Tips on Getting Back into Exercise Routine

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MosesRyan
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Joined: 3 May 2024
Gender: Female
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Location: England

03 May 2024, 11:36 am

Hello

Hope someone can share some experience and hope

I've always been very physically fit and active. It's a way of keeping regulated. I have strong psycho motor over excitability. I've been in a severe burn out. Got of of routine. Lots a lot of fitness. I need to get back to exercising and am struggling. I don't do classes as dont like the social element, I like to go in my own rhythm

Anyone have any tips, experience to share? My emotional, mental and physical health is really suffering. Just dont know how to get going again

Look forward to responses



ToughDiamond
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Age: 71
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Today, 2:25 pm

I don't exercise as much as I think I should any more.

Reasons, as far as I know:

1. I used to cycle to work and back twice a day, 5 days a week. Retired now, so I don't. Hopes of getting fit isn't a strong enough incentive to ride it.
2. Bike fell apart, replaced it but the new one is much heavier and therefore harder to pedal up hills.
3. Outdoor environment here is uncomfortable - traffic, very narrow sidewalks or no sidewalks at all, weather too damn hot, stormy, or cold, woodland full of snakes and infected ticks.
4. Little of attraction within reasonable walking distance.
5. Partner has no routine, making it harder for me to adopt a routine. Everything is prone to change at the drop of a hat so planning tends not to work, and my brain isn't flexible enough to adapt to an environment that's in constant flux.
6. Strange abandonment issue that tends to stop me going off and doing what I want to do when partner or cat randomly turns up wanting, or seeming to want, my attention.
7. Tendency to get glued indefinitely to activities on my big heavy laptop, which is physically hard to put to one side because there's no space to put it, the apartment being very small and crowded out.
8. Lost access to exercise bike.

If you can find out more about the reasons why you're no longer exercising, beyond the fact that life knocked you out of your routine and you're feeling burned out, looking at them might point to solutions that could be tried. In my case I don't see any viable fixes for the causes of my physical inactivity, so I guess the only hope is that if I become concerned enough about it, something else will have to give. Sometimes when you've got yourself painted into a corner the only fix is to walk across the damn paint.

Personally I'm a great believer in starting in small ways, and also in the idea "if you can't immediately make it better, at least don't let it get any worse." I try to walk to the store and back every evening (1/4 mile each way, gentle slope) when the heat and traffic have subsided. I also pace up and down the apartment while waiting for water to boil etc. And most days I do a few very simple stretching exercises that could almost be called yoga. A supple body is easier to exercise than a stiff one is.

Right now is a bad time for me to exercise more - I've got flu. :evil: By the time I'm over it, I'll probably have forgotten that I resolved to exercise more when I was healed.



MoeTrashPanda
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Joined: 7 May 2024
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Today, 2:48 pm

Same =(. I used to be super active in high school, but once I graduated and moved out of my parent's house my motivation to exercise really dropped. It doesn't help that sweat is a huuuge sensory issue for me.

I work in an office which has made my physical activity levels worse. Right now the only for sure thing in my routine is standing at my office desk. I like to stand for the last 20 - 30 minutes of each hour of my work day. I have it on my calendar to do a 15 minute walk at 2:00pm every day, but I usually ignore it... Maybe I should do it today. I also try to schedule a walk with my partner on my hair washing days (Tuesday and Saturday)--that way I can get any smell of sweat/oil out of my hair immediately after I'm done walking. So, I guess the only advice I have is to do things that are enjoyable to you, and to partner it with something you already have established in your routine.

One thing I read in a book (Jeanette McCurdy's I'm Glad my Mom Died) is that you shouldn't let your slip ups slide into an avalanche of failure. I'm trying to abide by this and be more forgiving of myself if I break my routine.

I'm going to subscribe to this thread because I'm also curious what other people do to get more exercise into their daily lives.


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