After years of having children, working on a pressure-filled career in the I.T. industry which involves sitting on my backside the entire day, and having a social life that pretty much involved frequent drinking, over-eating and late-night partying, you can say that I'm one of those modern-day women that won't ever grace a cover of a magazine -- fat, overweight, sedentary, stressed.
Those days, I sometimes caught myself at the mirror and asked myself: where had my youth gone? Where's the active girl who played basketball in college? Where's the bubbly girl that can party till past midnight and be hard at work the next day? Where's the slim person who can eat whatever's on the table and get away with it? Where is that young lass who can smile and be happy in the midst of the smallest or biggest of adversities? Where in the world is she?
I was entering my middle-age, with pains and aches in my joints, and diagnosed with mild scoliosis at that. I was prone to coughs and colds with the slightest breeze, constantly felt weak and exhausted, and have tons of clothes in my closet that no longer fit. I thought I was ugly, chubby, wimpy, and I was miserable.
Then I took up aerobics classes at the gym. I initially paid for one session, and stayed at the back of the class. I was so conscious of how roly-poly I must look to the others in the class, and how I couldn't possibly keep up after a decade of inactivity and of letting myself go. I was so out of shape that I was scared I'd pass out 10 minutes into the session. I had to cheat. Instead of 16 repetitions, I did 8, counting twice before raising my legs or bending my arms. I was dazed, out of breathe, and in pain well before the class even went down for floor execises.
But I welcomed the pain and the difficulties of that first ever aerobic class. For me the important thing then was to drop some sweat, which I never experienced anymore for more than a decade of my inactive lifestyle. And when that aerobics class session ended, I was fiercely glad I survived. Fiercely glad because, I really thought I was going to die. Really.
Thus began my journey to take back what was once mine -- my youth, my health, my strength, my confidence, and my beauty...
The lessons I learned initially:
- Recognize the need to change (or embrace your own overweight, unattractive, miserable self)
- Commit to change (or gather all of your separate, doubting and dissenting selves into one team and have all of them agree to that one goal of getting fit)
- Actually start changing (or concretize your plan by enrolling in an aerobic class, gym class, dance class, go running, start walking, eat healthy or whatever you planned)
- Be unfazed by the difficulties (it looks bad at first but remember that when you're down, there's no way to go but up)
- Allow yourself a glimmer of hope (the best part of these darkest days of change)
- Treat every drop of sweat as a moment of triumph! (No, really, overdo this part of it. This is the part that will keep you going!)
More of my journey back to healthy in later posts. Thank you for reading!
Related Posts:
My Fitness Adventure - Why I Run
0 comments:
Post a Comment