Saturday, May 27, 2023

How to stop seeing the requirement to drive to my fitness related activities as a barrier/excuse?

I live in a rural area. The city itself is very car centric. I accept that I need to drive anywhere to do most things. When I was younger, I didn’t care about going into/out of the city multiple times a day. As an adult, however, I have an extreme aversion to it. It’s not anxiety. It’s not fear of driving. It’s pure hatredšŸ¤£. I hate driving. I hate wasting time. I hate the cost of gas. I hate the wear & tear on my car. This applies to everything not just exercise. Rural life has made me a bit of a minimalist in that if I’m making dinner & I don’t have an ingredient I absolutely do not go into town to get it - I just do without. I have one day/week in which I schedule errands I literally schedule them outside of rush hour & this takes a full day - adding exercise on top puts me out of the house for 8-10h on my day ‘off’ which I can’t do because I have house tasks to attend. Way before the WFH movement was a thing, I legit picked jobs based on commute time & route. You get the idea.

I need more exercise & I need to attend a facility for a pool as I’ve decided on aqua fit classes for health reasons. Yet the thought of driving for 30 mins each way fills me with dread. That’s 60 mins I’ve lost. To make it worse, in order to attend some classes, I’d have to go into town 2x/day because of work as none of them line up even remotely close to my shift start time. I thought about scheduling my errands & my exercise & my work on the same day, but it’s too much - I can’t leave my dog for 12h.

The ‘best’ case scenario is I go into town for just this on one of my other days off, but damn! That’s still 60-90 mins (depending on traffic) of my day just for a 45 min aqua fit class.

Now, I am aware this aversion is a flat out excuse. I get that. I own that. What I need help with is re training my brain so I start to see this travel time as either a necessary evil or a privilege? I need help sort of toning down how absolutely stickler I am concerning driving anywhere, but I can’t beat my brain.

People who commute to whatever or don’t hate driving what can I do to get over this? I don’t like music. (Seriously, I don’t listen to it.) & I can’t over saturate myself with audio books as I already listen to them 4-6h/day while cleaning, sleeping & other exercise outside of the planned aqua fit. (I need to ‘save’ them for when I walk/run as they’re my main reward system for that exercise.) Even as is, I’m already listening to them too much.

How can I just stfu & accept this needs to happen to achieve my weight loss goals? The thought of spending an extra $100/month or more on gas to get there is just so unappealing.

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