Feeling Feeble

I have a cold and a fever. Every muscle from my hips down to my ankles feels like it's been stripped with a potato peeler, jabbed with pointy things, given a wedgie and then set aflame. In short, I am not well :(

I am very rarely ill and so it is that I tend to forget how much it sucks, how unlike myself it makes me feel. One of the things I like most about being fit is that it's mentally empowering. If I'm ever called upon to scale a wall, leap over a car, bust my way out of a locked room, I'm pretty sure I could do it. The mental buzz I get from that is more gratifying to me than possessing a gravity-defying ass (although obviously, I quite like that too;).

I was a geeky little kid and while I may have been praised on occasion for my intellect, physical pursuits were disdained and discouraged. Accordingly, I didn't particularly value my body and I filled it with rubbish. It didn't have much outward impact in terms of my weight but I sure did feel crappy. Looking back it seems bizarre but it took me until I was pregnant to really connect fuel and feelings, to consider treating my body nicely as a reward in itself. Carrying a child and giving birth awakened me to seeing my body as a purposeful instrument.

I now utilise my physicality and strengths every single day, in all sorts of ways and to be unable to do so, even through illness, feels like a real slap in the face. Being ill makes me feel feeble and it scares me to think that this is a glimpse of what old age may bring. To have the mind be willing but the flesh be weak? No thank you!

So while my body is recuperating, I'm going to busy myself planning my training for the next month and set myself some targets. Weights-wise, I've been focussing more on compound movements to get the last of the winter chub off. It was persistant this year - evidently I am not fully over the emotional eating thing yet. By way of encouragement, I'm going to focus more on my shoulder workouts again. One dedicated session a week, including my much hated lat raises! My reasoning is this: I actually worked shoulders last week for the first time in a long while, mainly because the gym was busy and damned if I could get near anything else I wanted to use. In amongst the pain, I looked in the mirrors and saw that the striations on my anterior delts were visible again and it reminded me of how quickly I get results with my shoulders ... and how pretty I think it is when they look wicked strong! I think it'll be a nice boost to see them back in their rightful shape and will inspire me to work harder on trickier areas. My strength is certainly coming back (probably about 80% of what is was at what I laughingly consider my peak!) and I'm going to continue to work hard on that for the rest of the month and then come June, it'll be super clean eating time.

It will be nice to have my body back the way I like it :)