Two weeks ago I got suddenly and rather mysteriously ill. Very high fever, nausea, dizziness, and a total lack of appetite for anything but cheese. It lasted for several days, though it did decrease over those days. I finally started to feel like myself about a week ago.
I started back on my ball/core workouts sometime last week. I started walking again on Friday. Today, I was back to my goal of core work/walking/steps. Yes, it took me two weeks to get back this place. It's frustrating. I won't say that it's not. At the same time, I'm not going to dwell on the time I lost. That is completely pointless and a waste of my emotional energy. It's also not really worth it, because I think I made the right decisions here.
I've been more active for several months now, and one of the many things I have learned to accept about exercise is that it isn't an exact experience. There are days when everything goes as it should. When your work out is a fulfilling and amazing thing where you feel like you have accomplished the world. Then there are days when you feel like a one legged hippo trying to do ballet.
When you're not feeling well, you have to think a lot about how this would and should affect your work out. Some people will tell you it shouldn't affect it at all, but they're stupid. Yes, I went there. I'm not even going to pretend to be nice on that one. If you are dizzy and someone is telling you to work out anyway, they are stupid.
This becomes very much an issue for someone who is working out from a place of ill health to begin with. I weigh a lot and my body is going through many changes during this process. There are days when I am in so much pain, just walking through the house is rough. Of course, there are other days when the pain is actually less after I do my walk up and down the driveway. Those are the good days.
Kind of easy to see where the danger in this happens. If you've been too sick to work out for three or four days, it's very easy to just tell yourself you don't feel like it on that next day . . . and the next . . . and the next. I would be lying if I said I'd never done that. Clearly, I've done that a lot.
However, when you are trying to reclaim your health, it is important to take some time everyday to review your goals and remind yourself why you have them. I did this during me recent recovery from the illness. Every night before I went to sleep, I would think about my goals and my plans to get there. I would remind myself of how bad things can be when I'm in my worst state of health and make promises to myself that we wouldn't let that happen again.
So yes, I allowed myself time to recover. I even took a bit longer than I possibly could have because I knew the fever and days of little food did some bad things to me. At the same time, I didn't let myself off the hook either mentally or emotionally. I didn't allow myself to pretend like things haven't changed, like I don't have some goals here. I kept a firm grip on my plans and I do believe it has been what has helped me to follow through with my plans to start working out again.
When I look at it that way, while I did lose some ground in the physical side of my progress towards health, I think I may have gained quite a lot of ground in the emotional arena. This may prove to be quite useful in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment