The more I thought about it, I
guess the more I realized that I just couldn’t stand to see all “those”
people. That is ultimately just made me
sick to my stomach to have to try and put on a smile and not let the world
around me affect me.
It’s no secret that lately I’ve been struggling with food.
In fact if I’m completely honest I am pretty certain that in the last month
there hasn’t been a single day where I haven’t eaten an excessive amount of
food, some days even bordering on the binging category. This has left me mentally struggling with my
body image issues. This has left me
feeling less than good about myself. I put on a brave face but ultimately I
worry that at some point all the binging is going to catch up with me on the
scale. I have teetered into a land that
I hate which is one where my decisions are being made out of self-loathe rather
than self-love. I know there is a big
difference in my life when those lines are crossed.
Going to the old gym, The Edge, can ultimately prove a
recipe for disaster when I am wavering on my resolve and self-esteem. Seeing all the body builders and generally
pretty bitchy girls can just be too much for me to handle. Sure, some of them might be lovely and nice
underneath the vain exterior and it’s not fair for me to lump judge them all,
but at some point I have to do what is best for me and my mental health. I think that is getting away from that
environment. I am sure I don’t realize
how much it affects me until I am without it.
Yesterday was the first day where I really really was dreading going
there so much that I decided not to.
Yup, I decided to go home and run outside instead because ultimately I
couldn’t handle the thought of dealing with all of those outside forces
yesterday.
I just can no longer handle the hyper-perfect world of the competitive
image driven gym. It makes me insane. I
just want to walk into a gym and not feel judged. I want to feel good about
myself. I want to work out for me, to
better myself, and feel good about my progress.
I don’t need anyone else bringing me down. It’s just not good for me. It takes away my accomplishments simply being
in that environment. Clearly yesterday I
ended up in a fucked up mental space by the end of the day.
So I did in fact decide to go home and run. This was a good and bad decision all at
once. It was hot. Like 80 something
degrees here. I countered that clearly I
need to run in 80 something degree weather for you know Maui and all. I thought this would be a swell idea. It wasn’t.
This is the first day that my body tried to endure this heat and it did
not like it. Typically I like running in the heat honestly. But it’s that whole going from zero to HOT
without the proper build up that kind of blew things into crazy land.
My run last night was one of the most humbling runs I have
done in a long time. I thought Saturday’s
run was humbling… eek… it had nothing on last night’s attempt at a run. I say attempt because it was eye opening to
say the least. I was tired. I guess,
after work, after mentally kind of being in a funk, and then to just go for a
run in the heat and apparently dehydrated was not a good thing. I actually felt my stomach side cramp which
hasn’t happened in forever. I felt my
body want to slow down. I wanted to quit so bad. I did in fact slow down. And all I could manage was a 4.15 mile
run. And it took me like 43
minutes. It was awful. More than the
time, it was how I felt. I felt horrible.
I felt like I was going to die and it made me feel like I was incapable
of running.
Two bad runs in a row and my mind starts to doubt my
ability. I felt so awful about last night’s
run that immediately after running I decided that I perhaps should wake up
early this morning and run at least 4 miles before work just to redeem myself
so I feel better about running as a whole.
My run felt that bad. And to make
matters worse, I was beating myself up because I only did about 43 minutes of
exercise, 450 calories burned and that was it. I did nothing else
yesterday. This unto itself is not
really horrible, but for me it seems like a cop out. But I tried to forgive myself. I really did
try to not be too hard on myself.
I tried to refocus myself and my energies and think of the
positive. The positive being that
yesterday was the first day in a very long time that I can remember that I
actually recorded an entire days’ worth of food. Yup, I went back to
myfitnesspal and entered my food. For good or bad, ugly or not, I entered
everything. And when I say ugly I mean everything I ate yesterday was a processed
piece of crap. But I don’t care. It was a start. I actually recorded my food and finished with
around 1,500 calories for the day. This is great for me. This is totally acceptable and I felt so much
better. In control having actually stuck to some semblance of a reasonable
amount of food. No late night binges. No
over the top food. And that is the
positive take away from yesterday. Back to the start, back to recording just 1
day of food. Trying to get it back under
control again.
Perhaps my take away from my run too was the fact that my
legs felt like led weights and it immediately became clear that if I could
freaking lose 10-15 pounds this whole running thing would feel easier and
breezier and I’d certainly be lighter on my feet. So despite the horrific exercise I will
declare yesterday an overall win.
This morning I woke up around 6 or 6:30 and thought about
running. I even laid out running clothes.
But as I secretly suspected I couldn’t force myself out of bed to actually run.
I will pretty much choose sleep over exercise in the mornings on most occasions. Plus I blame my dogs, they were providing
some very good snuggles this morning and I couldn’t leave them. So I did not run this morning. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I
needed a “redeem” myself run. I needed something to make me feel good about
running again. So I did something completely
unprecedented for me. Something I have never EVER done. I changed into my workout clothes before
lunch, at noon, and drove myself to a nearby park, and decided that I was going
to go for a lunchtime run. What??? Yup.
I can’t run tonight because I have gym plans but I desperately needed a vote of
confidence in the whole running department and the only way to get it is to
just go out and do it.
So I forgot to bring my Garmin GPS run watch. I just had my heart rate monitor which doesn’t
tell me distance while running. But that is not an excuse not to run. I had my
phone and I used a run app, which clearly will work. I just can’t look down at
my wrist every second to see where I’m at and instead had to rely on intuition
to direct my pace. I used the app and
ultimately discovered that when all was said and done I had ran 5 miles, right
around 50 minutes so clearly intuitively I was doing my 10 minute mile pace. This
made me feel much better. My run last
night was brutal and I couldn’t keep that pace.
But the most important part about today’s lunch run was that I was able
to actually run and at some point feel my comfort return. It wasn’t the easiest
run of my life, but it wasn’t the worst either. It was comfortable and
consistent and I felt okay.
I felt okay enough that I do feel redeemed from last night’s
debacle. It was hard to run without my
watch on my wrist, I didn’t like that. But I still ran 5 miles and that made me
feel a whole hell of a lot better. So 5
miles are already in the book for today.
So anything really is possible if you want it bad enough. I figured out
a way to get in a run today even while at work.
So yes my friends I changed into workout clothes at noon and ran for 50
minutes on my lunch and now am sitting in my stinky workout clothes in my
office. It is a very good thing I have a
very flexible work. Come on, I work for construction workers in a
construction office that is primarily a dirty messy place and mostly I am completely
alone all the time. It’s all good. But I
do stink!
So back to that whole gym thing. I still can’t stomach the thought of going to
Edge. For whatever reason a switch has been flipped in my head and I just don’t
want to be there anymore. I truly
believe it is a bad environment for me and my mental well-being. I went all last week and I was fine, kind
of. I was able to do my workouts and
such but ultimately it just pissed me off.
I complained to Amanda and she told me to just come to her gym. She said she’d let me work out there. In fact she just texted me and wants me to
take a class at 5:30. I said sure because
I have already done my run for the day.
So I am going to take a class from 5:30-6:00 and then I am going to do
leg day at Amanda’s gym. It is much
smaller but much calmer and more real.
Real people. Not crazy body building fitness people. Just your average normal human beings looking
to improve the quality of their lives.
This is what my gym used to be and what I miss. So tonight I am going to go to Amanda’s gym
instead. Because I just can’t go to Edge tonight either. It just feels too yucky. Not sure if this feeling will ever pass. This might be proof that it’s time to call it
quits, right?
Anyhow. That is what
I am up to. I do feel relief having run
5 miles today already. I feel like breaking things up into different parts will
work out nicely. And it wasn’t so awful, like perhaps on some days this summer
I could possibly get in some lunchtime runs at that park. Anything in the 3-6 mile range would be
possible. I could steal away 30-60
minutes for a run depending on the day. Perks of having a job you love with
lots of freedom and flexibility. One of
the reasons why I am willing to accept less than ideal pay or benefits. There are other perks that come with it.
I also feel like I am making up for my lack of a totally awesome
workout yesterday. Since I’ve already
burned 515 calories today. That means after tonight it’s going to be a good
day. I have a nice big workout going to go down tonight too. I still feel pretty good from my run so I might
not even need to do a real warm up tonight before class but we will see.
Anyway, I really should get back to work now.
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