Since May, a lot of strange things have been happening in regards to my health and my physical ability. Six months ago, I was doing four to five intensive workouts a week – two of those days I would be doing two classes back-to-back. Now, I can’t really get away with doing one of the strength classes a week. I haven’t worked out in the capacity that I had been in a few weeks, and I am starting to feel it.
There was a big, obvious reason as to why I was working out so much, and that was to look good. I’ve had some seriously deep habits of hating how I look that had stemmed from late elementary school, but as I have been entering my twenties and life started to pick up, working out had become my biggest stress relief. I was sleeping, smiling, and purposefully walking in front of mirrors. My working out habits started getting pretty heavy about a year ago, giving my six months of some pretty rejuvenating plyometrics, strength training, and some dancing – because ya girl loves to dance! Since I had my first flare up mid-April, I suddenly found myself unable to do the hardcore workouts I had been able to do not two weeks before.
That’s something I have been struggling with more then anything else. Do I miss my daily coffee? Hell yeah. I miss my abundance of Mexican food (chips & salsa ARE the way to my heat) and my ice cream. Don’t even get me started on thick crust pizza; I’ve worked through that, and I’m able to fight off the majority of my cravings. Yet the most difficult thing for me to wrap my head around is that my body can’t really work out the way it could not so long ago. I have found two pretty intense reasons why I’m having issues with it:
- The Level of Intensity Meant A Lot: I tried doing yoga after I realized that maybe jumping around on my inflamed joints wasn’t really good anymore. But I found that I still had aggression and anxiety that flowed through my body maybe an hour after completing a thirty minute yoga session. So I stopped, because of that and more so because I didn’t think it was impressive enough. I kept trying to attend the strength classes, but after the one on Tuesday nights, I woke up and sometimes could hardly walk because of the stress on my ankle joints; I couldn’t make espresso drinks (I work at a local coffee shop) without a pain in my wrists because of the weights. It was a crushing blow. Even when I tried to pick up yoga again, I felt the same pain and immflamuation in my wrists. It’s difficult for me to sit with myself and allow my body to heal and process things is on it’s own, when my brain is so full of previous expectations and emotions that need expression. This has been one rough evaluation of how my body deals with things.
- My Idea Wasn’t A Possibility Anymore: What do I mean by that? I mean that I had always had this image in my head about what I should look like and how to get there. Suddenly, almost overnight, I found myself watching as that image was blown away in my brain, leaving me with no point of reference. How can I burn away the remaining fat if I couldn’t do any kind of cardio? How could I get those lean muscles if I couldn’t attend my strength classes? My God, was I destined to remain half way there?! Fighting with a daily fear of what others things of me, this was the most heartbreaking reality I have had to face so far.
There is one massive positive here though, and that is this: I realized that my image of “attractive, healthy, and fit” was not really going to work for my body type anyway. It clicked in my head that maybe, just maybe, what I was seeing and comparing myself to was actually dangerous to my self-esteem and the image I had of my own body.
It’s easy to take advantage of something that you don’t know can get taken away when you’re so young. It’s incredible what can appear or disappear in just one day. What’s happened though is I’ve found myself feeling healthier then before because I’ve had to make major mental switches. I’ve had to realize that maybe yoga and pilates is actually good enough; that maybe jumping around and lifting dumbbells isn’t the only way to achieve a heathy body or be able to release that stress and anxiety. I’m just now coming around to the idea that being told I have autoimmune diseases was one of the best things to happen to me. Although that depends on the day you ask me, which is like most things.
I wanted to take this moment to write this post, because how I’m feeling right now isn’t common. Living with an autoimmune disease is no joke. But don’t give up. Be gentle with yourself. And continue to try new things. You never know, maybe yoga didn’t work a year ago, but it’ll work for you now.