Sometimes I Hate to be Right - I AM at the Beginning

Okay, so for some reason, as soon as the doctor gave me the okay to workout, I stopped working out and stopped wanting to workout. I have no idea why. I feel like my motivation has been at an all-time low and I'm back to the same fears I had when I started running last year - I won't be able to do it, what if someone sees me and thinks I look stupid, etc.  Also, I just always struggle with getting started in anything remotely athletic.  So with the exception of that one day at the gym a few weeks' ago, I haven't worked out since (until today, I should add).

I did go to another fitness coaching appointment (as they call them), but I had a really bad head cold that week - I heard a long time ago that you could still work out with a bad head cold, but the last time I did, I got pneumonia. No joke.  So I work a bit harder at taking care of myself when I get sick these days!  But I went to the appointment, found out I'd actually put ON weight (though I was wearing knee high boots that day also which I wasn't the last time) and talked nutrition with Kris (who could fit a half hour conversation into five minutes. She said she was impressed I could keep up). I was terribly afraid that she'd slam me for my bad eating, but she said I basically eat well and just need to switch out any white flour products for whole grains, look for 100-calorie snacks for desserts (but not cut them out, yay!) and have dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate.  Okay, manageable. I'm also supposed to drink more water, and I can keep drinking Pepsi, as long as I also add an extra glass of water to my day.

Like with working out, I've not had a lot of water since we talked that day.  I'm not sure what it is - I have it easily accessible in my house with a giant brita in the fridge. I'm just not thirsty that much! So I have to make a more conscious effort to start adding more water into my day.  And I've been eating too much candy again - it's my weakness. Along with chocolate chip cookies. 

But all of this thinking and conscious effort is overwhelming me a little and I think that's what I struggle with. Frozentriette gave me some great advice a few weeks' ago, telling me to change one little thing at a time.  She's totally right.  But for some reason, I feel like I just can't do it, like all of these people are expecting me to do more (what people, I don't know), and as if I'm supposed to be keeping up with all these other athletes whose blogs I read or twitterstreams I follow, and when I don't, guilt creeps in.  On top of the fact that I may have jumped the gun in joining the gym, thinking that would motivate me, while now, I just feel upset that I'm spending money and not going.  I keep telling myself to just pick one yoga class at the gym and go every week to start with. But last night, when it was time to go to yoga and I was in a crabby mood, I just bagged the whole thing.  I'm not sure why I do all this hiding out when experience has shown me that exercise makes me feel better, sleep better, and helps me get out any frustration/stress I have.  I'm really struggling and it's very hard for me to admit, but I'm hoping that if I just take workouts one day at a time, eventually, I'll build myself back up again and actually enjoy it, without always feeling guilty that I could be doing more.

So anyway, that was my goal for today. I've got a fitness coaching appointment at 3:30 (which I've already postponed twice, so I HAVE to go today) and I made myself re-start the Couch to 5k plan. I had hoped that I would be wrong about how far back I'd fallen in running - that I'd get out there and it would be so easy I could jump ahead.  Unfortunately, no.  Today's plan was a five minute warm up walk, and then alternating 60 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking for 20 minutes.  And it. Was. Hard.  Not impossible hard, just not as breezy as I expected it to be.  But the difference between this year and last year is that I already know I can do it, because I've done it before. So that helped. And I did really push myself in those 60-second intervals, so I was feeling tired by the time I was done with each of them.  And remembering my distances from last year, I know I went further today than when I started out last year, so I must have been running faster. 

So we'll see how it goes.  Last year, I was good at taking each workout as it came up and not stressing out about it too much (minus that first 20-minute stretch of running - holy cow was I worried about that one!).  I think a lot of that was because I was just doing one thing - running.  Today, I'm already feeling pressured to go to the gym for my appointment and then do an extra 30 minutes on the elliptical (because of course, I get wrapped up in the idea that the trainers are judging me, when they probably don't care) or just making an excuse when probably Kris won't even ask me whether I plan to workout.  The long and the short of it is that I'm overthinking EVERYTHING lately, which paralyzes me. So like Jannah said, I need to start small, add in one thing at a time and then build on that.  I'll give it a shot...