Gym-spiration – I Need Some

Two years ago I joined Planet Fitness, determined to get out of my funk of being overweight and exhausted. I had a goal of getting my body back to where it was in my twenties. Now being in my 40s, I realize that was quite a lofty goal, nonetheless I worked hard at it. Because of certain health issues that I have, including COPD and asthma, it does make it hard to keep up with workouts the way healthier people would. I was actually proud of myself because I was going to the gym 5 days a week without fail and continuously upping my workouts to beat my personal bests. I did end up losing about 20 lbs, gaining a lot of strength but not a lot of tone. I still had quite a few inches of fat to lose.


Then the pandemic hit. In March and April, all of our gyms started closing down. Membership fees were frozen until an unknown reopening date. I went ahead and canceled mine because I didn’t want to be surprised with a membership fee when they decided to reopen. During that time of being stuck at home, no longer able to go to the gym which was directly between home and my office, which had also shut down, my motivation went to shit. Now I was waking up to walk 20 steps to my desk where I sat for 10 to 11 hours everyday only to walk 20 steps back to bed at the end of my shift. Working at home redefined a sedentary lifestyle. The pounds came back quickly. The energy left quickly.


Now that the gyms are open again, I have been trying to get back on the path albeit slowly. My lack of energy makes it difficult, as does no longer passing by the gym on the way to the office and back home. Now instead of ending my shift at 8:00 p.m. and going to bed, it means actually getting dressed for the gym, driving down there, wearing myself out, and driving back home. When you haven’t really left the house for 8 months, that’s a heck of a chore. I know that one option would be to wake up a couple hours early and go work out before I start my shift but I’m always leery of doing that because anything could happen to make me late for work. I am no stranger to flat tires and dead batteries. I’m also no stranger to back injuries which lay me up for a few days at a time. One wrong move and my scoliosis reminds me it’s there.


I desperately want to get back to my 5-day a week workout routine. The trouble is finding the energy and motivation to do so. I suppose I do have the motivation in being sick and tired of looking the way I do. I know that the more weight I lose the more energy I will have. So what’s my problem? I think once I got into the gym habit it was easy to go. It was my personal time, my alone time, and I looked forward to it. The lockdown broke that habit however and now it is extremely difficult trying to get back into it.


For those of you who continue to go to the gym, I would love to hear what inspires you to keep at it. Let me know in the comment section below what motivates you to be your best self.

Challenges never cease

Yesterday, I was looking forward to making the trip 2 1/2 hours south to go pick up my daughter who I haven’t seen in far too long. We miss each other terribly but its been nearly impossible to get up the money to get there as far behind as everything had fallen. Well, the thrill of having my daughter back has been taken away from me yet again as I have been in the hospital since Wednesday with a very sudden onset of right lower lobe pneumonia. I have been unresponsive to most of the breathing treatments, antibiotics and steroids that they have been pumping me with. I was in such respiratory distress yesterday that the doctor strongly suggested intubating me for 48 hours and waking me up after 2 days of ICU treatment. Of course I fought it tooth and nail. He diagnosed me with COPD. My blood pressure upon arrival was stroke level 236/120. My blood sugar is running in the 200’s so I’m shooting insulin three times a day. I’m an unholy trifecta of health problems right now. I had been praying for healing but certainly did not have to go through all this to achieve it. I think I was hoping for more of a miracle than missed child, missed work, missed home. I just hope to God my daughter understands that my being away is not by choice, that I want us together but that I am still financially destitute and severely ill. I still, after all the treatment, cannot get out of bed without taking ten minutes to catch my breath. I don’t know how long I will be in hospital, but I need to start responding NOW to treatment.