I have seen something somewhere along the lines of you can prioritize your relationships, your job, your health or your social life and generally you can manage two of these but probably not more.

The first time I saw this stuck with me because there is a phrase most people who do any production management are likely familiar with and that’s you can do something cheap, quick or well. Pick which two.

With that in mind, I have lately felt like a heck of a failure because between trying to manage my job, school (which isn’t on that original list but I think should be – especially if you’re a full time student), and my relationships, I have been doing a terrible job with the whole health thing.

If you’ve been reading for a while you might remember that during the pandemic, I went for a check-up and my doctor mentioned that my cholesterol was high and the best way to fix it would be to lose 10 pounds (this is a very sketchy statement, the more I read about weight and health correlations, especially as I am far from morbidly obese, but anyway, it is what he said). I could tell from the way he said it he did not expect me to lose any weight.

So I lost 30 pounds. Screw him.

And then I pretty easily kept them off for a year because I had a routine of exercise I actually liked and over the course of losing the weight, I developed eating habits that were totally sustainable and easy to keep up with.

During all of this, thanks to the pandemic, my only real priorities were work and health. Which also included high enough income to easily just throw some money at simple, healthy solutions sometimes (I don’t feel this is discussed enough when talking about health and money because you totally can make good health choices in inexpensive ways but they often take a lot of time too – see paragraph two above).

Then I added full time school into the mix and because my habits were so well ingrained, for the two months I was home waiting for my visa I was able to balance school, work and exercising pretty darn well.

Then I moved to an entirely new country where I no longer had access to a car (this sounds so simple but I have increasingly realized is possibly the #1 disruptor to my health routine) and all of my food habits were just destroyed.

They were destroyed because I moved into a flat share and just had a tiny corner of a fridge to fill and because the kitchen was genuinely something out of a horror movie that I did everything in my power to avoid – so that led to a lot of takeout.

I wasn’t sure how to join a gym and knew I would be moving in two months. So I figured I’d just wait to get it sorted.

And within two months I destroyed a year+ of good habits. I also developed a raging skin infection that kept me from sorting out joining a pool immediately after moving to my current flat.

If you’ve been following other life updates, my brother is getting married in June. And I am a bridesmaid. You may or may not know this, but when dying bridesmaid dresses, they all have to bought at the same time to get dyed in the same vat.

So about three weeks ago, my future sister-in-law announced it was time to order dresses. Stay with me. It all connects. Some of you probably can already guess how it connects.

Well, I’m in the UK and the sizes are weird here, so I literally measured myself using a measuring tape to order and was between two sizes.

I decided to size down, stupidly thinking I could surely just lose a few pounds if it’s too tight.

Well the dress showed up the other day and when I went to try it on, it is like a massively large sack on most of my body and yet there is no chance in hell I can zip that thing up thanks to my boobs (and back fat too probably).

If I just don’t breathe all day, I can get the snap on top snapped.

So I sighed a little but decided this will surely motivate me to actually lose the 15 pounds I’ve gained back.

(Which is actually a little exciting that it is only 15 because I have avoided all scales for the last several months – this also convinces me body dysmorphia is alive and well in me because I was sure I was going to weigh even more than when I started losing weight during the pandemic.)

And this leads up to today and the writing of this post. Surely the nightmare dress will be motivation enough to get it together right? And in a most unfortunate but sort of useful twist, work is still obnoxiously, incredibly slow so I have more free time than I actually want.

I weighed myself today. I logged my coffee and oatmeal breakfast. I essentially decided to try to tackle this like week 1 during the pandemic and just log everything this week without stressing too much over it to learn what the actual calorie and serving sizes are of British foods.

I answered some emails and worked on revising my thesis in the morning. I even knew that the whole day was really mine, so I could exercise at my preferred time (smack in the middle of the day) and then just finish up my to do list when I got home.

This is literally the perfect day to make my grand return to the gym.

I got dressed. I even put on my bathing suit under my clothes. I am wearing my bathing suit still as I type this now. I looked up the bus time, as it is snowing and kind of nasty out, and had my first internal sigh/road block.

It costs me just under £4 to go to the gym when the weather is gross because that’s the cost of the bus up and down the hill.

This caused my second internal sigh – when I am very, very cold, I don’t want to swim (go figure). But I told myself to shut up and get down to the bus stop because I am already wearing my bathing suit.

Sidebar Fun Fact: I genuinely enjoy swimming. After the first lap I find it very peaceful and I think it helps my mental state immensely and I also think through things that are bothering me or important points in my research that I need to clarify better. Swimming is all around excellent for my life. My brain knows this. My brain also doesn’t ever want to swim until I am already in the pool. It never stops. I’ve been swimming since my early 20s and actually getting in the pool is never not a battle. What is this nonsense, brain? Why do you do this to me?

So I go down to the bus. And it is late.

The bus outside my flat is very unreliable. I don’t know why the 244 hates my stop but sometimes it just doesn’t show up.

So it is cold. And it is snowing.

And all I can think about is that it is still a 10 minute further walk from the bus stop in town to the gym. And I am so cold. Far too cold to swim.

I wait a few more minutes.

And then I gave up. I probably could’ve just walked most of the way to the gym in the amount of time I waited.

And I sat back down at my computer to share my total failure to do the things I know are best for me with you.

Total failure at the moment at least. Because I am still wearing the bathing suite. And the gym is not closed for the day yet. So there is still hope.

But I am also still so cold.

I am also left wondering how this would be going if I’d made some different choices over the summer. When I was looking for my current apartment, I found a few that had gyms and lap pools in the building but they were, on average, £400-500 more a month. Of course, they were also nice apartments and not the questionable space I did choose to rent.

Would maintaining my earlier weight/healthier habits be worth £2400-3000 more a year (and also having a boiler that works consistently, walls without holes in them, and probably central heating)?

With work being slow, I guess I do feel relieved I made the choice I made to live where I do but I am sometimes reminded of a conversation with a friend back on tour a few years ago. We are the same age and he mentioned that he also had a habit of moving into the cheapest places possible and that he had recently upgraded to a proper apartment and his quality of life was so much better he thought he was an idiot for living in those questionable situations as long as he did – since the work does always seem to work out.

And this does make sense to me because I do really believe that if I could store my swimming kit in my car and just drive from my flat to the gym, park and go right inside, I would swim a lot more. It’s the hassle and cost to get anywhere or do anything in London that just stops me in my tracks.

So this is how money and fitness are connecting – or failing to connect – for me at the moment.

Maybe I’ll give my trek to the gym a go one more time before the end of the day. Or maybe I will curl up in a blanket, finish my schoolwork and then climb into bed because my flat is also very cold and I am nearly at my wits end of being cold.

Of course, that’s just until this summer when it will then be too hot to function. Sigh. At least a swim will seem like a nice alternative in that weather? We’ll see.