Your health is your wealth

Jacob wants it to be known that he exercises, too!

 

“Those who don’t make time for exercise will eventually have to make time for illness.”  

(Robin Sharma)

Headed early to the gym this morning. Early means after 10am for me, because as a night owl, I am not one for jumping out of bed at 6am to greet the earth with a sun salute.

So I hopped on my bike on my gym gear and cycled merrily down the road, feeling very diciplined and fit.

It’s been four months since I’ve started going to the gym twice a week. Luckily, the gym I go to is small, has a cheap rate for people on no income, and while it has all the equipment, you don’t feel surrounded by gym bunnies and muscle men in tattoos. It’s more your friendly neighbourhood place, where you hop onto the exercise machines and do your own thing.

I’m certainly not a fitness fanatic or diet lover, but I’ve come to realise that if I don’t exercise more and pay slightly more attention to what I devour, I will have to pay the price pretty soon. As an IT freelancer, crafter and writer, my habitual position is slouching over something, be it the keyboard, the knitting or my desk. Not only do I get regular backpains and muscle cramps, I also have a kind of hunched standing posture, that freaks me out every time I look in a mirror.

There are times when I get up from an intensive computing or knitting session, and I can hardly stand up straight. Sewing is even worse – I try not to sew more than 30 minutes in a row without getting up and shaking that body, because otherwise I am stiffer than Myrtle, my wire mannequin.

So I now cycle and go to the gym…and I am starting to notice the difference. From being just about able to lift the measliest weights, I now can haul a few more, my back doesn’t complain as much, and I am far more flexible. I also realised that my stomach muscles weren’t dead after all…

A gym session also puts me in a good mood, and I no longer crash onto the bed for a two-hour nap! And on one occasion, a good hard gym session was needed to get me over a bout of extreme grumpiness and frustration after some futile phonecalls to a certain office…

The hardest part is still to get myself to the gym, but what helped is the fact that I set the gym times nearly in stone. They are close to sacred, and will only be changed in exceptional circumstances. This is ‘me time’. I am doing this for myself, to feel healthier and fitter, to have more energy, and to be able to dance the night away without having to sit down every five minutes, moaning and groaning about aches and pains and feeling a hundred years old.

The gym is actually one place where I get many creative ideas. The body does its work, while I let my mind wander off to knitting patterns and blog ideas…like this one.