Weird Things I Hope Other People Do at the Gym as Well

1. Competing against the athlete next to you like a chihuahua trying to win a fight against a doberman. 

2. Taking the act of ripping out a sanitary sheet from the box like a personal fitness test. And failing miserably in front of everyone (who are "obviously" watching and judging you).

3. Taking someone normal getting on the treadmill next to you (rather than all the others currently available) as an invasion of privacy, and then turning up your headphones as loud as possible in case they try to talk. 

4. Taking someone who is extremely muscled grabbing the treadmill next to you as a personal insult. Am I being used like a before-and-after pic where I'm the "before" and they're the "after"?

5. Letting the huge rolls of sweat drip down your face as a show of defiance against the group of hot athletes strolling into the gym. I will not grab my face towel for you (just a few seconds after when you've already gone past)!

6. Getting stressed out like an overworked dish sponge when someone walks too close by you when you're on the elliptical. And working out the argument in your head that's bound to happen if you end up hitting them with one of the levers.

7. Running while texting and wondering if someone's ever going to call you out on it. And working out that argument in your head as well. Yes, I am currently texting my doctor who just told me I have five months left to live. How dare you make assumptions about me!

8. Accidentally staring too long at the female members of staff. How the hell do they get their legs looking that trim?

9. Wondering if everyone else can hear your music and repeatedly taking out your headphones to check. I'm definitely not cool enough to be listening to rap music. Plus I feel like that's more of a strength-training kind of thing, not meant for the scrawny, red-faced chick panting on the treadmill.

10. Leaving the gym way too early, so you pretend to be short on time as an excuse. Don't forget to huff as you repeatedly check your watch and look mildly rattled as you race out the gym doors.

Gyming Your Ass Off is a Blessing and a Curse (for Your Skin)

Getting into gyming is a blessing for anyone. Like, you’re not going to enjoy it at first, probably not after a while either. But, eventually, you start craving it like, say, a Maccas cheeseburger. The thing about gyming is that it’s the best addiction to have: a healthy one. All you want to do is obey your body’s needs and make it better. You become your body’s bitch, and it’s a great sort-of-messed-up relationship to be part of. You treat your body well by working out and suddenly you’re getting eensy beensy muscles popping up everywhere, you’re staying more hydrated, you’re making better snack decisions (knowing damn well a bowl of chips is going to kill you on the treadmill later), and your skin becomes increasingly smooth and glossy like a good-quality magazine. However, there is always going to be too much of a good thing.

With me, it’s my skin. My damn, sensitive, crybaby, ‘ooh, I don’t feel like it’ skin. Working out is a joke for skin like mine. The rest of my body absolutely adores a good ol’ workout, but my face: absolute chaos. My skin is that kid from primary school that cried during thunderstorms and faked sick to get out of Phys Ed (okay, I did that). You kind of hated them, even if it was just how they were.

Two years back, when I used to gym every day, my skin had taken it as a personal insult. From what was originally just left-over teenage acne, become full-fledged pizza-face and people coming up to me on the street asking if I ever washed my face. For the record: I did and still do. My skincare routine is so damn developed, I could host a three-hour lecture on it.

Let me recite it to you:

·       Following the resulting chaos gyming had caused my skin, I completely admonished junk food from my diet. I was as healthy as it got for someone who could barely cook. I was constantly looking up what antioxidant-rich food there was out there to save my skin. My shopping cart was loaded every time. I even tried getting rid of dairy for two months, figuring it might be secretly aiding the hormones that were causing my acne.

·       I woke up every morning with Benzac’s dermatologically-tested face wash, proceeded then by a tiny dab of skin serum (Estee’ Lauder’s skin serum), and then finished with a pea-sized amount of Benzac’s dermatologically-tested face moisturiser. This is repeated at night as well. In addition, I also exfoliated my face once a week and applied a face mask twice a week.

·       I absolutely detested people touching my face and would wash my hands immediately if I was ever to touch my own.

·       I would change my pillow-case every week.

·       I would wipe my face immediately after every meal I ate.

·       I would shower immediately after gym.

·       I would eye the shower head, nervously wondering if maybe the water was polluted.

·       I avoided makeup like the plague, only wearing it on particularly bad days when I knew I couldn’t handle people asking about my face.

Taken back in 2014. One month on Isotretinoin.
Lips are swollen and acne has
intensified into clusters from pills.

Absolutely none of this changed the way my face looked. Eventually, a miraculous change that saw my face go from millions of pimples to none was seeing a dermatologist for a shot at Isotretinoin: a hardcore pill that dried the holy berries out of my face and eventually had the skin completely change in a matter of six months. It was then I divulged myself into the world of junk food and absolutely zero gym. God, it was bliss. And my face, for the next entire two years, did not change back to its formerly dotty state at all. Not even a single zit.

Taken in 2016 after gyming (hence redness). No filter.

Moving back to the future, I start gyming again. I remember how much I loved it. The beauty of a good sweat came back, and, wouldn’t you know it, I started breaking out again. Nowhere near as bad as it had gotten before, but a few pimples did arise. Luckily, this time I was able to narrow down the causes with a simple question typed into Google:

‘Why have I started breaking out now that I work out?’

And, oh, the answers came. It wasn’t that I was dirty and not washing my face well enough afterwards. It wasn’t because I wasn’t thoroughly cleaning the equipment before use. What finally occurred to me was that my breakouts were radicalised… by heat rash.

Ah, yes, heat rash.  

For some people, gifted like me, you have been blessed with the good ol’ skin condition known as ‘heat rash’. What this basically means is that when you work out, you get so damn overheated, that you’re literally suffocating your face from air (often, your body too). The rush of heat causes the sweat to get in your pores and then clog them, making them itchy when you workout. Lovely. Dovely.

Taken immediately after working out. Evidently,
I have become a tomato.

Now, I won’t say this is the sole reason behind my previous skin problems. Really, heat rash was just aiding and abetting it. Most of my acne problems were just related to hormonal issues. This was obvious when, after finishing my Isotretinoin treatment, I never saw another breakout again — no matter how poorly I ate. And I was eating Maccas and HJs up to five times a week. Sorry, health gurus.

After one month of gyming, little dots began to show up

A week or so into changing up my routine to
combat heat rash.

For anyone else who might suffer from heat rash. Here are my tips for preventing breakouts:

1.       Bring a spray bottle filled with cold water. I felt a little dumb at first spraying myself while running at the gym, but the effects were almost immediate. They toned down the redness in my face as well as helping to even out my body temperature.

2.       Splash face with water immediately after a workout. I go to gym for about an hour every day, but I find my face only starts to itch when on the treadmill. Possibly because I get a little too competitive with myself and keep going even when my breath begins to struggle. I’m not washing my face after every workout I do, only the ones that have me going so hard that I can feel my face begin to itch and redden like a diseased tomato.

3.       Wash face towel after every use. If you sweat profusely during a workout, you don’t want to be wiping your face with yesterday’s dried-up sweat. For all I know, that could be intensifying the effects of heat rash. Get a clean towel.

4.       Don’t just wash face after coming home from the gym. Have a shower. If you get heat rash, it’s likely not just happening on your face, but on your chest area too and maybe your back. To prevent yourself from breaking out in these areas, it’s best to wash yourself immediately after. Including your hair. 

The Taboo of Goal-Setting

There’s something to hate about picking up a self-motivation book and finding that half of it’s based on goal-setting. Like, suddenly, I’m expected to do work outside of the book and not just absorb what it has to say in one sitting. Maybe that’s the problem with reading for information — it’s literally just absorbing info. No bookworm suddenly wants to commit to a book as devotedly as to start doing productive, task-worthy things outside of it. You know, the ones that give you a weekly planner and tell you to achieve a goal by the end of the week? 

You don’t want to be setting tiny barely-passed-the-starting-line goals when the reason you picked up the book was to completely one-up yourself. It’s like those become-a-better-person books: I pick one of those up to learn new life mottos, to figure out how to deal with difficult people — maybe learn some cool, quick breathing tips. You know? But then they tell you to set small goals for the day like ‘smile at everyone you meet’ or ‘make someone happy’. And, just like that, the book is tossed to the corner of the room and never picked up again. I have no regrets.

Who has time for that? So much for a life-changing perspective. Thanks, Dr. Susan with two PhDs, you’ve really changed my life by loading half your book with fill-in-the-blanks goal pages. ‘Really different stuff.

I like to cut corners. I skim books. I actively seek TV show spoilers on the internet. I get bored of colour-in books because all I want is to reach the end-product. I absolutely detest taking the long way around. I’m all about efficiency, even if there is some collateral damage spilling out the sides. So, when someone tells me to just start small — how dare you. How dare you suggest the world can’t change in one day.

The thing about goal-setting is that it's given themselves a bad reputation — or, maybe, the way we think about it has. It’s basically how we think about all small world problems. Someone with acne should just wash their face. A person with depression should smile more. Naturally, we like taking shortcuts around things, regardless of how effective they are. We don’t think goal setting is all that effective when sometimes all it recommends is that someone who is depressed just tries to get out of bed for the day — HOW DARE the results not be immediate. Goal setting suggests we cannot instantly arrive at an overall desired end product but, rather, walk slowly there and hope we’re heading in the right direction. We're not superheros after all.

Maybe it’s the fact that I skim read, but I never thought the idea of setting goals was played out right in these books. Too often all they sound like are meaningless little quests that likely build towards nothing. Just as with eating healthier, people suggest things like cutting down takeout by one night every few weeks or switching it up for one less teaspoon of sugar in your coffee. To me that sounds like utter rubbish. Why bother setting tiny goals like this when you could be back to your old ways straight up. I just never seem to find an explanation as to why teensy eensy goal setting is so effective.

It is for this reason I want to give a shout out to goal-setting, from my own personal perspective…

• ·       Either toy with the lighter or burn the house down.

Ultimately, it depends on the person. For me, as someone who previously could barely stomach anything but junk food, the ‘burn down the house’ method was the way to go. I banned myself from McDonalds and HJs for a year and, following the ‘burn the house down’ method, I found myself actively wanting to set add-on goals. This goal has been developing since with such add-ons as —  also no takeout at all —  and go to the gym five days a week —  and drop that bread! 

•      Try to remember it’s not just one goal.

Goal-setting looks stupid because, most of the time, it starts with a small, not-that-effective aim. But, like human nature, once we achieve one thing, we’re hungry for more. Goal-setting is a total pat on the back, and, while stupid goals might only be achieved at first, a noticeable change from where you were at the start can soon be seen.

Left: October. Right: November. Intense tensing of the tummy in both photos.

•      Make goals you will commit to.

Luckily for me, I’m the most socially awkward person I know. So telling everyone I’m going to swear off burgers for a year is a pretty useful way to prevent me from backing out of it. It’s best to make goals you can actually see yourself achieving. And, at first, it’s important to set weekly goals so that you don’t accidentally give yourself an unrealistic time frame like ‘give me five years, and I’ll get healthy again’. Goals disappear when you don’t see immediate results. Weekly goals set you up more for success, even if it’s a dumb one.

Example of dumb goal: drink skinny coffee instead of normal coffee.
It costs like 40 bucks extra, but damn that skinniness tho'. 

•      Don’t, for the love of God, compare your goals to someone else’s.

Image Credit: Owlturd Comix

Nothing's worse than getting all excited that you're a few goals down, and then looking over and seeing someone who's already reached the end product. Rather than let this in the way of your determination, see this as a motivator.