Adrenaline high!!!

I love exercise!!! I do I do and I do!!

It's a huge pillar of support in my life and I recommend everyone to work out their own fitness plan and stick with it! Regular exercising has SO much benefits, at the very least you get this beautiful endorphin rush after sweating it out and working out a storm. Endorphins are hormones your brain produces to get you that "happy" feeling. It is the same kind of feeling drug addicts chase, new couples have and new mothers produce when they see their babies. You feel invincible and on top of the world. With exercise, it is probably the healthiest way to obtain this hormone. Oh, consuming chocolate also produces this.

When you eat right and exercise regularly, most people will enjoy

a. Less aches and pains. You know what I'm talking about. All those years prancing around in those?
Yup, they take a toll on your poor lower back. Pregnancy too. Funnily enough, I used to have knee problems climbing stairs. Ever since I started working out regularly, it went off.


b. A fitter, trimmer body that you are proud of. 6 packs or not, your body can only benefit from the strength training and cardio workouts you constantly do. After a while, you can wear clothes you used to shy away from because the flabby arms and saggy ass firms up and you can wave goodbye without it trembling nonstop! Your arms that is. If your ass trembles when you wave goodbye, I'd say you've got bigger problems there... hehe

c. You can enjoy your food and do not need to look for weird diets that promise the world and usually do not work. Some of those that have been bandied around... no this and no that, I think even if it works you have no idea what it's done to you internally. Trust yourself, not so whatever studies the papers decide to publish on that given day. We have seen how coffee is SO bad for you one day, then a total turnaround by saying it's got anti cancer benefits the next. It all depends on whomever is funding the studies, doesn't it? Bah humbug! Eat right and eat well.

d. It's no guarantee that you won't drop dead of a heart attack before your expiry date. I hear people talking about so and so they knew who lived so healthily and yet still died of a heart attack or a stroke you know. But all things considered, it is still your best bet. The benefits of living healthily will put the life into your years. Remember, its not the years you have in your life, but the life you have in them! What is the point of living to a hundred if you can't eat what you want, you can't travel because you can't walk long distances, you can't physically enjoy time with your loved ones?

Life is too short to be otherwise.

A little chat on fitness

What is your idea of fitness?

I've lived most of my life in a state of inactivity. Having been blessed with a skinny gene (both my parents are skinny), I've never been interested in working out. Sweat? Work out? What's wrong with you? I can fit in my clothes thank you very much. My best friend used to come to my house to drag me out to exercise - I never once went. Hehe. I remember once trying out a gym and getting told by the woman in the next treadmill, why are you here honey? Go home and eat some cakes!!  I've always controlled my size with my eating. When I want to lose some weight, I simply eat less. I was one of those annoying pregnant women who do not look very pregnant, just a neat bump in front.

Enter parenthood.

Yeah yeah, pregnancy was fair enough, with my gynae telling me to keep the weight gain to 4 pounds per month. He would actually tell me off it I put on any more than 4. He explained that my body frame isn't large, so it would not be a good idea to have a large baby to deliver. I thought it was logical enough, so I did as he told me.

I lost all my pregnancy weight when my son was 6 months old. I remember having to buy size 6 jeans, which I could never fit into before, and never again since. I went on happily inactive until I had to play and dance alongside my baby in kindermusik classes. I actually put my back out leaping like a frog. That was my realisation that I had to do something if I wanted to remain healthy and around for my son.

I joined a gym soon after. I did mainly weight training with a personal trainer 3 times a week, but was still neither here nor there because the trainer allowed me to get away with a lot of nonsense.

Fast forward to this year, after moving down to KL I had to find some support pillars. More on that in another post, but fitness is one of them.

I am now heading to the gym 5 times a week for various classes and it serves my purpose. TRX is my new best friend. It sculpts your body like you wouldn't believe! I believe I'm the fittest I've ever been in my life.. it's good to be able to feel this way, isn't it? I got a little crazy at the start but I think now I've mellowed down and am taking it easy, enjoying the process rather than the result. I think of it as preparing for a marathon instead of a sprint. If you do too much too soon and push yourself to the edge, you are going to burn out. Chances of you stopping and never continuing is too great because of the all or nothing mentality. Sidebar - another benefit of this support pillar is that I've met a like minded group of people that I can hang out with. That's great, considering I didn't have that big a network when I decided to move to this place.

Contrast that with enjoying whatever number of times you have allocated to work out a week, resting or skipping a day when you feel like it and knowing you can get back with a fresh body. That somehow makes you stronger after a couple of days of rest, you know?

Buddha preached the middle way, and that's what I'm doing with my fitness. What about you? What is your story with fitness?