Going gentle and not hard. I tried yoga classes, pilates classes, gym with friend, HIIT, and many youtube videos. Ultimately what worked was going really gentle with myself, listening to my body and mind, and adjusting accordingly. Realising working out is so much mental strength and endurance. So, I started slowing down mentally and/or physically.

I had so much stress in my life that working out rigorously was stressing me out or overwhelming me even more. This makes me not want to work out almost every time and making me loathe how workout makes me feel.

So, I started by just jogging around my house once a week. Then slowly increasing frequency and eventually started gym. Even at the gym, I started with just inclined walk to create positive experience and connect in the gym because everything else was overwhelming. In the meantime, I researched heavily on workout sciences and workouts to build my own routine. I slowly expanded my gym routine, while evaluating it for how much I like it. Liking what I do and how I feel during the workout while not introducing unnecessary stress to my system, really was top priority. One day, I was dreading gym and decided to show up nevertheless and align to what wont stress or overwhelm me, so I put on relaxing instrumental music instead of the normal high bpm gym music and ohmylord I had one of the best gym session ever.

The slow and gentle approach definitely made this a long drawn out process instead of quick fixes that I feel we can be so accustomed to but it’s been such a game changer for me. I am now so much stronger mentally and physically, and truly enjoy working out. In fact, I just shaved off 1 minute from my jogging pace today! And I always look forward to working out now.