*Well, obviously it was not just the fitness tracker. But it all started with it!
Last December I went home for Christmas and received some unexpected gifts from my family: a new pair of Doc Martens, a fake cactus for me to bring back a little bit of desert, and… an Apple Watch?
I was grateful, but also a bit surprised. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with it—I don’t do any sports, I practically only walked from my house to the bus stop, and I didn’t know what else besides fitness tracking it could do. Was it an indirect message to tell me to start going to the gym? Maybe it was, but I refused to believe it. I despise the gym, sports clubs, dance classes, or anything that requires me to sweat and wear tight clothing. I just have issues.
Being that girl who was chubby in primary school and always got picked last when forming teams in physical education, I struggle with self-perception to the point where it can stop me from doing things, even if I think I will enjoy them. I wanted to dance when I was little, but my body type was so different from the other girls so I felt embarrassed in the first class and told my mom that I actually hated dancing. Of course, it wasn’t true, but I didn’t want to go if I was going to be the worst, the one who moves off-beat and is not flexible, not lightweight, not graceful. I convinced myself that it wasn’t for me.
Same thing for the gym. The first—and only—time that I went to the gym, I was maybe around fifteen, and although I was already much slimmer than before, my self-esteem and image were ruined by that time. Going to the gym seemed like a punishment for being “fat” (or that’s what I thought, even when I wasn’t), and it was dreadful to step in a room full of people who were fitter, stronger, skinnier, better than me. Long story short, I tried too hard and ended up throwing up in the toilet, feeling humiliated and incapable of doing great things. So that was the end of it.
Now, you must imagine the terror I experienced when my friends here in Nottingham started going to the gym last October. I was mortified that they would invite me, and when the lunchtime conversation topics started shifting to how much they lifted and how many calories they ate a day, I feared that I would never be able to overcome my eating disorder or my petrifying fear of the gym. They didn’t try to convince me to join them, but just by listening to their conversations and watching their progress, I felt like a failure, because I was very convinced that I would never be able to achieve something like that.
Back in December when I got the Apple Watch: I started wearing the watch to make my dad happy, but I got annoyed when every single day of the rest of my holiday ended with my device saying: “Hey, it was a calm day today! You did 100 steps and burned 0.00006 calories. Can you try harder? ” God, everything reminds me I’m a disgrace. Fitness disgrace.
Then, on the week between Christmas and New Year, I went for dinner with two friends I hadn’t seen in a while: one of them, my girl best friend who now runs marathons first thing in the morning and climbs hills for breakfast; the other, a professor who became our friend during Uni and is now a guide and source of infinite wisdom. We were catching up on our lives, humbly sharing our accomplishments of the year, and when it was my turn to speak, I was so ashamed of being so useless (what can you say after your friend has shared that she ran a marathon?), that I just said the truth: I kind of wasn’t doing anything sporty.
Our professor friend told me, in the kindest way possible: well, you should probably find something to do! (My immediate thought was: WOW, he’s saying I’m fat! But no, that was not the message). He then said that, since he had also done a PhD, he knew it was important to not let it absorb you, and a good way to prevent this was to exercise. You need to prioritize your health, he said.
Returning to the UK with this food for thought, I felt like I had to change something in my lifestyle. I couldn’t keep telling myself that I was not meant to exercise, because it was clear that I needed to, even if I was scared of it. So, I set myself a small goal. Walk every day to Uni and back and try to find a dance class to attend (if it was K-pop, even better).
I walked for a couple of weeks and realized that it was not too much of a challenge. My daily steps averaged around 10,000, I was not feeling tired, and that 30-minute walk was starting to improve my mood and even my mental health. The k-pop dance class, I couldn’t find then but I thought by mid-January, I could actually do so much more. I’m pretty able to move. And the Apple Watch was already cheering for me. “Congrats on completing your daily steps! Think you can do it again tomorrow?”.
I found a lyrical dance class in the city centre, and, after some deep thoughts and considerations (and the encouragement from my lovely gym bro housemate), I signed up to the gym with my friend Mariam, and we started lifting weights three times a week, and running once a week.
This story has no ending or conclusion yet because I have realized in these two months of trying things I had always been afraid of, that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that this may be only the beginning of what I thought would last less than a week.
I realized, after maybe three weeks of dancing and going to the gym, that the worst part of it was the beginning. The worst part was the first day of scary thoughts of “Oh, everyone’s going to realize that I’m insecure, everyone’s going to realize that I was fat when I was 10 years old, everyone’s going to notice that I sweat a lot and I’m a slow runner”… But it never happened. All of a sudden, I started enjoying what I was doing, even if I was bad at it because it made me realize that I am not incapable of it. I can run, even if I was slower at the beginning. I can lift weights, even though my noodle-like arms can only manage the bar (hey, the bar is already 20 kg!). I can dance, even if I lose my balance in the spins. And even if I don’t see changes or progress, the Watch reminds me: “Well done! Your run today was your fastest ever!”, “you just achieved all of your goals for today!”, “you just doubled your daily goal!”. Even if I don’t see it, I guess I’m expanding my limits, step by step, and that is more than what I thought I would ever be able to do.