Why health really is wealth
Unfortunately, prioritising your health only kicks in when you get sick.
It’s only when you become ill that you realize, nothing is more important than your health. There are far more serious illnesses around; however, nowadays, a cold or flu also seems to wipe you out. Is it a cold? Is it the flu? Or is it COVID? Who knows?! All I know for certain is that nothing has made everything so clear to me as it did when I recently fell ill for an entire month. At first, I thought it was the flu, and then, just as I felt a little better after two weeks, I headed to the gym to try and get back to normality and immediately fell ill again with the same thing.
I never really understood that health is wealth until recently. It wasn’t just a phrase inspiring or motivational people said. It wasn’t just this most recent illness that made me realize how important health is, but also the last couple of years of general colds and flu made me reevaluate my health. I’m still in the process of building a stronger immunity, and if you follow me on Instagram, then you’ll know I’m still sticking to my fitness plan, which seems to be going well apart from my recent month off, which did demotivate me.
When you’re lying there on your sofa with your blanket, feeling sorry for yourself, that’s when you realize you can’t do anything unless you are healthy. Not only does it affect your body, but it also heavily impacts your mental health. There have been several times I’ve genuinely thought to myself (obviously when I’ve been well), 'Oh, it’s fine; even if I’m sick, I’ll just lay on the sofa and work from my laptop, and ultimately, nothing is stopping me from coming up with new ideas and being creative’. This couldn’t be further from the truth. While I’m lying there sick on my sofa, all I’m thinking about is how unwell I’m feeling and feeling completely sorry for myself.
What can also feel just as bad as the feeling you have when you’re sick is the feeling of having just recovered but knowing how behind or off track, you are with things like fitness, diet, workload, and any other hobbies that need maintaining.
Getting back to the gym after a whole month off has been difficult, to say the least. My first worry was that I would get ill again by tiring myself out at the gym (I know it sounds ridiculous, but honestly, when you’ve been ill with something like the flu for over a month, you become paranoid about anything reigniting that sickness). My second worry was how many steps back I had taken from my fitness journey. I genuinely felt like I had put all the weight back on that I lost over the last six months, and it made me feel like crap.
Getting myself back into the gym and back on the diet wasn’t so difficult; however, getting my head in the right place was more difficult than I imagined. It’s taken me two weeks just to feel motivated again and to stop giving myself a hard time for being sick.
So ultimately, what I’m trying to tell you, in a nutshell, is that it’s OK to feel all sorts of ups and downs when life throws you a curveball. Just remember, the only person who can get you back on track is you.