I still don't feel better since posting this- in fact I am not at work but sitting on the sofa waiting for my doctor's appointment. Needless to say I haven't been working out and am not sure when I will be able to pick up my routine again. In light of my last post where I said that I get annoyed when I can't exercise, I did some thinking and tried to figure out what exactly it is that gets me so upset. When I am fit it's not always with pure pleasure that I am looking forward to my daily workouts. I usually exercise in the afternoon or the early evening and some days I really struggle to convince myself that it is necessary for me to get up and going. When I come home from work I am hungry and sometimes tired, I see piles of laundry laying around and there's 10.000 reasons why I should not be working out. Still, that never stops me from picking up my bike or lacing on my shoes and I always do my workouts as planned. My mood and attitude towards my designated workout of the day shifts completely the second that I start it. There's no more sofa to sit on and the laundry has long been forgotten. I focus on myself, my body, my thoughts and my goals and I actually can let go and relax. When exercising I am truly with myself and all the other worries and struggles of the day are pushed aside for a little while. Especially when running I am able to let my thoughts wander and I have oftentimes been able to come up with solutions to problems or answers to questions that concerned me. In a way, my workouts are very luxurious "me times" that I have been fitting into every single day lately and I have been benefitting from them in all aspects of my life outside of fitness as well. I am definitely overall less stressed and don't let problems at work or in other relationships get at me so much. It is almost as if I am not only physically strengthening my body but my mind as well. On top of that, at the end of every workout there's a feeling of achievement that is very enjoyable. There's so many things all of us have to do every day that they don't stand out anymore. We all have to work, we all have to pay our bills, we all have to take care of a million things but at the end of the day we don't say to ourselves: "Well done! Great job taking out the trash!" At the end of my exercises I usually do that, though. I feel that I have achieved something. Even though it's not measurable, it is special to me that I have gone through the effort of doing this particular workout. That's why I miss working out and I hope that this doctor will fix my cold so that I can continue my program very soon.
