Habits
#33: Work trips and fitness skips
You don’t realize the true power of habits until you break one.
For major part of 2023, I had struggled to find a fitness habit and keep it. But since September 8th, I have gone to swim at my local pool for 35 days. That is enough for me to proudly claim that I have a good fitness habit going on. Swimming regularly felt like discovering a hidden chest buried within the depths of my willpower. Most evenings after work, I try to get a solid 48 laps of my 25m pool in 30 minutes and feel a sense of accomplishment. Everything was going great with my new fitness habit.
But last week, I had to go away for a work trip and my habit was broken.
That week looked like - work, eat, sleep, repeat. My days were spent at the vendor’s office, and in the evenings, my colleagues and I would go to these fancy restaurants. We stuffed ourselves with meals loaded with barbecued fats, deep-fried carbohydrates, and grilled calories. My taste buds had a field week.
I had planned to burn off excess calories in the hotel pool. When I went to the pool on the first day, I was disappointed. It was 3 feet deep at it’s shallow end and was about the size of a bedroom. It was perfect for a baby to swim laps in. There was no way I could swim laps in that pool and my habit was broken.
I started to feel a little funky after the first couple of days. My movement was limited during the day, I didn’t burn the calories I was feasting on. I could feel the weight gain after every meal like I was putting on a slightly heavy jacket. Also, the newbie muscles gains felt like they were wilting because I wasn’t exerting them. I knew this week wasn’t going to be good for my body.
So when I returned from the trip and jumped back into the pool this week, I wasn’t surprised when I had to exert myself more. The same workout I did before going to the trip now took longer. I had taken a step backwards. I wished I could save the progress I had made before the trip and could re-start in the same spot a week later. But life doesn’t work that way. It made me realize how important it is to stay consistent with my swimming.
It is part of my daily routine now.
PS: I know, I have lost my habit of writing this newsletter. I am working to make some improvements on that.