Long time no see ^^

Dear readers,

my recovery diaries stopped almost a year ago. I took a hiatus few months later and never came back.

I am not wrapping my personal training up. I would still love to help people to understand how their bodies work and help them to learn how to self-manage their exercising routines and tools. Despite being so warmly accepted and understood by the expat community here ( especially big thanks to @fitnessplus in Chuncheon and @worldtrainerkorea) after what happened last year and especially after seeing myself (not) handling it made me yet again feel inadequate in the field of health coaching.

For a peace of mind I have decided to come clean about what happened.

In October last year I had a missed miscarriage. My body was exhausted after a ten minutes walk with the dog. I have slept hours and hours at night and hours and hours during the day barely making it up to get some food. After we were told that the pregnancy will not be taking off and after the surgery, my body needed extra two weeks to realize that it is not pregnant anymore. Altogether I have been just sleeping through most of the days for 2 months force feeding myself for the possibility of making it happen.

When I finally felt better mentally, which thanks to partial denial and huge support of my closest ones didn't take that long I was ready to skip back to the gym and pick up where I left of.

When I was studying to become a personal trainer, I have learnt that if a person is bed-bound his muscles start to weaken drastically after approximately two weeks. I knew that I was gonna feel some difficulties when nursing myself back to fit. But what came was so so so much worse than what I expected. From being able to pull up my whole weight few times I was forced to go back to assisted pull up machine and to being barely able to pull up few times with half of my weight assisted. From being able to lift 60kg deadlift I was forced to grab the 10 kg empty pole and start from basics again.

I was devastated. The bed-rest has robbed me of all "abilities" I have had to prove myself in front of my customers. That was my first thought. With 8 pounds gain weight ( which obviously didn't come from a muscle weight) my recovering ED finally caught up with me again. Despite the trashed body image I have always had and am gonna keep having, when I was training I had my strength and knowledge to prove myself to the forever growing and more and more extreme fitness industry (and obviously, to myself) To justify my place in the community. But that was gone.

I came up with an idea of recovering diaries. To show my strength again through nursing myself back to fit. But as I was warned, my immunity has reached it's lowest after the miscarriage. From December to pretty much February I was constantly sick and on medicine. My need to leave the house and find another way how to make myself occupied/useful has won me over and I found a job as a teacher.

To wrap it up. It has been a year now and I am still 7 pounds heavier than I was before everything happened. I am very happy in my new job. I think I have realized that I am not meant to be a entrepreneur or freelancer. Having a stable hours, stable income and being able to work without the pressure of being judged (given that MOSTLY by myself) for how firm I look makes me feel very good about myself. I still obsess about my weight, I still fail with my diet plans... right now I am my most sensitive, most difficult, most aggravating and especially most important client. I just can't go back to my clients with that state of mind. I am not going back to actively seeking career as a personal trainer. I am still keeping my Facebook page opened for those who want someone to relate to and in the future I might come back with some online advice on exercising itself, as knowledge is the only remaining leg of the tripod that supported my career as a personal trainer.

I did not quit exercising, though. In the past year I have found myself a nice yoga teacher who helped me to learn the basics and now I am exercising home. Recently I even started swinging my kettle bell again. I take it as a good sign that I am on (this time natural and not forced) way to recovery.

Thanks for reading this and who knows, maybe see you soon.

You sincere,

Lenka Kim

#recovery #bodyshaming #bodyimage