This post is simple: I’m reclaiming my life. Well, I’m attempting to. It’s exciting – I’m finally putting into place some steps and plans to help me live the life I want. I’m starting with my health and fitness. It’s an incredibly broad field, but I’m going to start small. It’s just the first step.
A little backstory
My “fitness journey” began in high school when I was in year 10. I remember working out at home in the morning before heading to school. They were half-hour workouts that led me to lose almost 15kgs throughout the next few years.
I wanted to lose weight because I wanted to make myself smaller. But instead, I fell in love with feeling athletic and stronger. When I started uni I joined the uni gym. However, I haven’t been consistent since then.
But that’s about to change.
At the end of April/early May 2022, I started noticing pain in my right ankle. Some days it felt fine and other days it felt like it was burning. I still managed to go on hikes and do some movement, but over the year it got worse. I could never build a habit of running because it hurt, and it got to the point where just standing would be agony. I’ve been working on strengthening my ankle, but I’m not sure whether it is just a strength factor as I’ve been told.
Another small, well big, problem is that my inability to move without pain has caused a sharp decline in my mental health (that was already rocky, to begin with). It’s still not in a good place, but I’m working on it.
Not being able to move, my ankle injury and my unsteady mental health have led me to regain weight, plus some more, and now I feel like the biggest blob ever. I’ve lost all my self-confidence, strength and agility. All I want is that back.
Something I’ve found is that everything seems to be a flow-on effect. If something isn’t right, then something else becomes not right. So, I’m hoping it’s the same when I improve myself.
So what’s next?
Well, there are a lot of things to focus on. But I’m going to focus on my sleep schedule, my fitness, and my diet first. Now, there’s a lot within that, but I’m hoping that I can slowly chip away and improve all three. All of which will help me in reclaiming my life.
My sleep schedule
This is a tough one. My sleeping is all over the shop, and it takes forever to get to sleep. I know that by fixing my sleep schedule and having a strong sleep routine, I’ll feel better. This one is a must. I just have to figure out how I want to approach it.
My fitness
Let’s start with my fitness. It’s a big one that I want to focus on. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve started to build my foundations, and moving forward, I hope to increase my strength, agility and speed. I want to be an all-around athlete.
Last week I made it to the gym twice, my swimming club twice and I ran a couple of times as well. This week, I hope to make it to the gym three to four times, swim club twice and run three to four times a week – with a bike ride or two in there somewhere. It’s a lot of exercise, but I like moving and have the time to do so now.
I’m not going to be super strict on myself, but I want to focus on moving and implementing a warm-up and cool-down for my gym workouts and running. Oh, and I forgot to mention I hope to start working on my mobility as well.
So, I’ve somehow got to fit this all in with my hikes as well.
My diet
The aim is to eat more healthily and increase my protein intake. My diet isn’t very good at the moment. I don’t eat that great and I tend to binge. I want to try and create a balanced diet that works for me. I don’t eat a lot of meat as I don’t really enjoy it.
I’ll know what I need to eat more of soon as I’ve had a blood test and will be looking at the results soon.
Now, this is only the beginning
I hope that this is only the beginning of reclaiming my life, and that once I start feeling better within myself it will have a trickle effect and life will become a little bit easier. I haven’t been happy in a long time and that’s all I want – to feel good about myself and life.
The plan is to document my journey on YouTube and share updates here, but we’ll see how I go.
