Photo by Barnabas Piper on Unsplash
I’ve been humbled by how much my physical capacities have nosedived. I’ve had to reel back many of my daily activities. This was from an already diminished level compared to my days pre-burnout. I’ve gone from being able to juggle a full time job, evening activities, writing, travel and exercise to having to pick a single activity per day.
What made it particularly tough was that about a year ago I had already hit the worst of it. I had found some level of consistency, and it seemed like I was slowly improving from that point on. But around last November, the ‘real’ burnout seemed to hit.
My sleep worsened. Dreams intensified. Body fatigue massively increased. It turns out that I had only hit the point where I had the energy to do the emotional processing.
The cost to my body has been one of deconditioning, weight gain and random physical pain. I went from doing three sets of romanian deadlifts lifting 50kg (exercises to strengthen the back) twelve months ago to having debilitating back pain from a ten minute walk.
For one reason or another, a positive has been that I’ve spent little time wallowing in self pity. I stopped going to the gym since it became evident that my body was no longer able to handle it. A few months later, I stopped going to dance classes as I started to find even holding a basic posture quite painful.
Over the last few months, my new goal has been to do 5000 steps in a day. The number was somewhat arbitrary, but it was what was already set up on my phone app. If I wanted to get scientific, then around 8000 is probably the most effective amount. But 8000 steps felt too much, and doing that every day just didn’t seem unreasonable.
Truth be told, I thought it would be more temporary. By the end of June, I started to regularly surpass my goal. I even did a hike which meant a day with around 23000 steps. Although I did have some physical pain, I have managed to slowly overcome it overtime.
Yet this last week has demonstrated why having such a low baseline goal was best. I’ve had another wave of fatigue stemming from emotional processing during sleep. My physical capacities were far lower then they were even a few weeks ago. These waves seem to come a little arbritrarily, so it’s not something I can plan for.
Having such a low baseline means that even on the rough days, I can do the minimum. It’s meant that even when I’m extremely tired, I’ve pushed myself a little to get my steps in. Critically, it’s only a little push, as anything further would actually do damage to my body right now. It’s also meant that I can keep up with my goals, even with the ridiculously hot weather we’ve had this summer.
One of the hardest parts has been navigating this all with professionals. My gym trainer would try and push my through fatigue, even when I said that it wasn’t what I wanted. More recently, a physical therapist kept trying to convince me that pains I had from exercises were just typical delayed muscle soreness. It seems that physical regression of my kind is so outside the typical clinical expectation that the assumption is that I must be doing something wrong.
A self created goal is one that I can manage. There is no overly-eager professional trying to push me beyond my limits, nor tell me my own bodily understanding is wrong. It also allows me to structure my day more flexibly, based upon how much energy I have, or commitments that might wipe me out. It also tackles an issue I had with my previous gym routine, where I would essentially push very hard on one day then have days of significantly lower activity. The boom and bust cycle isn’t so good for my current situation.
Whilst I do hope that most people benefit more from healthcare professionals than I have, there is something valuable in building our own independent goals that we control. When we outsource our health and wellbeing to someone else, we bypass the signals of what our body genuinely needs. This is as much the case for nutrition as it is for exercise.
And if we’re making a goal, we may as well make it realistic. A small goal done everyday is better than one large aspiration that never arrives.