Why is being active so important for maintaining a healthy balance in life? It is simple – our bodies need to move to stay healthy. If we do not have our health everything gets out of balance.

How much movement do we need to do? If we do nothing we rust out, but if we do too much we wear out!!! The level of activity required is something that it is personal or individual i.e. you must work out for yourself what you need to do to achieve balance and stay healthy.

I have to say that I am not an expert on physical activity, nor am I in any way qualified to tell you how much activity you will need. This post is my opinion, based on my own experiences. What I can suggest is that you set goals for yourself, ask someone to help you hold yourself accountable for achieving those goals and involve an expert if you think that might help you succeed.

So what about me? What is my story?

Here it is….In my first post in this series I talked about having to overcome a tendency towards workaholism. When my children were young and I had a busy job, my life became very complex and overwhelming and I neglected my own physical health for years. Not only was I overweight, I was unfit. I was active i.e. I went for a walk every day and took dance classes every week, but I tired easily and was not eating well. My focus was on work and managing the family activities, with no thought to me or my body! Any activity I did do was aimed at helping me cope with life, not live life to the full! I was out of balance.

It took a broken ankle and 12 months of pain in the lower back to get me to change all this. Looking back, I can’t believe how stupid I was i.e. I allowed myself to be unhealthy for so long!

Getting back into balance meant that I had to focus on me first and let other things slide for a while. This may not sound very balanced, but initially I had to put a concerted effort into fixing the problems I had caused for myself. I spent many hours at the physio and the chiro to sort out why I was in pain. I then had to determine the best way to fix the problem. The problem was actually caused by poor pelvic alignment and no core strength!

Fixing the problem

When we neglect ourselves over time we should not expect a quick fix!  So to reverse the damage I embarked on a regular program of exercise to complement the treatment from the physio and chiro. I started swimming at least 3 times a week, started a regular yoga class, kept walking and researched a program to help me lose weight. It took some time for the swimming to be helpful as I couldn’t swim very far. What I was aiming for was an improvement in my core strength as well as an improvement in fitness. I set goals to improve my swimming ability and goals for weight loss. Six months later I could swim about 6 laps of the 50m pool without collapsing and I had lost a lot of weight. Twelve months on and I had achieved my desired weight, I could swim 20 laps of the pool comfortably and was making progress with yoga. And even better than all this was that my lower back pain was almost completely gone.

Maintaining the Activity

Of course as I said earlier, too much activity can wear us out so I had to work towards a better balance once I had ‘fixed’ my problems. This is when I started to examine my whole life and determine what I could cut out, what I had to keep and what I needed to get better at. The key to my success was to establish strict routines. Swimming was an early morning activity, I took a yoga class once a week and went walking every night. Then around this I fitted in work and family. It took a few years to learn how to put family before work but I did that eventually too!!!

The hardest thing for me now is to give myself permission to rest. I always fear that if I rest I will fall out of my routine and go back to being unhealthy!!! That may seem silly but it keeps me on my toes. However, I know from first hand experience that I must continually check in on my goals and routines to make sure that I am balanced and not obsessed with  the physical activity I take on.

Where am I now?

So many years on, I am still swimming and walking and as a result of the pandemic, the yoga is now online so I can do it every day. This is who I am now. Activity is essential to my physical and mental wellbeing and part of my self care every day. Ultimately, I am now very aware of what it takes to maintain balance in my life!

You can be active too!

I highly recommend that you set some goals and establish some routines to help you become active. It will help you maintain a balanced outlook on life!

What Next?

We hope you will join us at Helpful by Nature by subscribing to our email list. We would love to hear from you, take your questions and provide answers if we are able.

Until next time,

 

 

Gillian (and Andrew)