Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Transition Phase

If any of you have or are about to embark on a drastic life style change then some of what I am about to say will make sense. Imagine this. It is the middle of winter, freezing bloody cold, you are overweight to a point where your life has just become a mere existence and you fear the future as you have let your weight and fitness get to a point where you are probably going to die if drastic action is not taken. Fast forward 12 months and you have been exercising non stop for the past 6 months, been watching what you are eating and your quality of life has improved by 100%. Things aren’t as much of a struggle as they used to be and you enjoy being outdoors. You enjoy your friends and family and you just enjoy waking up and seeing the sun… BUT in a funny reversal you now find the gym boring and want to get out and do the things outside that you haven’t done for a long time.

The situation above is obviously about me – aka Team Shell. I have had extensive conversations about this with people that I thought would know. Not the trainers at Flames but people in similar situations who have lost a lot of weight and completely changed their lifestyles. One guy at work summed it up perfectly. He said “What you are going through is a transition. The transition from exercising because you really, really need to lose weight to exercising as part of your lifestyle”. For me I thought that was a perfect description of what is going on. The gym feels really restrictive because I know what will happen next as they say, as I have been doing the same program for a few weeks. Some of the trainers are great and mix it up for you and others are not as imaginative. I guess I just want more. So that is what I am going to do. For the next two weeks I am dropping back to three sessions at Flames a week then two sessions on my pushbike or at the pool. I just want to see what happens.

I will let you all know how it goes of course. As I mentioned the other day, I have a whole new neighbourhood that needs exploring.

2 comments:

Ann Y said...

This transition feeling is so normal, but it is also a time to push harder. Yes vary your forms of exercise but you will always need to have the core form of exercising to just keep the status quo.
As an associate said it's a lifetime change not just these six months that has given you a taste of feeling better.

Anonymous said...

Hi Shell, you could always join up to a bootcamp style program for a couple of months. Still have someone to motivate and enforce but with the variety of different people and excercises and the bonus of being outside.