Health vs Weight

I unexpectedly ended up at the Sporting Wheelies gym the other day, after avoiding it for about a year. I was going out to breakfast with a friend who also used to work there, and she detoured us on the way to drop in and say Hi to whoever was there. It was pretty early in the morning, so only the gym was open, so we went in and chatted to a few people. It was actually quite painless, despite my fears of humiliation and mortification.

The Gym at Sporting Wheelies (that's not me!)

The main reason I've been avoiding the gym there is not that I used to work there, but that I've put on so much weight over the past couple of years I'm too embarrassed to show myself there. I've also been avoiding other situations, because of feeling insecure about my weight and how I look.  I've been steadily gaining weight for the past few years, and one of the reasons for that is that I've been trying to work more on my health than my weight. 

Since I was about 15, until relatively recently, keeping my weight down was more important than being healthy. I used to do some very, very unhealthy things to control my weight, to the point that I was facing some very serious health problems. Unfortunately, stopping doing the dodgy things that kept my weight down led to my weight going up, but I'm already healthier for it, even if I'm, er, curvier.

Lately I have been working much harder on getting healthier, where I have to stop worrying about my weight and how I look, and concentrate on how I am. I'm cooking and eating real food, and am also getting back into growing my own veggies. I can't pretend that I'm not sometimes cooking and eating pancakes, but at least they're natural!

However, worse than my weight going up is how far my fitness has gone down. I have very little stamina, and  just getting around is much harder, and it's really important to me that I have the fitness to be able to work and/or study. My hip pain may even be worse because of my extra body weight (I won't know unless I lose weight and see if my pain improves). I'm also getting older, and there's heart disease in both sides of my family, although much more seriously on my Dad's side. 

Exercise used to be my way maintaining my weight, and things first started to come unstuck for me when I was no longer able to exercise intensely - namely when my hip pain started, affecting how and how much I could exercise. Then I seemed to just get more and more injuries from exercise - especially in my shoulders, which is bad news for a wheelchair user. That's when I turned to other methods for controlling my weight.

I've been trying to get back into some sort of routine with exercise for a while now, but it's been really difficult to break through the fatigue that comes with living with chronic pain. Swimming is the only exercise I've always enjoyed without needing competition for motivation; I enjoy the meditative aspects of swimming, as well as they way it strengthens my shoulders without (so far) damaging them. I can also run, cycle and kick in the water in a way that's impossible on dry land. 

I've had my swimming kit packed and in my car for weeks now, and I keep promising myself that I'll go swimming tomorrow, but then I have a sleepless night or something, and just can't make myself go. (Funnily enough, only of my ways of sending myself to sleep is to imagine myself swimming up and down a pool. It regulates my breathing, and is often successful.)

Anyway, the point of all this is that I've decided to stop being embarrassed about my weight, and get back to the gym where I can do something positive about my health. The staff there are experts on designing exercise programs to suit a person's abilities (and at a couple of dollars a visit it fits into my budget!!), and best of all, there are no mirrors! 

Of course, I still have the same issues with fatigue, but at least with the gym I avoid the preliminary workout required to get into my togs that I get with swimming, and the gym has twice as many accessible showers as the pool. Both the pool and the gym are only a few kms drive away, and they both have easy parking. Really, my excuses for not going are very thin indeed......

But, as extra incentive, after I've both been to the gym and for a swim for two weeks straight, I will allow myself to buy a new t-shirt. That should work!

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