21/02/17 – I’m almost sure I’m going to fail at this

I decide to start exercising again so I won’t always feel physically ill.

Self-care when you’re not doing well

Lately, I haven’t been consistently exercising because of some mood and anxiety issues. I’ve self-castigated over laziness and inconsistency and wavered a lot. It’s not a good practice to constantly self-criticise if it doesn’t result in any behavioural change. It’s useless. So I’ve been doing …

Meal prep, self love, and stuff

I’ve been going through a blue period. When I’m down I find it difficult to do nice things for myself and end up falling into bad habits. My bad habits are fast food and refusing to write or exercise. Today I had a burst of …

Anxiety, periods, and gastro are all more powerful than me

I have not exercised for two weeks. I have excuses. I was out until late at night, I had the kind of anxiety where you’re afraid to do anything but stare and hope something bad doesn’t happen, I vomited in a public bathroom from stomach …

Meal prepping: something I can do well

I haven’t been exercising because a weighted blanket of anxiety has been gently draped over my shoulders, immobilising me from doing anything useful. I am grateful for my meal preparation during the last week. It was difficult for me to eat with my family, due …

Learning how to breathe

Some days, I don’t want to have fun while exercising. Four of the planets, in my natal chart, are in Scorpio and I was raised Catholic: sometimes a bitch needs to flagellate. Today was one of those days: I didn’t want music or an upbeat blonde …

Confessions, breakfast, working out, and feeling better

I refuse to call going to brunch “cheating”. I want to eat healthily and get fit but I do not want to miss out on brunch. So I went to brunch yesterday. I ate two poached eggs, mushrooms, grilled cherry tomatoes, bacon, a beef sausage, …

No workout, five hours of meal preparation, which counts as strength and endurance training

I couldn’t exercise today. My back is in agony after standing over a hot stove for five hours (literally five hours, not including shopping time) doing meal preparation.  Meal preparation is a thing people on YouTube say is simple and easy if you just give …

Bitch. I’m back.

Hello, blogosphere, it is I, Janine back from what feels like forever. I won’t make any excuses. I dropped off my fitness journey just prior to my Thailand trip and worked out very sporadically since then. ‘Sporadically’ is a word I learned from the 1995 …

18/03/17 – Intermediate yoga is too intense for me

Yesterday I did 30 minutes of cardio and 15 minutes of core but I didn’t blog about it. Sue me.

The cardio was a low impact video from POPSugar Fitness – I haven’t linked it here but you can find it if you want. The instructor irritated me because his partner was assisting in the demonstration and he kept on referring to her with these baby names and it annoyed me.

I’m not a fan of pet names and while I was sweating I hated it. My core workout was supposed to be longer but I was finished.

Today my yoga workout was 45 minutes and was set at an intermediate level. I know I’m not at intermediate level (yet) so I didn’t put pressure on myself to complete some of the more difficult moves.

I was able to generally keep up with the class using some variations and I surprised myself with how much I could complete.

I think I’ve found my favourite yoga instructor. Micki Duran is strong, graceful, and balanced. I was really inspired to reach that level of control of my body.

I think I’m going to exclusively follow her yoga videos. This video pushed me in cardio, strength, flexibility, and balance without discouraging me from continuing with my workouts.

It was difficult but I want to get better. Also, she’s friends with Fergalicious Definition Make Them Boys Go Loco.

Love when we actually get see each other. #proudfriend #fergie #officialmickiduran #mickiduran

A post shared by Micki Duran (@officialmickiduran) on Sep 12, 2015 at 5:23pm PDT

 

16/03/17 – I work out after hitting a speed bump and things feel significantly worse

I hit a speed bump. By speed bump I mean I had an awful case of reflux, then a rest day, then two depression days where I skipped working out and working in general.

I spent those three days of rest feeling guilty because I skipped exercise; depressed because I was depressed, ineffectual because I wasn’t working on anything else, and almost entirely sure that if I enjoyed even one day I would never work out again.

Luckily for my journey, my rest days were awful. Lineo compared it to my body holding me hostage. I’ve started this way of life and now my body expects some cardio or it will self destruct. I felt like I was decomposing on those days. It was unpleasant.

I resolved to work out today and dreaded it while I babysat my niece. Once my sister returned home and after the new Monsta X teaser dropped; I had no excuse to put it off.

I completed thirty minutes of total body toning, low impact, cardio and I felt like I was going to die.

Everyone who encouraged me to get back into exercising after my big failure told me to go hard with my reentry but I tried to commit to the form of the exercises and do my best without hurting myself.

It felt so bad to start exercising again. I was slightly cheered by the fact that could complete the workout and I haven’t lost all the progress I’ve made in the two and half weeks that I’ve been doing this.

Still, I feel ungainly. I still can’t do a full push-up but I can do a plank and a half push-up. There’s a metallic taste in my mouth after this thirty minutes.

I will not lie and say that it feels good to be stretched out, in my underwear and a towel, on the floor. It doesn’t feel any good but after these two days, I see there really isn’t an alternative.