This blog is simply a diary of some sort written by a person who is facing the once thought inevitable fact that I am getting old. Even the term diary might be aging myself since right now I am on a laptop doing something younger crowds call blogging instead of using a pen to write in a small book that had a little lock and key on the side that I never locked for fear of locking myself out of it. Not to mention the robe and slippers and getting really tired at nine o'clock pm. I am not a certified personal trainer, just a normal girl who worked out heavy for twenty-two years and then just quit. Yep, just quit.
My love of fitness began at the age of twenty with a fitness machine me and my brother had just bought and that first rush after a workout. I was hooked, and worked hard after work, five days a week for twenty-two years. Weightlifting was my favorite and cardio was a must. I would be angry at myself for missing a workout, and push harder with unattainable goals. What I had thought was relentless willpower actually turned out to be a perfectionist mess. After I had bought my own home at forty-one my commute became an hour longer and not one gym was in a radius of forty-five minutes. I kept going to my gym twenty minutes out of the way from my job and then the hour and twenty minutes back to my new home. This was that straw I always heard people talking about that broke some camels back. It brought me to the end. At first I thought I would jog down the street and use my free weights at home like I had done at thirty when I could not afford a gym for awhile. That lasted a few weeks and then I started feeling excuses becoming more powerful. That had always been there but nothing stopped me from moving forward. That must have been one strong camel or one strong straw that broke his back. It finally came to the point for the first time in twenty-one years I quit working out. At first I was upset. It was not the quitting that bothered me as much as the love of no constant pressure. Sure I had gone a week once or twice and one time even a month but this was different. I felt different. I felt relieved. After work I could go right home, I could make dinner, I could watch TV! Hey, I am forty something anyway so who cares? I began to love this and this love continued until I started noticing the effects. I was moving a pumpkin from the front yard to the back and felt badly winded. I was taking longer to move from a squatting position to standing upright. My fortysomething year old body began to surface to my sight. It is not that at forty you suddenly wake up and whops! what happened??? It is, however, what happens when you have been bodybuilding since forever and then just stop. Sad as this was I enjoying my excuses or the first time in my life. I accepted how I looked and yes I looked good and knew people would accept me for was especially my boyfriend. But in that I never realized about what did I really think about my new body? It made me sad. I began to miss the way my clothes fit. I don't mean weight I mean the lean way I had looked. I missed the feeling of earning my body the same way a person feels about a job. I missed the ability to move a hundred pumpkins to the backyard. This log is about my journey back to fitness. At that moment I knew it was something I wanted back but did not know that after a two year break and loads of defeating mind sets how hard it would be.
My first realization of how bad my defeating mindset was when a gym opened three miles down the road from my house. I was so excited! I joined during the preopening and hit the cardio and weights just like always. This first week was good but then I started picking on myself. I did not lift long enough. I did not use the elliptical long enough. Time became my enemy. I was not lifting hard enough. My biceps should be much more defined. Goals became my enemy. I was not going often enough. Quantity became my enemy. Slowly excuses made me feel better then working out. I tried for so long to keep up with such unattainable goals that again I quit. Plus, at forty something my drive was much lower then it was at twenty something so I enveloped myself in my age like a blanket on a snowy cold day. And then after awhile my sadness came back. I had to figure this out. So here I am attempting again with a new camel and hopefully a new mindset.
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