Workout Streaks, Eating Disorders and Life in general- Little things to tell your brain

You're here because my workout streak intrigued you or maybe the title but I take that as an appreciation. Thanks for coming! This is a note to my future self that I can do the things that I set my mind to and an anecdote to tell my friends it's not difficult!! I have always believed that being physically fit reflects into being happy. And by being fit I do not talk about looking sleek and sexy, no! It's about being at peace with your body and with who you are. It's about feeling great. All our bodies are different, all our minds are different, how we function is different. Don't take what I say as it is, I know that my friend circle is smart enough to not do that but I re-emphasize that you evaluate these things in your context and just ponder if this is of any use I talk here not specifically about fitness but about the mind. The Past To set context, to organically present to you why I choose to do what I choose to do and why these ways work for me, I'll have to tell you a bit more about myself, my mental and eating disorders and about my childhood and teenage years. I'll try to keep this very brief. You can skip this if you wish to. I had been an obese child for as long as I remember. You cannot blame kids when they don't particularly gravitate towards the "fat" child in the class. I inevitably felt under confident and a need to hide, which I still do sometimes even at this point in life. I wasn't a physically active child, I'm not very proud of it but that was who I was. I preferred brooding to playing. I spent most of my childhood with my then just widowed grandma. It was a two way thing, she gave me undivided attention and love that wasn't easy for me to get from my stupid 4-year old bully peers and I gave he the love and solace she needed. I don't blame anyone but that wasn't probably the best place to be. Hiding in the comfort zone, being exposed to emotions of sorrow and love that intense. I was right there in the middle of it and I think I can tell, it was when I started understanding people's emotions with utmost sensitivity. I had been too aware of emotions, of others and mine. I over analyse emotions and feelings and I guess it all started there. As a child, I had nothing to do but understand how people felt. I didn't choose to go out and make friends for obvious reasons. I was hiding away. When I look back, my childhood is extremely empty, I don't remember anything that stands out for me. It's like a void. To fill the void I felt back then and to feel special, there was only one way out for me. Academics. I used to listen and study well and always had a girlfriend who I loved so dearly. It was always one person for me. I always chose to keep a small, very intense world. By the time I was 6, I was already morbidly obese- 36 kgs at 6, 40 at 8, 50 at 10, 72 at 12, 84kg at 13 years age. That was my peak. I changed school, I was the brightest kid in the class and got the spotlight, I think it was at 13. At thirteen is when I believe I started living life. Like my life started there and before that it's just a blank page. I had a cozy group of friends. I was the fattest and the brightest. It started from academics. The story of determination. I wouldn't let my piece of identity, that just one piece I possessed, go away. I'd study day and night. A lot more than my peers. My life had been deprived of male attention all girls got. It was and still is a big factor of my mind. I craved to be liked, by boys in particular. It wasn't about attraction but maybe more about attention. I needed a boy to feel worthy. And I knew, why no one was interested in talking to me as a friend. Why everyone called me "sis" "akka"affectionately.I didn't like it. I was done being mature beyond my age, I was done feeling older, I was done being made to feel the older cozy motherly figure. I was already working out and had lost 10 kgs in a year by grade 9. And then, this infamous crush struck me ( you know it, you know the guy y'all bitches from school 😂) . It hurt me that the guy felt embarrassed about me having a crush on him. I became a literal mad woman and started working out aggressively. In the summer of 2015, I lost around 12 kgs in 40 days. For the first time in life I saw how beautiful I looked without all that flab, though I did it for a guy, I became very confident. I weighed 60 kgs, my lowest since I was a teenager. Losing weight changed my world , now the popular kid considered making friends with me. In the years that followed, I had been lowkey cheated on. I was scarred and felt unworthy. That's a whole different story but I don't want to talk only about the sad things of the 8 years of my living. Shoutout to everyone who loved me and respected me and let me keep my small intense world with pride and filled me up with joy. Shoutout to you Apoorva, Tanu for choosing to be my friends and still being there. Shoutout to Janhavi for pulling me out of the rubble. Shoutout to Vishnu for loving me and letting me live life my way. Shoutout out to Mrnalika for always reading what I write and making me feel worthy of life. Shoutout to friends like Guna for whom I hold immense admiration in my heart. Apoorva again, shoutout to you because 😂I don't know how to put it. Shoutout out to all the new friends of lockdown. Bala, I write this because you pushed me to and thank you for that :)! Also my genius brother who is my biggest fan. Okay, let's start! Health Issues I was diagnosed with PCOS at 14. I had been bulimic for the most part between 13 years of age until 3 months ago. I have a history of starving myself. I had been severely depressed for two years from 15ish to 18ish and in a bout of anxiety for almost a year from 2018 (when I joined IIT Madras) to 2019. I'm not flexing here and I don't say they were terrible years. I did have happy fun times during depression, but I make it a point to acknowledge where I was at. It's all sorted now, I'll tell you how! Don't Fret Pt. 1 - Eating Disorders Okay, so! For me bulimia was because I unconsciously felt I would get fat by eating a big meal one day. When I went on a workout spree in 2015, I had been bulimic and kept literally nothing in my stomach. 8 years is a lot of bulimia and Vishnu pestered me to talk to my therapist about it. By then I had come across this example from Rutuja Diwekar's book that "it's stupid to think that one day's food could get us fat and it's ridiculous how much extra effort people put to compensate, it's just one day". It made a lot of sense to me. It's unnatural to tune our body to very orderly food practices, it should also be able to handle occasional feasts here and there. But it takes reflection to seperate a feast day from a feisty life. It only starts getting to you when you make bad food a part of your lifestyle. There's no need to fret and vomit out for one day thing, it causes more damage and there's no advantage at all. Bulimia can also cause death. If you manage to tell yourself your stomach is very well equipped to handle it or, you don't choose to fill yourself up to an uncomfortable extent where yourself to the brim, you're good to go! All it takes is a little control over the mind. When you're full and you're going for another slice of cake, all it takes is a syllable "No" from your mind. Don't think beyond it! Accept where you are! If you want to lose weight or get better at academics or any change you want to bring to your life, *you have accept where you are , just be highly aware* Say, you have to get better at academics, you feel it itching. You cannot be passive-aggressive saying "Hey we gotta improve but see where we are at is not bad yeah" when you do it, your mostly making excuses with yourself and oh come on guys! Why would you want to hide from your gut? It's STUPID. Honesty with self, listening to yourself is important. Don't trick yourself and be stupid. When there's a crisis, recognize it, be honest! It was my moment after months of failed workouts on April 4, "Uh oh, it looks bad now, I need to workout! " The declaration hence, has been made. Next up, the work! Choose but Choose!. It's lovely to have the world lay before you with it's millions of possibilities and options to choose from. But mate, the harsh truth is that sometimes in life, we need to make concrete goal based decisions and our life is limited to explore everything that's there. A choice needs enough pondering but also there'll be a point when you know the pondering is getting too much. Indecisiveness strikes! It is a craft to be able to balance freedom of choice with consistency and will power to get things done. Yes, it is, and for you to be able to get a feel of it, it'll take practice. Quoting my example, I picked up at least 5 workout challenges and completed none! The 12 week workout challenge I just completed had 4 failed attempts before it. Each time, I was able to complete only 2 to 4 weeks of it. After making the choice… Assuming that the choice has been made with enough reflection and awareness. It's time to stick to it! And don't go back! Unless it's starting to give you problems you didn't expect or cannot handle. That's a rare case. We mostly evaluate and pick things that we can do. Say, you want to learn DSA, you picked a course after much evaluation and it feels off after a point, don't go around looking for another course unless you have concluded it cannot serve you. All of the research has to be done ahead of making a choice! It becomes difficult if you keep jumping around from this to that and to have started doing a million things but couldn't complete even one! For me, I chose my workout program and stopped browsing other workouts and went on with it. It was worth it. Consistency teaches as much moving forward as variety teaches being here and exploring. Do not undermine the learnings that consistency could potentially provide. Don't Fret Pt. 2: Being in the moment! If you have a workout to do tomorrow and you start making your mind wary of it from today's night , you won't have strength to start working out or the state of mind of taking the workout to completion! I have learnt this from Vishnu and used it making my own amends. Preserve your energy! So he stops studying few hours before exam unlike me who prefers reading until the papers arrive. By the time I start reading the question paper, I have tonnes in my brain already- worry, expectations, tonnes of freshly dumped information. There's probably no space in my mind to process what the questions ask for when his mind is at its peak energy, free from worries and in action right when it's required! Can you believe it! Sometimes, being smart requires you to stop thinking! As for my workouts, I never made it a point to go over the next days workout and be prepared as such. I knew it was only going to wary me. So I just opened the workout in the morning and started doing it and got it done yep, not thinking helped. Why mornings are important… Well, for me, if I got my workout done in the first hour, I felt immensely active and energetic to crush anything that could come at me. Just feeling active is the point! Starting right is a thing! Days when you don't start right… There'll be days you don't start well. What worked for me was *not sticking to the notion of "if the beginning of the day goes down, the rest goes down too" * I have been, many of us are of a belief or hold the practice of letting it all go down voluntarily when things start going down, wait for hitting the rock bottom and then derive motivation from the crisis and so on. Been there, done that. It's a stupid practice! Do not ever forget, you are in charge of your life. There are times you cannot use your power because you're not in a place to but always, in life, YOU ARE IN CHARGE! So when things start going down in your life do not blame it on nature and give up on your charge. Get the bull by its horns. It's a waste of life and time to wait for it all to go down! To set context, if there was a certain day I woke up late, I didn't just give up on my workout because I didn't start. I just preferred to complete it. Spurts vs Lifestyle We all dream to be something or be somewhere in life. And to achieve that, we sometimes think it's completely fine to get things done all at once. The Spurts of hard work or effort do not contribute to your personality or character! A lifestyle does. Patience! We glorify people who chill and work one day and finish it but the real strength is in waking up every morning, having the discipline and awareness to pull off things in a sustainable manner. So, for workout, it's not one challenge you do and be done, it's just the beginning of a lifestyle you're imbibing. Stop viewing life like a bunch of dots. Life lies in the transients- the processes, the nuances- more than it lies in the beginning or the end of something. Talking about the time you put a streak and you broke it one day, if you view the streak as a continuous process and not mind the break and start again, awesome! That's lifestyle. If you view a streak just as a goal to smash and all the value you give to it is the number itself, you give up and fail. Pushing yourself on the difficult days.. I never took a break from my workouts even on the days I had to give end semester examinations. As long as I felt I had enough energy to pull it off, I did it. On the days of exams, I worked out in the afternoons instead of mornings. It gave me immense madness and pride to be so dedicated. It reflected everywhere. You'll be aware of your body needs, if it doesn't need a break and there's an offer for a break, you don't have to take a break if you could pull it off. Think in minutes and seconds… Frog jumps, burpees, planks and lunges damn it! These were the exercises I fretted to do. I didn't let myself droop at the sight of them but I concentrated on getting through the next 10 seconds.. The next 10.. And done! Breaking the goals into small chunks is an excellent way of life! Take breaks! When we are in full swing, we prefer not to take breaks. Sometimes it's from the excitement, sometimes from the fear of inconsistency! Human bodies and minds require breaks. We require breaks to be consistent in the long run! Going to work after a break is a great action of resilience! Be aware of physical pain, mental agony DO WHAT FEELS GOOD DO WHAT FEELS WORTHY Keeping Track, being proud, being your own anchor ⚓ The workout I pulled off way back in 2015 is still my anchor. It's evidence of how far I can go, what I can do! Right now as I'm writing this down, I know I'm writing this to my future self as an evidence, as a reminder of all learning. Do great things in life, the things that make you happy and proud. Acknowledge these journeys in life, hold them close to your heart, keep rising when you fall. Look up to yourself. Fear not!! That's it y'all, I feel hella fine after these 60 days of workout. Thank you Heather Roberson! Onto the next workout challenge from tomorrow! Happy and Proud Shravani Thota 15 June, 2021