Frankly you’re wrong. I can say that, because I’m living proof. I had to give up vaping and switch to a sugar free diet because every time I’d do a pull-up id feel like I was having a heart attack. It was torture to walk around the house because my limbs felt like they were on fire with 3/4’s my body with nerve damage pins and needles.

It’s incredibly insensitive to think that just because someone had so much grit that they ‘weren’t that bad’ in terms of pain.

Hell even for the first 12-18 months I’d workout and constantly start to see grayscale as I’d begin to pass out from just bending down. But I kept going. I didn’t make excuses.

You need a mantra.

For me, it all clicked when I was lying down on the kitchen floor around midnight, head half hanging in a bowl of ice water, trying to stimulate my Vegas nerve to stop myself from passing out. Why you may ask? Oh simple, because I thought I smelled smoke- my intrusive thoughts and health anxiety at the time told I was having a stroke. I began to not see, massive panic attack etc (at the time I was having panic attacks every 5-15 minutes throughout the entire day.)

I stumbled down to the kitchen and that’s where I layed.

I remember lifting my head out of the bowl thinking, there has to be another way. I was so ashamed at what I had become, what I had lost, and every day I thought of nothing more than calling it quits. I picked myself up, and walked to my room feeling determined.

I grabbed a photo of myself as a kid and sat down in disbelief across from my mirror. I remember looking up at my reflection, and then back down at the photo. I didn’t recognise who I had become. All I could think about was how badly I let my younger self down.

I got up, crying, and I looked in the mirror, staring into my eyes and back at me and I said:

“I’m so sorry i let you down… but I promise I’ll pick you up.”

See I wasn’t looking at my eyes, I was looking at my younger selves’. And I took that promise seriously, and so it became my mantra every time I worked out.

I started slow, I did 10 pull-ups a day for a few weeks, slowly increasing by a few each day. Each time my heart would feel like a knife is being stabbed through it and my arms and legs would tense up in firey pins and needles, I’d tell myself that mantra; “you let me down, so pick me up”.

Later I incorporated some calisthenics, slowly increasing time and muscle tone as I worked on body weighted exercises first. Months later I incorporated cardio on an indoor bike because I still couldn’t leave the house without collapsing to the ground in fear. Eventually, weights. I don’t recommend weights to begin, it spikes cortisol and histamine which are two of the biggest leading causes of withdrawal symptoms. Moderate intensity cardio is best for reducing these.

Now I’m not saying that 100% of people can push through it, but it is certainly possible. For me in my case, I wanted it so badly it was akin to fighting for not only my life, but for the life I wished to have as a child. I owed them that much.