I am beginning to learn that goals have something like a honeymoon period. You’re all excited at first doing it every day; seeing the start of progress like you can taste what the finish line might be like. Then life happens responsibilities, not feeling good, or any other of the numerous things that constitute a lie. That has been what has been happening to me these last couple of weeks and I am less than thrilled about it. Now to be specific I do not have kids, but responsibilities and as well as not feeling good have been adding to an already existing struggle. For other people though kids and responsibilities involving kids may add into this, or aging parents and the responsibilities involving that may add in.
For me, though it has been a mixture of responsibilities, not feeling good, and weirdly losing my mojo for doing this. These struggles are all added onto the continuing one of feeling like I do not have time. But the losing the mojo thing has kind of been odd, I am at the point in building the habit that I subconsciously know I should do it but this feeling of just ‘bleh’ came over me. It was not a feeling of lethargy just ‘bleh’. Part of the ‘bleh’ came from not feeling good, but it was not even like sick and bedridden not feeling good. Looking back a part of me feels like I just gave excuses. It was just not feeling good life sucks kind of way. Which does not help the feeling of having given excuses because I did not use the time to help myself not feel like life sucks. Now I know that is not true but looking back that is how I feel, and I am sure that I am not the only one who feels like that in certain situations. Adding that to the issues of feeling like I do not have time which I am still struggling with and probably will for a while, yet it just did not happen for me.
Working to keep this goal going is proving to be interesting, like anything it obviously takes work. But it also seems that there are going to be more areas I will have to work on than just the fitness parts to accomplish this goal like self-motivation. Now I am good at trying to motivate and encourage others. I am not always the best at doing it for myself which I do not think is very uncommon. Now I consider myself a semi-decent self-starter, but it is something I have struggled with in many areas of my life in the past. I am currently wondering if I am anywhere near what I will need to be to accomplish this. I am thinking that if I get better at that then when these ‘bleh’ periods come it will be easier to feel like I am still progressing in my habit and goal without feeling like I am sliding backward. Not sure we shall see how this goes and if that helps.
So with all of that in mind, I have not given up, but I am going back to 20 mins walks, 6 flights of stairs split into two sets, and yoga to keep it interesting. The current issue going forward seems to be remembering to do the second set of stairs. I get the first set done and then I get distracted and before I know it, I am walking out the door to go to work. Oie life, I will get better at this, but it is definitely going to take time. Am I alone in that issue though for those of you who work out at home? I know in a gym it is a different story, you would go and not leave until your entire workout is done. Maybe it is taking a break between sets, but my thighs will go on strike if I do not take a break. They are burning after the first three. When I say six flights some may consider it twelve because there are stairs then a landing then stairs and then the second floor. On the landing, there are no rooms. I go from the ground floor to the second floor and count that as one flight. My thighs which have never been strong do not like it. Part of the reason I like to do it is the pain and feeling of muscles working. Maybe I am weird.
Yoga is proving to be another issue altogether. While for a long time I have enjoyed learning bits of yoga here and there. Right now, I am having a hard time getting into it, I have yet to complete a whole video and it is not exciting me. When faced with the three options of what I am doing I am not choosing Yoga. I even have been trying to rotate through doing the different things on different days and Yoga is just not winning out on any front. I keep saying oh I will do it tomorrow and then say the same thing the next day. I am thinking I need to switch to a different one, but I am hesitant to do that because I still want all the benefits that come from doing yoga because I think they will help in the long run. But I am also thinking that it may not be a good idea to try to force myself as it may cause a kind of burnout. Or maybe I am just overthinking the whole thing and just need to switch it out. Not sure yet.
If you haven’t figured out this is me being real that for me this goal is hard and a real struggle. But I am doing everything I can on my own to make sure I am doing it right. The one thing I have not done that is always recommended is to talk to my doctor before starting this. It is often recommended to consult your Doctor when doing new fitness things, or at least that is what it says in the disclaimers on the workout videos. On top of that after having a conversation with my roommate I have realized that I need to learn about something called a training plan. Now I have heard of these from coaching swimming, but I was only an assistant coach so uh what the heck is that. Oh, this should be fun, and now this raises more questions that will require research because as I grow in consistency with my habit when do I switch to implementing the training plan? Yeah, the honeymoon phase is very much over, and a lot of hard work is coming my way, and apparently, more than I originally thought.
Looks like I will be figuring out how to break this down even further to make sure these things stay manageable. Also, to make sure I do not freak myself into thinking I am overwhelmed and cannot do it. Which we all know is not the case, but with the mental struggle about time, I have been having you never know where that will end. Starting points are going to be Pinterest and Google for the training plan templates and an idea of what it is. It is also going to hopefully help me figure out how much I should be increasing and how quickly I should be doing it. While I do not think there is a set rate for how quickly you should increase, I am not an expert on this. Something I learned is that if you have any kind of goal that seems big, I highly recommend breaking it down into smaller goals to make it more achievable and manageable. It has helped in avoiding being discouraged. For me, I just got to figure out when to increase to the next goal.
As I am working on these smaller goals, learning a lot of new information, trying to keep myself motivated; I can start to see maybe people do just fall off and let old habits continue. I personally do not want to do that. While all this information and work is a lot and a tad overwhelming, I not only know it is going to help my health and fitness-wise. I like learning it, it is interesting to me. I think this is because I like helping people develop healthy habits and for once I am forcing myself to develop healthy habits. So, using this information to help myself and learning about it is interesting. Never thought I would ever say that, and while these struggles will probably not go away, they are not going to end this journey. It is weirdly fun, that may lead to something in the future like a certification but that is getting ahead of myself I am not there yet. One step at a time.
Lemons or Lemonade 