Back on New Year’s Eve, you vowed that you would be fully committed to your exercise-related New Year’s resolution. After spending most of last semester in your bed watching Netflix and eating Cheetos for hours on end, you realized that you needed to get it together and do right by your body spring semester. You told yourself that exercising can’t be that bad. It’ll help you stay healthy and it’ll reduce your monumental stress levels in college, plus all your friends are doing it. Your pep talk to yourself instantly motivated you, and you were ready to get started on fulfilling that resolution the instant you returned to campus.
Fast forward three weeks. You’re barely hanging on to your commitment to exercise. So many problems have gotten in your way and have challenged you and your determination to achieve your goal and get that nice bod. Here’s a list of the eight struggles you’ve faced while trying to fulfill your New Year’s exercise resolution to be a healthier Collegiette:
1. Time
Fitting an exercise workout into your college schedule has proven to be as difficult as finding a table at Hamp during the dinner rush. The six courses that you’re taking this semester and your involvement in numerous clubs and activities on campus eat up most of your time, plus throw a part-time job and your attempts to have a social life into the mix, and you’re pretty much booked solid for the next four months. Even if you do find time to take a class at the Rec Center, you’ll still need to find the time to get there, change into your workout clothes, and shower afterwards. While you want to get in shape, it’s hard to justify blocking two plus hours to go to the gym when you could spend that time chilling with your besties and finishing that English essay that’s due the next day.
2. Finding cute workout outfits
In order to get that fit bod, you know that you want to look the part to be the part. While no one judges you for how you look at the gym, you know that you will not be motivated to workout if you’re dressed in just an oversized t-shirt and sweats. Besides, many Collegiettes like yourself have gotten into the fashion of wearing cute and colorful sports bras, tanks and leggings while working out in the Rec Center. You’ve realized, however, that getting into the style is one thing, but finding it in your size is another. The long hours that you’ve spent shopping in Target and online for cute workout clothes that will fit you have been strenuous, and the prices that you’ve had to pay for those outfits have almost made you give up your resolution entirely.
3. Motivating yourself to go
Even when you somehow have free time and the perfect outfit to wear, you’re still stuck struggling with the fact that you’re unmotivated to go. Why spend time on an activity that makes you sore and causes you to sweat up a storm when you could just chill in your dorm with your friends and have a Full House marathon? This problem is mainly fixed when you invite your friends to come work out with you, since exercising is always more fun when you’re suffering through it with another Collegiette.
4. Being waitlisted for classes constantly
In order to attend fitness classes at the Rec Center, you need to first sign up for them on the IMLeagues website. Of course, you don’t have to attend classes in order to workout at the Rec Center, but you know that you yourself will never stick to your resolution if you opt to exercise uninstructed. The sign ups for fitness classes, however, open the day before the classes are scheduled at times when you’re always in class. The classes you want to take (Zumba anyone?) always fill up within the first 20 minutes, and you always end up being stuck on the waitlist praying that someone will drop to give you a spot in the class. It’s pretty hard keeping that motivation to work out when you’re not ever guaranteed a spot in a fitness class.
5. Getting to the Rec Center in Winter
When there’s ice and snow outside, the trek to the Rec Center becomes its own workout session. It’s less of an issue for Collegiettes living in the Honors College or Southwest, but for those of us living in Central, Orchard Hill, Northeast or Sylvan, the struggle is too real.
6. Remembering what locker is yours
If you don’t want to pay for a locker for the entire semester (because let’s face it, what’s the probability that you’ll actually keep your resolution for that long?), you can rent a lock with your UCard to keep your stuff safe in a locker while you work out. While that’s all well and good, if your memory isn’t all that reliable, remembering your locker number becomes the ultimate stressor. How can you focus on working out if you’re stressing about not remembering the number of the locker that you locked your laptop in? The fear that you’ll have to humiliate yourself by asking the Rec staff to help you find and open your locker becomes all too real and makes it hard for you to justify keeping your New Year’s resolution to work out at the Rec Center.
7. Forgetting valuable workout essentials
Many Collegiettes bring various items and remedies to use while they’re working out, and while some are optional, others, like bottles of water, are essential to ensure that you’re taking care of yourself in the process. As you live a stressful college life, it’s easy for you to forget to bring those necessary items when you go to work out, and when you realize that you’ve forgotten them, it puts you in a sour mood. Your mood becomes ten times worse if you forget your UCard, because then you won’t even be allowed into the Rec Center, making your effort to go work out a waste of valuable time.
8. Avoiding eating like a pig afterwards
Working out is a great way to burn calories and get on track to living a healthier lifestyle, but your efforts to exercise will be completely blown if you chose to eat nothing but junk after working out. As difficult as it is, try to balance your diet so that it supports your exercising efforts as opposed to making them useless.
Eating right and exercising for at least an hour a day will benefit you in the end! Keep working at it, you can totally do this! As Collegiettes, we all have faith in you!