Improving my health by getting more active every single day

My first time posting in this community

I found this community a few weeks ago and decided to subscribe because I knew soon this would be one where I was going to share my experiences regarding self improvement. Not only mentally, but also physically. For several years, my activity level was very low, I was not really motivated by the environment and this made me get active less and less because halfway through the year we had the pandemic period and weren't allowed much, the other half we were still living in a dirty area where I just didn't feel happy in general. You can truly say that I hated living there most days and that it could have a huge impact on my mental state of mind. Luckily, I'm very aware of the fact when my mood drops below 0 and it's not a one day thing so that I can at least kick myself in the butt and not dwell in self misery for too long.

If you aren't happy where you are, do something about it!

It's something that sounds quite easy in a way, but for many people the usual answer will contain tons of excuses why they can't change this or that because of x or y. I was that person too in the past, I only saw issues/bumps/problems that weren't going to bring me anywhere instead of thinking in solutions and making it happen. I've learned that the advice of just do something about it is often leading to the response of excuses from most people, and now that I know (after breaking through that cycle of excuses) that it's often (exceptions are there, of course) not that hard as they think at all, I've gotten a bit allergic to people full of excuses.

I had a whole list of things I wanted to improve

For about 4,5 years we were very unhappy in Budapest, there were good things, yes, and good times, of course, but the overall feeling was unhappy and quality of life was low too. We had a good apartment with some issues but the area, it was so bad! I honestly felt instantly depressed whenever I stepped one foot out of the building. The looks, the smells, the people in general, it was just not our cup of tea. We actually knew this very early, once the buzz of exciting new times and not knowing what the future will bring were slowly fading by the day. We gave it a real shot though, we even considered moving to the country side and buying something there. Which was actually going to be possible as we would have been able to get a mortgage there with our salary, and yet, we decided not to do it, our conclusion became more clear and the one thing we truly wanted was to get out of there as soon as possible.

The pandemic came, making it hard

We decided to sit it out as I really didn't fancy traveling with the restrictions and possible issues along the way so therefore we accepted the fact that our stay would be a bit longer than we hoped. Meanwhile, we were absolutely sure that we were going to move back to Spain, so this extra time also gave us the possibility to consider things more carefully and not act in a rush, in a way the pandemic has brought us (personally) good things as well, opportunities arose and we took them. Our finances improved greatly during these shitty years and therefore making them less shitty for our family.

More points of attention

Even though I'm very proud that I managed to get a lot stronger mentally during the past years, I also got lazy. And I hated it! Now don't get me wrong, I've never been a person that went to the gym 7 days a week, BUT I also never got as lazy as I did during the pandemic years. I fully admit that I sometimes just used the restrictions as an excuse not to get up from my chair and work instead of walk. And yes, the environment, haha. At some point I decided I'd go back to boxing and we bought these pads, I truly enjoyed it but my boyfriend hates holding them up as I punch way too hard according to him, lol. We agreed that we'd pick this up again in Spain. I hope I can convince him one of these days.

I have made a good change and started walking

Maybe you have read my blog about back pains that acted up badly just a week before departure to Spain? This was a month ago, you can read it here. I was a bit afraid that this was going to be an issue traveling as well as walking here as many walks are uphill. Thankfully, I can say that all that walking has made the back pain go away completely until I overdo it some days and then my body screams to take a rest. But I truly built some stamina over the past month! And I'm proud of that, to be honest.

Last month's activity

Here's the screenshot of last month's activity from my Huawei health app. I don't have a smartwatch (yet) so it's just basic info for now:

You can see the start of the month was a lot of walking, the first days were hectic. It slowed down a bit but not for too long. You can see the past weeks have been quite good and almost every day I reached the 7000 steps I aimed for. The few days I didn't, I needed to listen to my body as some days I just feel I have to take a step back.

Pretty funny to see that I almost walked 135km last month. because if I check the past year:

You will see that I walked a total of almost 300km, but almost half of it was done in the past month. I think it's safe to say, I'm on the right track!

Monday's activity

Monday was the first day that I decided to go for a walk in the morning and start being more active to build some stamina. I went in the morning with my daughter and found out that some roads are not easy to reach by foot. I walked uphill to discover a roadblock, shit! We had to walk back, and go uphill again, thankfully there was one other option we could take halfway back, so I didn't have to make a full round. I was glad I didn't as it was already getting hotter by that time.

In the evening, we all went for another walk and my total was 11.7k steps of which 23 minutes were registered as moderate to high intensity. It sure felt like it was more haha.

Even though I was tired, I felt proud and also fitter even after that one day of two good walks.

Yesterday's activity

The next day, I did two again one of them was even all the way down to the sea, and I'm surprised to see I had more steps on Monday as I can barely imagine yesterday's walk was shorter. Either way, it was good to see 32 minutes of moderate to high intensity this time. I didn't feel worse than yesterday so that's a nice bonus.

You can see I'm already making a bit of progress :)

Regular updates

I don't like to pin myself down to weekly or bi-weekly updates because I know real life happens, just as it is right now, I've been feeling horrible due to a sore throat and runny nose. I took a day of rest and will see how I feel tomorrow, I'm actually hoping to feel ok enough to do at least 1 walk, may it be in the morning or evening.

Credits

• The header image is my personal design made in Canva Pro.

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