028FD: Daily Workout Struggles

Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 241

I had celebrated Duterete's lack of a public address yesterday too soon - he decided to go on air again today. Nothing of particular interest - just more patting themselves on the back for a job supposedly well-done and explaining that re-opening the economy does not include increasing COVID-19 cases because they say so.

But on to less dissatisfying discussions. 

More than a few friends have mentioned that they're somehow inspired by my near-daily workouts.  And while I do recognize that I do put a lot of effort into this whole physical fitness effort, it doesn't mean I'm having an easy time of doing so. It's actually really, really hard.

In all honesty, I spend a LOT of time telling myself to workout. I start psyching myself up the night before when I check my Nike Training app to check on what's next on my schedule. Ever since I increased my workout plan difficulty to level 3, I've been getting more of these hefty 45-minute workouts that really test my limits. Despite working out for a better part of the year, these are still pretty difficult and it's no joke getting through them.

Ironically, my biggest motivation to workout is probably my daily weigh-in. To maximize losses, I tend to weigh myself only given a number of factors: (1) after I've gone to the bathroom in the morning, (2) after I've worked out, plus (3) before I drink or eat anything for the day. I know that on days when I don't work out, I'm naturally heavier than I'd like to be. So to curb my disappointment, I push myself to do some physical activity first.

This has gone all the way to me sort of fudging Recovery Days by still jogging or at least doing 30+ minutes of yoga to help with my flexibility. If I'm up to do, I actually do both so that I still get a good workout and admittedly less "recovery" time than I probably should. But that's just me being crazy and to some degree scared of what I'm going to see on the weighing scale. 

Just this week I've been a little lower in the water if you get my drift. I was already dipping below 74kg last month, but this week I seem to be struggling to get below 75kg. I try not to overthink it since weight is just one factor in my overall state of fitness. But the numbers will always rest heavily on my mind. No workout means getting even heavier - or at least that's how the simplified logic goes. Don't even think about rationalizing my body fat percentage slowly going down and all that stuff. I'm still overweight, after all. Muscle or not, I still need to reduce my overall weight to get to a healthier range.

Despite this sort of self-intimidation as motivation, I can be pretty slow to get started in the morning. Sometimes I end up procrastinating for more than an hour before I even get my workout shorts on - the rest of the ensemble takes a fair amount more time to get through. A lot of times I just end up feeling the time crunch since I end up running out of free time before I need to go online for work, and so I just kick myself out of bed and get going as best as I can. 

Even when I've done all of these routines so many times over the past year, there's always this minor feeling of anxiety even just thinking about getting started. Will I be able to get through all those burpees? Do I still have the stamina to survive those mountain climbers? When will my sit-ups actually look like proper sit-ups and not just glorified crunches? There are so many questions expressed through so many different voices in my head as I get around to starting my workout. 

But eventually, I get started. I barrel through the worries and the anxiety and the laziness and just start following the commands on my phone. A lot of times I want to give up mid-way through the routine or skip sets to just catch my breath, but I keep pushing and keep going. And I end up celebrating internally when the cool-down sequence for that workout begins and I know I've gotten to the home stretch. 

Then I have to figure out how to get myself to do it all again tomorrow.  

Ultimately, my point is that I'm still going through one heck of a struggle every single day. I don't feel all that inspiring - a lot of times I'm barely hanging on. But I'm also stubborn as heck and that drive is what keeps me going even when I don't feel up to it or I'm not actually "motivated" to finish a workout. We do what we have to do. And honestly, I don't want to die. That's still Reason #1 for all this.