I'm a little lost

[KawaiiHime-sama]

I suppose...I predicted this earlier. My struggle seems to be maintaining my exercize through life events... and it is something I am very poor at.

 

My last post was in April, when I tried to go on the 6 week challenge. I can't remember exactly what stopped me from exercizing, but it likely has to do with motivation. It was around that time I found out I did not make it into grad school, and also when I got a 'half-promotion' at my temp job so that I had more responsibility but the same pay. How fun. Two months after that point I would go on a few dates, that would ultimately end with us 'just being friends' though an unfortunate amount of tears were involved. Right when that relationship was ending was also when I was finally able to leave that job. It also happened to be when my car got totalled (darn rain) so that cost me another chunk of money to get another. It took about 3 weeks before the fog of deppression from working at that terrible environment and being unable to live full-time as my gender would leave.

 

So... Around October I finally found myself feeling comfortable with my path, and with my situation and my dysphoria has continued to decline due to my transition. I went out running every other day for the first 3 weeks of october (I would walk a mile, run a mile, walk another mile, post-stretch), but it got super rainy and my alergies had been acting up during the last run pretty severely and been screwing with my 'sports related asthma' which doesn't do well in the cold... so I held off runing in the rain. When it came time to run again... my brother had just gotten in to visit and he was getting eye surgery a state over so I ended up driving him a lot while also going to my appointments. That's probably not much of an excuse to not run though.

 

And so, now, I'm back.

 

Perhaps some of my issues regarding motivation had to do with a crappy job environment combined with not being full-time and the dysphoria/depression that causes... but it's still tiring to see that I can't maintain a workout.

 

It seems I'm good at generating motivation that says "Hey, it would be awesome if you worked out because you could get -blank-, -blank-, and -blank- benefits" but not very good at maintaining that motivation and momentum.

 

And then when I try and start up again, like now, I get bogged down in trying to find a routine. So many influences like: It's getting colder and my asthma will choke me if I exercize out in the snow. I'm moving in January and trying to save my money so I can't really get a gym membership, nor buy too many items to work out using(I'm currently jobless, with non-matching paperwork until January which makes job hunting awkward, on having to spend another thousand on a facial procedure in a few weeks I didn't think I'd have to). But so far my understanding of my goals suggests strength training would achieve the ends I seek... putting it at odds with my lack of funds for a gym (also I'm still extremely unconfident, so It'd be tough to go to a gym... I know I know 'suck it up' but with people like myself in the news more than ever, with confrontations and the like flourishing... it can't help but get me a little worried). And I don't have any friends in my town that could help out.

 

So I'm a bit lost. It seems like a motivation problem on the face, but theres all these annoying restrictions I'm trying to deal with on top of it.

 

Any guidance would be helpful.

 

Edit: I went ahead and did one rep of the Advanced bodyweight routine today, and I'll try and get that back up to 3-4 reps as a primary lead off.

[dancezwithkittehz]

I was going to suggest checking out bodyweight workouts and it seems you already came up with that solution as well!  You can get super strong just doing bodyweight as long as you keep progressing to more difficult variations as you are able!

 

As for maintaining an exercise schedule over the long term, a big part of it is just getting to where the exercise becomes habit. It helps to do this if you are doing something you enjoy to begin with as your exercise thing, which I know due to your situations with moving soon etc. right now you are a little limited in scope, but this is something to keep in mind!

 

Doing 6 week challenges with a small, obtainable amount of measurable goals really can help you to make something into a real habit. Once it becomes a habit it becomes something you just DO regardless of other things! 

 

However, big life changes can definitely screw around with even a set routine so I think it's important to know it's OK and that you can always pick up and rebuild later!

 

Learning what motivates YOU is going to be the big factor, and it's different for everyone. Maybe you just haven't found YOUR thing that you need to be doing exercise wise that would make it easier for you to remember to incorporate it into your schedule because you want to be doing it and not because of some vague list of benefits of it, like, the exercise ITSELF becomes the benefit!

[KawaiiHime-sama]

Learning what motivates YOU is going to be the big factor, and it's different for everyone. Maybe you just haven't found YOUR thing that you need to be doing exercise wise that would make it easier for you to remember to incorporate it into your schedule because you want to be doing it and not because of some vague list of benefits of it, like, the exercise ITSELF becomes the benefit!

 

That sounds like an awesome concept, but I haven't found anything like that which gives me any of the benefits I'd want lols.

 

Sure, moments of the workouts, the bodyweight, or running etc.. are fun. But, my motivation just ends up waning after a few weeks. I'm currently in that 'restart' mode atm, so Its easy to keep going, but I am worried about what'll happen later.

 

I guess its that level in the game I'm not sure how to beat. *scrambles for online walkthroughs*

[Pat]

Advices from Dancezwithkittehz are good.

 

In your post I read a lot of motivation problem and outside element/events that are out of your control and makes it harder on you and makes you quit. You sound just like me back then when I was trying to maybe stop smoking but damn it was so hard and there as this and that in my way and I always ended up not really stopping and getting back at it. I had a lot of good reasons to get back to smoking and they were all good reasons.... until I decided they weren't.

If you are anything like me, you will be disapointed about yourself each time you allow yourself to fail again. That's how it was for me. What changed everything is when I sat down and realized that trying and stopping and trying and stopping again is obviously a lot harder than doing it for real and for good, once. Not to mention multiplying failures isn't something we want. We owe it to ourself to succeed. Quite frankly, I had to give myself a very hard kick in the ass (I mean very hard) but as Dancezwithkittehz said, the moment it becomes routine, things get a lot easier and trust me this will come fast. The routine thing will help but more than that, you will soon want to keep this in your routine cause you know, routines becomes comfortable after a time. Now that's success!

 

Your life belongs to you and you alone and you have to make the choice to not let anything between you and what you want. You owe this to yourself. When you are at week 2 of your training and suddenly are about to give up again, ask yourself if you want to go through this hard first 2 week process again, and again. Fail 3 times after only 2 weeks and you'll have spend 6 weeks at it and it still won't be part of your routine. Do them in one go and I bet it will be different.

 

Your workout is one of those moment of the day where you have total control of what's happening. It's a time you spend with yourself, to take good care of yourself.

 

 I wish you the best of luck in your project and I am looking forward to ready you say it's all working out well.

 

Cheer!

[KawaiiHime-sama]

Soo... I kept up the workout for a few weeks. From the day of that original post to december 2nd... which is about 3 and a half weeks.

 

But then I started having panic attacks non-stop over a series of 4 days (and stopped working out), eventually heading to the emergency care center where I was prescribed some medication until I can get in to see My doctor on Monday and hopefully see a therapist soon as well.

 

Haha, so my workout sessions seem to be off for a bit, as the medication I'm on make me incredibly lazy and I'm still so depressed as to have zero motivation regarding workouts right now.

[Pat]

Good to hear back from you and happy to hear you could keep your workout routine for a good 3 and a half weeks. That's a big step in the right direction! Just don't forget to get back at it once you took care of this panic attack thing. Good luck.