Hi, lurker here to talk about a big struggle of mine on this journey towards self improvement.
So I am a 27 F, been losing a pound a week since December using CICO and very pleased with how that’s going. I started out at 182 pounds, today I weigh 147, and I have gained enough confidence through this process that I have adjusted my goal weight from 130 to 120. Adjusting it is a big deal for me because I never even expected to get near my goal weight, seeing as I’ve failed at weight loss so many times before.
However, this post is not about the diet that is going quite well but about the exercise which is a big struggle! I am not on this journey just to see a different number on the scale. I am going for a FEELING. A feeling I have never experienced in these 27 years of life. I want to feel healthy and capable and strong and quick. I want to feel light on my toes. I want to feel like I could do (almost) anything other people can do without being winded or chafed or embarrassed.
All that to say, I really want to put on some muscle in addition to losing weight. But exercise is SO HARD! It has always been really hard for me and I get embarrassed and self conscious about people seeing me struggle with these very simple things. For an example of how easy the things I struggle with are, take stretching. That’s not even supposed to be the hard part but it kills me! I am so inflexible that a pilates instructor nicknamed me “the tin man.” And it’s not just that it hurts and is hard to do, it feels like I can’t breathe from a simple stretch. The one where you raise your arms over your head and lean to one side, for example, makes me feel like I’m suffocating. Then sometimes I see posts on here of people with higher starting weights than mine, who say they just started running a bunch and did a 5k and all this kind of stuff I can’t even imagine doing at half their weight. It makes me feel pathetic and weak.
But I’m not just here to complain. I’m here to tell you two things. First, if you really struggle with exercise you are NOT alone! Not everyone just changes their mindset one day and can then run a mile the next morning. And not everyone can go couch to 5k as quickly as those who post their successes do. The second thing I want to say is, don’t beat yourself up and make it an all-or-nothing kind of deal. Just because you get winded after 10 mins on the elliptical or an embarrassingly low number of reps with weights, or just because you can’t make it through half of a 30 minute home stretching video, doesn’t mean your effort doesn’t count. If you are struggling, sweating, out of breath, or just tired from your “workout” then you still accomplished something. And the final thing I want to say is, even if you just barely worked out your physical muscles, you worked out an important mental muscle. The fight muscle. The determination muscle. If you work out for an entire month but can’t increase the weights coz you haven’t been doing enough reps or all that, that’s not a failure. You still did it, even if it was 5 minutes every day, and your mental fighting muscle is stronger.
That is all. Best of luck to all of you on your journeys!
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