The eternal question for all white girls. Exercise or Extra Fries? To gym or not to gym?
After my recent post about my mental health slowly going back to ‘normal’, and after forcing people to join my gym, I’ve been visiting the gym regularly for the first time in years. Despite so many years of GCSE and A level PE, I forgot one of the most important aspects of what I learnt: healthy body, healthy mind. Naturally, when you do exercise, your brain releases the chemical called serotonin. Funnily enough it’s been proven that eating chocolate can also release this chemical. Serotonin is responsible for happiness. With this is mind, when thinking of ways I could improve my mental state, exercise was obviously an answer. Although it got to a point where I hated the bones of sport after countless injuries, hours in the pool and illness, after the recent weeks it become so obviously that my body has missed the serotonin it wasn’t getting.
Although I wish I could go and exercise everyday, my body cannot physically take that anymore. However, I have noticed that now I have so much pain in my joints, I can’t feel the achy muscles the next day, so I guess that’s a positive??
It’s fairly frustrating being restricted to specific machines. Because of my weak joints, weight-baring and unsupportive machines are off limits. So I can’t go on a treadmill, I can’t use a normal bike as there’s no support for my back, cross trainers are okay for a small amount of time and my wrists can’t deal with weights heavier than 10kg. This means I’m restricted to what I can use, but nonetheless the benefits are still very apparent.
Unlike most females my age, I’m not doing this to lose weight or get a super slim model-like body. I’m just going to stop me being too fat and to make my brain have a bit of happiness that it so desperately craved.
The thing is it’s so easy to let the arthritis win on a regular basis. Even going for a wee is sometimes enough to make me want a nap. The fatigue always gets to me, and it always make me want to say ‘ah well, I’ll have a takeaway’ and then this is where the white girl dilemma comes in- do I exercise or do I just get fries?? Whereas old Kayleigh would absolutely 100% go for chicken nuggets and extra chips from maccies down the road, new Kayleigh may actually take up your gym offer… but only if food is definitely on the cards for afterwards… because I still love food. I still really love food😂
I suppose the moral of this lil story is that exercise, however difficult to do, benefits you maybe without you even realising. So maybe we should do more exercise every now and then
fightingrablog 