My personal fitness journey has been all over the place since I started back in 2014 in high school. I was a pretty active kid but I was by no means the fittest one and so I decided to make a change in my lifestyle. I had no clue how or where to start so I went ahead and bought myself a copy of INSANITY by Shaun T. The DVD included a 2-month program and a diet plan which I followed all the way through. My weight in the beginning was 180lb and I managed to go down to 165lb in the span of two months. This was amazing progress, but I found that it wasn’t something that I could do for the rest of my life. The workouts were grueling and to this day I would consider the INSANITY exercises to be one of the hardest workouts of my life. That said, you eventually hit a plateau where your body gets used to the exercises and the progress isn’t as visible. Not to mention, the diet plan felt very restrictive and I was consuming almost close to nothing because I didn’t know what I was doing. The program was just not something I could do over and over because eventually I grew tired of it, leading me back to where I started.
I stayed active throughout my high school career and I got really into sports and fitness. This led me to go ahead and apply for Mount Royal University, where I am taking my Bachelors of Health and Physical Education and majoring in Physical Literacy. Now this is when things took a turn for my health; The freshman 15 hit me hard. For those of you who don’t know, the freshman 15 is a common expression that refers to weight gain in your first year of post secondary. When you’re a first year living away from family for the first time, you tend to not take care of yourself properly in terms of nutrition due to lack of knowledge in cooking, stress, and social situations. What affected me the most was the amount of calories I consumed because of stress and the amount of partying I did because I wanted to socialize. I had no self control during my first two years of university and it didn’t help that I knew how to cook because I was able to make all of the cravings I had. This resulted in a lot of weight gain and I ended up being 228lbs which is the heaviest that I have ever been.
Being at this weight was hard for me because any simple physical activity became a difficult task. I was out of breath from just climbing a flight of stairs and I always found myself breathing hard even when I was doing nothing. This took a toll on me mentally and physically and it didn’t help that my coping mechanism was eating. Food made me comfortable and it was something that made me feel good but it was an unhealthy habit. I always saw myself in a negative way and I kept attacking my own self confidence which only made things worse. It wasn’t until I got injured due to my weight that I decided to make a change. I loved playing sports and so during an intramural basketball game, my knee gave out and it was the scariest thing I have ever felt. During sports, I have maintained all of my muscle memory but my body could not keep up with the way I typically played and it got me injured.
It was then that I decided to get serious with my workouts and diet, so I went and did my research, I got help from people who knew how to workout and started my fitness journey properly. I watched countless YouTube videos about workouts, diets, meal plans, supplements, and how to live an active lifestyle. I used what I learned in my degree to my advantage and I made sure to take classes such as ‘Intro to Strength Training’ and ‘Advanced Strength Training’. I also got recruited and joined the Kinesiology Games, also known as Kingames, which is a national event in Canada where kinesiology students from different Universities come together and compete in dance, athletics, academics, and spirit. I started from the very basics and made sure to build a solid foundation. After 5 grueling months of working out at the gym I managed to go from 228lbs to 174lbs.
When going to the gym, you need to throw out any big ego that you have because you’re there to work on yourself and not show off. I was self conscious at first and embarrassed when I first started working out because I feared that people there would judge me, but in reality, the people who are in the gym are also self conscious about themselves. Everyone is always striving to become like someone bigger and fitter than them, they are all there to work on themselves so you shouldn’t worry about what other people think. Another big thing that prevented me from going to the gym was the lack of knowledge, I had no clue where to begin and some of the machines can look scary when you don’t know what you’re doing. I started simple and made sure to build a solid foundation first. I went into the gym doing the exercises I knew, with weight that I could lift. Do not pay attention to how much weight people are lifting and only lift what you can. Form is the most important thing when going to the gym, so don’t try to lift too much in the beginning. Do not sacrifice form!
A couple of things I did to make my experience at the gym better was to bring a friend or listen to my own music. I made sure to keep my eyes out when people use equipment, so that I knew how it was supposed to be used. When in doubt, search it up and you’ll find out what you need to know for certain exercises. Over time you’ll get more comfortable and you’ll even start to get recognized by regulars at the gym. From then on, it became natural to me and I enjoyed working out. I would say that the biggest motivator that I had was the feeling I got after working out at the gym. You get such a big mood boost, that you feel amazing throughout the day afterwards.
As for my diet, I wanted it to not be too restrictive but also made sure that I was eating the right foods. I did intermittent fasting because it was what worked for me and my schedule. I had school in the morning and so during breaks in my day I would head to the gym to get my workout in. I would typically not eat anything until I got home which was around 2-3pm and then I would stop eating around 9-10 pm depending on when I started eating. This made it easy for me to eat whatever I wanted but at the same time, I made sure to control my portions and pick the healthier options.
This whole process took a while and there were days where I never really saw any progress, but that didn’t stop me and I persevered. I kept going and I had people who motivated me throughout the whole journey. Going to the gym and working out became natural to me. Anytime I felt stressed or depressed, I would just go to the gym and work it off. Just because you don’t see progress physically, does not mean that what you’re doing is not working, just keep at it and have fun with it. It will eventually feel less like a chore and more like a fun hobby.
Now you would think that this journey has a happy ending and that I managed to figure everything out about how to live an active lifestyle. Well that’s not the case because after months of hard work, it was all put on pause because of COVID. The pandemic has led to a decrease in motivation to be physically active all around the world. Sports programs, gyms, and other indoor physical activities have been closed off to the public for quite some time which was enough to lower people’s motivation to be physically active.
I myself have been a victim of this because as soon as the pandemic started, I had no clue what to do about my fitness. Before COVID, I was always out and about doing my thing, going to the gym for 2-3 hours at a time, and now we are isolated in our homes, unable to do anything. I started to go crazy because the gym was my way of relieving my stress, depression, and anxiety. I thought that maybe I could do home workouts and go for runs but the motivation was just not there anymore.
Eventually, everything that I had lost slowly crept up and I was back to where I started. This was a hard reality for me to accept because I worked so hard to lose all of this weight only to gain it back during the pandemic. Now every time I look in the mirror, I feel a sense of regret and sadness, but then the more I think about it, the more motivated I am to get back into it. The pandemic may have beaten me and my motivation but I have been here before, the only difference is that I now know it is possible and I know what I need to do.
The pandemic may have affected your health and fitness as well. Maybe your motivation to be physically active is not there either, but there is a silver lining to this. Use this extra time you have to learn something new, take time to figure out how to get your fitness back in order, find new ways to better yourself, so that the next time you decide to make a change you’ll be able to use your new skills. My fitness levels may have taken a toll but I used this time to learn how to cook so that I would buy less take-out food. I also learned new exercises and the proper ways of designing a workout plan. I may not be exercising as much or being physically active but I am learning new skills that I can use when I get back into it. Things may be tough right now but use this time to plan ahead for the future. Change does not happen right away, but by taking time to plan it out, you’re already taking that first step.
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