The one part of my body I'm prioritising exercise for.
Discover more from Lou O'Reilly takes out the trash.
The one part of my body I'm prioritising exercise for.
The gains have never been more important.
A short and sharp post today.
Chronic illness SUCKS!
I haven’t been to the gym in weeks. And while I’m definitely not the fitness gym bunny I used to be, I’m sad I’ve lost the small amount of strength and fitness gains made earlier this year.
In terms of getting better, resting works. But the utter bore of chronic illness is that if you do a half arsed job of resting, you don’t get any better, you actually get worse. Or at least in my case, that’s exactly what happened.
However, while I’m doing all this frankly boring resting, exercise for me cannot be off the table completely. But my goals have changed somewhat.
Everything from the neck down - out.
Exercising purely for good mental health - in.
The longer this bullshit illness hangs around, the sooner a sharp decline in my mental health will come knocking.
So my plan is to cut it off at its knees!
I may not be able to box with my trainer, or throw around heavy weights right now, but there are small things I can do that will help.
Walking - taking my dog on sniffari walks is super slow and good for us both.
Exercise snacks - using my body weight only to do short, sharp sets of 3-6 reps for the achievement factor.
Consuming uplifting content - TikTok is full of mental health survivors and advocates to help me not unpack in misery land.
Eating super nutritionally dense foods - gotta get the 5+ in.
Drinking a tonne of water - my favourite drink bottle is at work, but I’ve just seen a dupe at Kmart so that will be a job for my daughter to pick up next time she’s there (probably today).
Continue to take the plethora of medicines I have on my dance card right now
What have I missed?
I have three topics I’m reading about and working on (I’m not a researcher by any stretch) at the moment. No idea when I’ll be finished, but hopefully soon!
Bariatric surgery - this one is huge and complex, but I’m dabbling in creating a piece on it because it’s important.
Somatic exercise - this one piqued my interest after seeing an ad for it on social media. The ad itself was trashy, but a quick read across one of my favourite nerd sites - Harvard Med, shows some interesting empirical evidence so far and I thought I would do a personal experiment and see what happens for me.
How to start running when you suck at it, but really what to be a runner - I’m doing this because I hate running, but I’ve always wanted to be a runner. I know, go figure. Couch to 5K didn’t really work for me, so I’m investigating other ways.
Thanks for reading this newsy. I really appreciate the time you give to me for this and I hope you get some value from it. If you have any questions you can reply directly to this email or if you’ve landed here from a link, email lou@sweatypals.nz. You can also follow me on Twitter here, and instagram here.
Please remember while I am a qualified fitness trainer, and I’ve done a couple of nutrition papers, I am not a registered dietitian or nutritionist. Information shared here is through my own lived experience, personal study or a peer reviewed study I have nerded out on reading and sharing with you.
Lou xx