How to Stay Healthy/Fit During Quarantine

Motivation. I’ve published many blog posts that are related to the topic of motivation. Oftentimes, these posts focused on motivation to work, motivation to be more productive, etc.. Motivation is crucial in our everyday lives, but many people do not have the endurance or perseverance to push through and achieve their goals. Exercising is difficult, especially with no one to push you. With so many temptations, like the couch and the TV, the reason to go through the pain and hardship seems to diminish.

Not working out at all, however, is unhealthy. Even if you never exercised before quarantine, without even knowing it, you probably were active. For example, as a student, I walked at least 6000 steps daily just at school. That was my step count with no physical education or sport at school. Since I constantly walked around at school, I was able to get some sort of exercise. However, now, quarantine forced many people to stay at home, getting rid of any reason to walk around all day. This is why I started to workout and was able to gather some tips in the process.

1. YouTube

Many people go to the gym to workout. And there are quite a lot of people who have personal trainers telling them what to do. The benefit of having a personal trainer is that you can’t give up for the sole reason of being tired. The trainers push you harder and have structured plans. In simple terms, the only tough part is the exercise itself, rather than finding the motivation.

However, most gyms are closed now, so there needs to be another way to workout and to push ourselves. The best way, I realized, is to find a at-home workout on YouTube. Then, I would copy the workouts exactly the way the YouTuber in the video does them. Yes, just following those workouts may be no different from just creating our own workout routine to follow. However, the difference is the motivation we can get.

When I watch the videos, I think to myself, If they can do it, why can’t I?. Since the trainers in the video pushed themselves to film the video, it lets me know that I am capable of finishing the routine. It also motivates me to keep the same pace as them, which makes me workout more efficiently.

2. Music

A big reason people do not like to workout is because of the pain. It is so hard to hold a plank for 2 minutes. It is so hard to do 50 squats. However, this mindset makes it more difficult to finish the workout and makes the person hate working out even more. I found that having some sort of distraction can get my mind off the pain.

A good solution I found was listening to music I like while working out. If I focus on the song (the lyrics and the beats), rather than how hard the workout is, the workout suddenly feels so much shorter, and I feel much happier while performing the routine. I recommend creating a playlist of hyped music that you enjoy listening to play when you workout!

3. Calendar

I created a rewards system for myself. If I worked out for 10 consecutive days and controlled my diet, I would give myself one “cheat” day where I would not need to workout.

A calendar was very useful for this system because I could keep track of the days that I worked out. I would draw a symbol on the days that I workout so that if I see 10 consecutively drawn symbols, I can rest for a day. The “cheat” day that I can get pushes me to exercise because it gives me a sense of achievement.

In addition, since the calendar very clearly shows the progress that I’ve been making, it pushes me to continue and not break the streak. I have the calendar on the wall in front of my desk to remind myself to make healthy choices.

Ways to stop worrying about what people think

As people grow, their preferences begin to change and they stop liking things that they used to like in the past. Yes, it could just be a process of growing up, but I also believe that one of the major reasons for change is the surrounding people. This means that majority of the changes are not made because there was a sudden change of heart but because of what other people think. I faced many situations like this as well where I wore an outfit that I personally really liked, but once my friends told me their negative opinions about my fashion sense, I felt extremely self-conscious for the rest of the day and chose to not ever wear it again in public. I realized as time passed, however, that it is extremely exhausting to make decisions based on other people’s perspectives and opinions, in addition to constantly adjusting my own style to meet the societal standards. Here are a few ways to stop worrying about what people think.

1. Stop judging other people’s preferences

Not everyone cares about every little thing in life. In fact, the only thing that catches a person’s eye is what he or she is currently interested in or worried about. If you are self-conscious about one part of yourself, that means that is the way you view other people. For example, let’s say that you are self-conscious about your weight and you feel as though your thighs are way too thick. You worrying that other people will think you are fat based on the way you define to be “fat” means that you categorize other people as “fat” and “skinny” when you just look at them. If you learn to stop categorizing people based on your own perceptions and judging them based on what you think, you will soon realize that there is no reason to be self-conscious. Since at that point you’ll stop seeing reasons to judge others, furthermore not see why you should be judged and be self-conscious.

2. YOLO

It is a known fact that everyone lives once (at least it is the only provable claim). If you think about it, the time of our life where we can express ourselves and accomplish the most things is in our 10s and 20s. There is just such a limited amount of time to shine and live as you want. Yes, you can try to live your life when you’re older, but there will be less opportunities that are given and the situation will be much better if you try to accomplish the tasks when you are younger. That’s why there is absolutely no reason to waste the peak time of your life by worrying about what people think and adjusting to their perspectives. There are just so many different ways to enjoy life if we make decisions for our own happiness rather than for others. Therefore, since we have the one life to live, let’s live it to the fullest.

3. Have a moment to yourself

Trying to constantly live a life where you are surrounded by people, especially if you’re self conscious, may not be healthy for your mental health. This means that you will never be able to express yourself completely, always feeling unhappy and empty on the inside. Having a separate moment for yourself can be healthy and allow you to feel good about yourself again. Afterwards, you may realize that there is absolutely no reason to restrict yourself from feeling happy by trying to meet societal standards (unless that will break a law or negatively impact society). Stepping back a little to have a moment to yourself can be good to your mental health and could later change the way you choose to live.

Ways to get motivated to work

When I was much younger and I heard many stories about how stressful high school life is going to be, I didn’t believe it. I constantly thought to myself, how bad could it possibly be? Honestly, high school itself isn’t the worst thing in the world. However, the major reason why so many students suffer (me included) is because of the inability to manage time wisely and procrastinate. What is the major reason for procrastination? Some reasons include laziness, sleepiness, technology, distractions, etc. Therefore, with all of these reasons, it’s extremely difficult to get back on task. Because I suffered from this issue, I tried to find many ways I can get start my work. These are some tips that I came up with that may benefit you!

1. Find a way to integrate your personal interest with your work

This is a very, very, very effective method to start being more productive and actually getting things done. For example, if you have been following with my blogs, you’d know that I own the samsung galaxy buds and had them for about a month now. Due to this, I personally try to grab as many opportunities that I can get to use my buds. However, in order to actually use my buds to listen to music, I won’t be able to watch YouTube videos, which is the place I spend majority of my time in. In addition, if I choose to do my homework or so while listening to music, I’ll try to focus as much as possible for a long time so that I can use my buds for longer. This actually proved to benefit my terrible work habits and got me to be a little more productive.

2. Just get to it

Yes, this is a very vague point, but I realized that the hardest part about work is starting it. By this, I mean that once we start, it’s very easy to stay focused and continue. However, once I start acting lazy and just roll around in bed, the thought of working definitely does not sound appealing. That’s why rather than starting the day off by scrolling around in social media, it’s better to do something that is productive so that the day isn’t started feeling lazy.

3. Make compromises with yourself

The best way to get motivated is if there is a prize at the end. However, no one should be expecting someone to hand them a gift after they do the work that they should be doing naturally. Therefore, it is important to learn to buy a gift for yourself after accomplishing a hard task since no one will truly understand the pain of working really hard other than yourself. This means that you should make promises like “I’ll buy myself this after I finish this assignment” so that there is more motivation to work. This method actually proved to be very effective for me because I actually like getting products for myself so it actually allowed me to work much harder.

4. Search up requirements that need to be met in order to reach a goal

By this, I mean that if you want to get into a certain university, make sure to search up what the school asks of you. The reason for this is because most universities have a pretty high expectation of the students that apply for the school. After reading the expectations and requirement, it will be much harder to just roll around in bed without worries. These requirements will probably cause your rest to be less comfortable and cause you to get to work faster. Although this is a cruel method, it is one of the most effective methods if you have a clear goal for yourself.