My Journey With Health And Fitness – Managing Things From A Foreign Country

Thursday’s fitness class tends to be brutal. It is called Power Hour and the instructor changes it up quite often with unexpected routines. Today it was no different. We were given 8 exercises and in round 1 you would do 15 of each exercise, round 2 was 14 of each and so on until the last round at 2 of each exercise. There was a time limit on this but you had to do as many rounds as possible. I completed 11 rounds which meant I was at the point of doing 5 of each exercise. To put that in perspective, I did 110 reps of each exercise. Seriously, 110 pushups and sit ups? A year ago I would have laughed at the thought that I could do that.

When I come to Mexico it is not like I drop everything I do at home. As a matter of fact only 2 of my volunteer gigs are removed from my list, facilitating the caregivers support group and doing dog walking for a senior once a week. The only reason those are dropped is because obviously they require me to be there in person. Still on my plate while here is being financial agent for a candidate in an upcoming election, doing work for clients (it actually looks like I am picking up a new client and will be meeting with them virtually next week), phoning seniors each Friday and of course working out at least 2 1/2 hours each day (ok, maybe not quite so much on the weekend). Really, that is a lot.

So how do I manage to do it all? The workouts are simple, walking around the complex for 1 1/2 hour each morning then an online workout. The workout is in real time because as I have mentioned before I have my big screen tv set up as a computer with a webcam so I just Zoom into the class. The others are a little more challenging simply because of the time difference. However, in this world of electronics and virtual pretty much everything I can do most of my work anywhere that I go. I actually travel with a little case of USB drives each of which contains information for clients or volunteer organizations. The laptop that I am currently using is going to be staying at the condo since I purchased a new one for home a few months ago. You add to that a Mexican phone that allows me to deal with my emails wherever I am down here means I am still connected 24/7.

What the biggest challenge is though is actually to force myself to do anything. Ok, the workouts are a no brainer for me but I get them done very early in the day because of the heat and the fact I would talk myself out of doing them later in the day. The problem with the rest of the stuff is that choice between sitting poolside enjoying a beverage or working. Trust me, it would be easy to allow myself to choose the former over the latter. But I made myself a deal, the first week that we were here I would do as little as possible other than relaxing and spending time with my husband (I successfully accomplished this) but as of Monday this week I was back to doing all the rest. As a matter of fact I spent 2.5 hours watching training videos for my financial agent role yesterday.

Bottom line is I try not to put off any work/volunteer stuff while I am here. I know it would be easy to procrastinate but quite frankly I just don’t allow myself to do that. I would much rather keep on top of everything rather than let it get behind and then I have a huge pile of things to get through later on. Though I will admit, it all depends on the amount of tequila involved 🙂