I was surprised that I even wanted one.

Me, the person who has always been (and continues to be) somewhat suspicious of technology. Or at least too much technology. Or too much dependence on technology. Don’t get me wrong—I love my laptop. And I would DEFINITELY, in a heartbeat, run into a burning building to save it. I also love my iPhone. Maybe a little too much—I bring it everywhere with me (to bed, to the bathroom, you get the picture).

Anyway, my wanting a Fitbit was a bit of a surprise to me and my loved ones—up until recently I didn’t even know what it was for. But in my renewed commitment to my fitness, it seemed like a great tool to help me along and encourage me to move every hour, track my heart rate (which I have always felt is too irregular, I don’t know why), log workouts, track sleep patterns, and so on and so forth.

And for the first while, it was great! We went everywhere together, I wore it to bed every night, and I kept earning all sorts of badges…

My Fitbit would be like, “Great job, Tracy, you’re crushing it!” “You’re getting all your steps!” “Great job!”

And I’d be all, “Oh you…” So flattering!

The next day, my Fitbit would say something like, “Wow, you’re meeting all your goals…you’re walking everywhere, and you’re doing like, 25 flights of stairs a day! Awesome!” (Even though this wasn’t always the case—since Fitbits can’t tell if you’re physically walking up stairs or taking elevators/escalators. But I didn’t have the heart to tell it that.)

For the first little while everything was great. Every time I’d meet my goals I’d enjoy watching the corresponding graphic on the Fitbit (digital fireworks or a little rocket ship taking off or whatever). It was like any other new romance! My Fitbit was telling me how great I was, and I felt super pumped about it. We were literally in sync.

Then, after a couple of months, I had a couple sluggish days, maybe a sluggish week or two. I’d get the weekly updates in my inbox saying how I walked 20km or 30km less from the previous week. Or, down 100 active minutes last week from the killer week I’d had before.

And it was rough because I felt like I could never explain myself and say, “I know, I know, I’ve just been really busy with work and with deadlines…” Or, “I had a rough week and just needed to chill out! I’m sorry!” Nope. I would open the Fitbit app and see all the areas I was falling short: Steps, short. Calories burned, short. Floors climbed, short. Active minutes, short. Kilometres walked—something my Fitbit had praised me for on multiple occasions—short. It became a real bummer.

Then I’d have moments where, if I left the house without my Fitbit on, I’d panic for a second thinking, Shit now all these steps won’t count! (In searching for pictures to go along with this post, I found MANY others experience this same panic and express their feelings in meme form.)

You get the picture—my motivation was starting to be fueled by what my Fitbit had to say and not about how I felt. Just because I’m not wearing the Fitbit, doesn’t mean those steps lose value. Yet I started to feel like maybe this was the case.

Other times I’d have days of way surpassing my goals: getting over 17,000 steps in a day (the average person gets around 6,000/day I’m told and the recommended is 10,000), or having over 100 active minutes in a day, or whatever the case was. But often those days I’d be completely wiped or burnt out. I didn’t feel healthy–I felt exhausted and had only surpassed these goals because I was running around doing 50 things that day and didn’t even have a quiet moment to myself.

Of course, this wasn’t always the case–sometimes I’d feel great for surpassing my goals for the day. But the point is, the raw numbers don’t tell you everything.

I’ve really had to stop and think about extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation. (Extrinsic being pressure from something other than myself; including striving for praise from a tiny computer.) I want to be the person behind my motivation to be fit and healthy. I want to do it for me because it’s what I enjoy, or what I find interesting or exciting or worthwhile.

And I get that the purpose of a tool like this is to encourage you to make positive changes. Certainly having a Fitbit for the purposes of daily activity tracking has been great in some regards. I was sleeping better, going to bed on time, waking up earlier, walking more often instead of taking transit, and getting up regularly to take breaks from desk work.

I’m sure that I’ll be happy to have my Fitbit back in regular rotation at some point in the near future. But things were starting to feel a little off.

I’ve learned that I don’t ever want to feel enslaved or beholden to a certain number or weight or outfit or angle or image or object when it comes to how I feel about my own body. So until then, my Fitbit and I are on a break!

This week I fainted during my first-ever personal training session. I’m okay now, and everyone at the Toronto West-End YMCA who helped me were real champs about it! (Special thanks to my boyfriend who came and retrieved me afterwards as well.)

I was doing squats with the barbell, which weighs around 50 pounds. That might not seem like a lot, but it was more than I have worked with before. I wasn’t sure how it happened, but based on what the trainer said, as I was bracing myself for the exercise, I may have been holding my breath. (Rookie mistake!)

Anyway, by the time I put the bar back on the rack, I stopped to catch my breath and suddenly everything went blurry and dark. The next thing I knew, there were 3 YMCA employees around me, including the trainer, and I had an oxygen mask in front of my face. I was also slightly damp because I had apparently spilled my water bottle as I blacked out.

I wanted to write about this because I felt like it should/could have been a really embarrassing or discouraging moment. I could have thought all manner of things about myself: I’m weak, I’m out of shape, I’m not cut out for this, I should give up, I suck! I’m sure for some people who try new things incidents like this could turn you off from such activities altogether.

While some people might see this episode as a failure, I found it to be a valuable learning experience. And hell, I’ve had my fair share of fitness “fails,” including altitude sickness on a hike, nearly vomiting at hot yoga, sprained ankles, getting a nosebleed during horseback riding and tearing my riding pants fully open on my stirrups to reveal my floral underpants (unrelated incidents). Anyway, these things used to absolutely mortify me. I would definitely beat myself up about them and consider them proof that I was never meant to be a very active person.

But this time I feel surprisingly fine about it. In fact, I’m even a little excited to get back to the gym. Who would have thought! (Couch-potato Tracy can’t believe what she’s hearing!) So what’s changed?

For one thing, I know I had taken all the proper precautions beforehand: I was well hydrated, I had eaten balanced meals, and I wasn’t ill. I also followed up with the trainer after the fact and he noted that my form was good, I was strong enough to complete the exercise and up until the fainting, I seemed to be doing very well. I’m even going to a clinic in the next couple of days just to be sure the fainting wasn’t related to anything more serious.

The other thing that’s changed is probably my approach to new things and I credit this to the value creativity has in my life.

I’ve always been more artistically inclined than athletically inclined. I grew up with my mother and sister—both of whom are visual artists—in a household where we were allowed (encouraged!) to draw on the walls, repurpose things, make messes, break things and turn them into new things, and more! Creative and artistic endeavours were always non-negotiable.

Even as a busy grad student, I’ve always made sure that I’m pursuing or developing a creative skill. Some of these include basket weaving, photography, paper arts, crochet, wheel throwing/pottery, and more recently I was learning to sew in order to alter and draft my own clothes.

With my recent fitness commitments, I decided to put my creative hobby money toward personal training sessions, specifically to learn how to weight lift. Now, as an artsy type who was brought up in an all-female household, weight training might seem like an out-of-character choice. And to be honest, I’d never really been inclined to work with a trainer before—something about working one-on-one with someone in that context always weirded me out.

For better or worse, in the past I would have imagined training or an athletic approach as scary and intense (in a bad way). That’s probably why I avoided personal training for as long as I did. Training, to me, conjured images of a huge muscly person shouting in my face telling me to give them “5 more!” while snot, sweat, and tears dribbled down my face. (And sure, some people are into that! And that’s cool too.)

But for me, categorizing fitness as my new creative pursuit made me approach it differently. This time, instead of working with clay or fabric, I’d be working with my own body. And in a way, this idea made me more curious than fearful.

For example, when working with materials, painting or wheel throwing or what have you, you make a huge mess. With pottery, there’s clay e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. And I’d never make it through a session without having something I was super proud of completely collapse. In fact, this was a technique I learned the first few times I threw on a wheel: we weren’t allowed to keep anything we made. The purpose was just to play around, figure things out, be curious, and enjoy ourselves.

I have always loved this mentality when it comes to creative endeavors: most of the time, it’s messy and can often be more about the process than the result. It’s also unpredictable; with pottery, I can’t count the number of times I planned to make mugs and ended up with bowls. Or vases, or tumblers, or bowls. (Bowls are probably the thing all pottery “wants” to be if you leave it to its own devices.)

I think I unconsciously applied this approach to my renewed interest in fitness and the reality of failures: it can be messy and it’s a process. It’s unpredictable at times, and when you’re starting out you’re not necessarily going to churn out beautiful mugs every time. Or lift weights like a pro.

And while I know that the stakes are definitely higher with fitness, (i.e., you’re not going to injure yourself if your clay collapses), I’m speaking more to my desire to keep going and not to succumb to discouragement or embarrassment. I would never give up on my usual creative pursuits just because I made a few ugly things. Likewise, why should I give up on fitness from a few failed attempts?

I can only learn from my mistakes and keep going.

What sort of “fitness fails” have you experienced and what did you learn from them?

Some days I feel like a pile of garbage. My whole body aches, I’m tired, I’m grumpy. And the worst thing is that nothing really caused me to feel that way.

Things seem objectively fine: I woke up and listened to CBC over coffee with my partner. (Great!) We chatted and cuddled with our cat. (Awesome!) After he leaves for campus, I am able to begin my weekday routine: tidy kitchen, emails, research, write, work out, rest, and read. (Wonderful!)

But some days I wake up feeling like even the smallest task is too much. I look at the sink filled with dishes and even the thought of getting the warm water running seems like it might be near impossible.

On days like this, how could working out even be an option? I feel like my energy and motivation are so low, rocks and barnacles are probably more ambitious than me on days like this. (And all they do is sit around! Or in the case of barnacles, cling to ships and other ocean-y things.)

What to do about days like this?

For one thing, there is the option of giving into that feeling. And maybe even getting inside of it and figuring out what’s causing it. Writing is often a good tool for this. I sit down and mindlessly scribble out what’s going on with me and why I might be feeling like this: a busy past couple of weeks, cold weather, days getting dark before 5pm, bodily ailments, a disagreement with a loved one, whatever the case may be. It could be anything. Sometimes it helps to get down to the bottom of a bad mood: I can relax a bit when I know that there is something at the root of my low energy and motivation.

But other times it isn’t so easy to figure out what’s causing a bad day. And in fact, I may not be able to figure it out at all. While this is frustrating, it’s often enough to simply accept that some days are just bad. And that’s a part of being human.

And the truth is, on bad days, it doesn’t always matter why they’re bad so much as recognizing them as bad. If I recognize I’m having a bad day, it is almost always easier to preempt the badness by speaking kindly to myself, surrounding myself with the things that would make a bad day better, and overall taking it easy (i.e., not pushing myself so hard and watching out for negative self-talk).

One of the practical issues that arise from bad days is how it can affect my decisions concerning fitness and working out. I find it can be way too easy to let a bad mood trick you out of being active. When in fact, being active may be just the thing to make you feel better! A strange paradox indeed.

You might have seen these Inner Kermit memes that speak to what I’m getting at.

The idea being that many internal struggles tend to involve knowing there’s something you should do, and talking yourself out of it by giving into your “bad side.”

My newest strategy for dealing with this has been to take the element of “debating” or “deciding” out of the equation.

For example, if I decide in advance that I will exercise on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, then I commit to these days ahead of time. I do this because I know that if I leave it to myself to decide whether or not I will work out on a particular day, it probably won’t happen.

Leaving exercise open to debate with myself can be risky, especially when starting out because my habits aren’t fully formed yet. And it can become very easy to talk myself out of something or tell myself that I’ll “do it tomorrow.”

However, if exercise days are something that are already set or scheduled in advance, I tend to devote less mental energy to the subject, and even less mental energy debating with myself over whether or not I will follow through. I just do it. Bad days are normal, but having certain commitments in place ahead of time makes it so that a bad mood doesn’t dominate my entire day, or even entire week. And it certainly doesn’t dictate all my decisions on a given day.

The point I’m trying to make is, just because there are days I feel like a garbage pile, doesn’t mean I have to act like one.