By Jou Pabalate
As Riyadhis, we don’t exactly have a good history when it comes to leading healthy lifestyles. Shopping was for a long time our favorite sport and food spotting our main event.
In recent years, the tide has been turning and we now have people regularly climbing Mount Everest. For fun. And because we like jumping on bandwagons, we decided to try out this fitness craze. Let’s just say, it wasn’t an easy run! Haha! Get it? Run?
Despite the gazillion gym selfies and hashtags, there’s a bunch of things fitness freaks don’t tell you when you start working out, like…
1. It’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt A Lot.
That’s it, it’s just really going to shockingly hurt. You’re not going to be able to move for probably a week but you’d have to. Quitting is not an option.
Note: There’s a good pain and a bad pain though so always ask your trainer if there’s something more than soreness.
2. Your hour of training can be reduced to nothing…
By biting into a doughnut. Depressing. We know.
If your initial goal is to lose weight, you’re going to have to understand the unfair law of calorie deficit. Working out burns calories, eating puts it back in. 1 kg = 3,500 calories. Doughnut = 452 calories, to burn it, you’d have to brisk walk around the office for 48 minutes. Do the math.
3. Speaking of Doughnuts, The Homer Illusion is Real
You’ll walk out of the gym feeling like you’ve transformed into David Beckham, up until you look in the mirror. Then you realize you’re a different kind of David. The Hasselhoff variety post-, post-, post- Baywatch days.
And you know what? That’s okay. You start realizing that even if you’re not there yet, you are in fact getting stronger. You’ll be able to climb stairs without dying and 2kg weights will no longer feel like boulders.
4. The Weighing Scale will lie to you
One day you lost a kilo, another day you gained three. Don’t sweat it. Haha. There we go again. Anyway…
Don’t torture yourself by checking your weight everyday. For one thing your weight can vary depending on what time your looking at the scales, your water retention for the day; and some even gain weight because they’re gaining muscles.
Don’t base it on the scales; base it on your clothes. Ditch the scale for a month and when you do check, have your target within a 5kg range rather than a specific number.
5. Sometimes getting to the gym or taking that daily walk can be the hardest thing.
Being more fit takes time. To be honest, it’s not about having time but making time. You’re going to have that surge of energy to get off the couch and workout in the first week but then it’ll dwindle and that’s when you actually need to try harder.
Have your gym bag in your car. Schedule classes. Have a routine, put your workout time in your daily to-dos.
When all else fails, sprinkle your day with exercises. Choosing to walk to places can go along way, so does doing some squats while you catch up on the latest Game of Thrones episode.
