Do you have that one thing, one habit that you have to do on a regular basis in order to keep your life together? I noticed in the last two weeks that I do and it was an unexpected one – working out. Couldn’t my one habit have been resting?!
I was never the most athletic person in the world. I hated group sports, did not excel in PE but I did enjoy doing pilates by myself, I had a zumba phase and I also had a running phase until one day I hurt my foot. I never had a regular workout schedule and even when I tried to have one, I would give up soon.
In September I had issues with my knees and had to go to physical therapy and parallel to it I also started to do the Caroline Girvan’s Epic I program. This was the first time that I started working out with weights and it was the first workout program I did in its entirety. I felt so proud for completing it, that I had a whole blog post about Hitting a personal milestone.
I started Epic II which is also a 10 week workout program and then all hell broke loose with Covid in my family and it hit me hard. But through all of that, even after crying for hours, I would peel myself off the couch and do my workouts and it kept me grounded.
I also started to eat better, sleep better, did all of my tasks on time, enrolled into a course for Project Management, I was even a better blogger because I had more inspiration to write. I never attributed these changes to having a regular workout schedule.
And then, two weeks ago something happened. I guess that after being in a state of constantly worrying about my family and all of my problems hit me all at once when it was all over. This happens to me a lot. I go through some difficult period and I push through it and then when it’s all over, when it’s time to rest I start feeling everything at once. I needed a break but that break turned into me breaking my workout schedule.
This was like the first domino piece that started it all. I started to get a bit depressed, my insecurities were coming to the surface, all of the progress I had made now felt like nothing. I even broke my diet and ended up being in pain for days. I don’t actually diet in the popular sense of the term but I have a special diet because of my food intolerances. I did not listen to my courses for those two weeks. I started to be financially irresponsible because the one thing I do when I am feeling down is shopping and I went a bit crazy lately.
Skipping just a few days of working out started an avalanche of bad decisions and bad feelings. When I sat down with my journal (that I also stopped using for the past two weeks) I realized that working out changed the way I live and made me better since September. I never expected something like that to happen.
It’s comforting to know that I can go back, re-start the Epic program and get my life on track after this hiatus but it’s also scary to know that just one habit can make or break me, especially when it was so unconscious.
I guess it’s time to dust off the weights and get back into it. At least I did my daily walks every day so I did not spend all of my time on the couch.
Love,
Luna
Check out my last video:
It seems to me that not doing your workout educated you more than unconsciously doing a half-assed job would have. Congratulations!