Sunday, July 14, 2013

Pain is temporary,quitting is forever..... lets run

It has been a while since the last time i updated this blog. Who would have ever thought that it has been one year and 7 months that i have been away from my hometown in Taman Keramat . I have made a point to myself that when i pen this down, it requires sheer dedication and courage to share with anybody in this blog. As most of the writing entry in my blog has so far dedicated to fitness and nutrition, these two things will define and has defined my journey toward having better life quality in term of health and wellness. In the last two years I have been in the pursuit, I will not forget the time how it all started. My self journey started when I got a disturbing news that I was detected having a pre-diabetic during my pre-employment checkup. I could say it was the turning point in my life where the fear of suffering from diabetes later in my life struck me. Diabetes does not require  introduction to me as many of my family members had suffered and most has succumbed tragically to the deadly disease. Knowing that it is a reversible process, and with my family health background, I said to myself I need to change the way of my life.
The first time when I started this personal endeavor of getting my body healthy,  I didn't have a clue on how to achieve it. I would just do like all ordinary guys doing it by exercising aimlessly, with no consistency hoping that I kept the disease at bay by making my body sweat. I got all the information about it through reading and spending countless hours watching Biggest Loser Youtube video. Not only that, I did also spend money on various reading materials from the net with few purchase of  motivation books already in my book collection. The lack of motivation and drive to continuously to do it is the one that are missing in the puzzle. I reckoned that work load too may hampered my efforts.
Away from home and the food temptation that i had to endure here, may be the the turning point. It's like when you are in Miri, you attend a boot camp where everything can be done regimental and efficiently. All the tips that you know on how to lose weight can be executed here. I myself must decide to do all the tips that i have learned. The most important aspect is the time management. Here in Miri, I managed to go back home as what i have always plan to do.  Long gone the time that I have to endure almost two treacherous hours traffic when commuting daily from my workplace to home.In KL I could plan to complete my job by 3pm, but by the time i reached the jogging track, it was almost Maghrib and I was already exhausted . The only time that i could concentrate on my fitness was during weekend but, to get it done in 3-4 hours is near impossible and could not be repeated. Here in Miri, jobs can be completed or at least i am not in a constant pressure to meet any dateline. I am my own boss in a way. So i could to some extent run in a park almost every day.
As for the exercise, i did concentrate on elevating my fitness first by doing skipping at my own pace and at the comfort of my room. I have been skipping from the day that i thought it was the most effective and convenient exercise that I could do at home. However it is still not the best exercise to do due to its limitation. Few issues that I encountered was that the body take time to recover especially at the bottom part of your leg. I felt burning ache at the sheen, knee and posterior muscle of the legs most of the time and it just not go away. It dampens you when you want to push your body to do more repeats, but the mind keeps telling that I will not survived another minute as when I started to feel the pain. Thing became worst if you skipping bare footed just like i did . So i decided that I need to start jogging, but this time with proper attire - jogging shoes. My first thought that I must replicate the exercise that has shown  small success that I have achieved so far . I decided to switch to jogging because it has shown result previously. The only issue that i had with jogging is the same issue that i had with skipping. At first, i was concerned too much on my fitness because after running to 1km i will be running short of breath. When i am running out of breath, it will not look good. I have the thought that the longer you run without stop, the more calorie you burn. So this is the problem when you are setting expectation too much, you want to get immediate result by pushing hard but in the end you could not sustain.Given the vast amount of time that i have saved here, i strategized and plan my fitness training. I started the jogging at slower pace and covering less mileage. The first time around, i could only managed to complete about 800m without stopping. Later I learned the correct breathing techniques while running and put my focus on achieving certain mileage per week. I too allow sufficient time for my body to recuperate.  Once you achieve the smaller targets that been set weekly, it boost the confidence that i have been missing in me. Once the confidence kicks in, the pain was not much of an issue . Currently my routine is to run 1.6km to 2km non-stop, and to run 15km weekly
So basically now i have already master the technique that suit my body, and I will let you know the results in my later posting. And the mantra that have kept me moving, which I learned from the biggest Loser contestant "Pain Is Temporary, Quitting Is Forever" does help me especially during my running exercise. It seems that it removes the pain that you have been suffering as you push yourself to prevent  you to quit before you reached the goal that you have set. You must not trapped yourself into the old habit if you decide to quit early in every exercise that you made.