I can see a light glowing dimly at the end of the tunnel of this PhD journey, which I say to you from a desk in the bottom floor of the school library on a lovely June morning (it’s lovely June because the undergrads are gone and peace reigns in this library at the moment). I have a super sugary coffee and some snacks next to me – as that is how I have survived this period of life.

But lately I have been thinking a little bit about when I get more of my life back and I keep thinking about how the first thing I’d like to do is join the gym.

Because I have gained nearly 30 pounds during the process of this PhD journey.

And, sure, I could have not. I could have gotten up at the crack of dawn or exercised super late in the evening. But for this staying healthy goal, I have several legitimate barrier to my success, especially as of 2022, when I started this journey.

• Time – I go to school full time. I work part-time (cough, cough, definitely only part-time).
• Cultural Confusion – I moved to an entirely new country in 2022. How does joining a gym even work here. And the food packing. My goodness, it sounds so silly but I legitimately couldn’t understand British food packaging for weeks. I didn’t understand how to count the calories here.
• Good Habit Destruction – A complete upheaval of my life destroyed all the good habits I had. I had set times I liked to go to the gym. A yoga class I enjoyed that usually worked with my schedule. I have a pretty regular grocery shop full of healthy and fake-healthy but low cal snacks. I knew what to get at the take-out places I frequented to stay on track.
• Sedentary Habits – school and work both involve sitting in front of a computer for hours.
• The Cold Weather – England is cold; my flat is always cold, and the gym is relentlessly cold. Would you want to get in a pool?

And this sounds silly, but those things pretty much undid me. I only had so much energy each day and it went to navigating life in this country, getting work done and getting school work done.

I’m sure I’ve written in the past about how I got fed up in Fall 2022 and was like, no, I will stop this backsliding, and I nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to fit in some time in the freezing, miserable pool too.

So I decided, nope, your priority is to do this PhD thing. You have to pay for it. And you actually have to do it. So if something has to go for a bit, it’s size 8 jeans.

And I think it’s been an ok choice actually.

And over time, Cultural Confusion became a non-issue. I can (well enough) read the packing on British goods. I still haven’t found perfect equivalents for my favorite low-cal foods (Skinny Cheddar popcorn and seedless watermelon, that’s the winning ticket, and they don’t have either in the UK), but I can make do.

Purely existing in this country doesn’t take the same mental bandwidth it used to.

My partner and I moving to a lower cost area next month. I’m trying to make sure we’re closer to a gym, but if not, at least the savings in rent will make a gym membership and the trips on the bus less gutting. With some extra space, maybe I can even get a bike, as hauling the amount of junk you need to swim all around London with me all day, along with whatever else I needed was another thing killing my will to exercise.

We are also moving to nicer flats, so hopefully that means it can be properly heated and I won’t just be endlessly cold, which makes getting a pool much nicer. Also maybe the pools will be nicer there.

And as I move into writing up, there are, in some ways, more demands on my time, but they are pretty much peak flexible. So I’m hoping that will make swimming more appealing. I also swam the whole time I wrote my Master’s dissertation and found it a really useful time to think through things without my writing staring me in the face.

So, essentially, I’ve identified my barriers, which took a little time for them to really even make sense to me, and I’ve made a plan for how to get past them.

The plan isn’t immediate or perfect, but I feel like by this time next year I can be back in a healthy groove and maybe by the time I graduate, I can be in slightly better shape. Not only because I miss the size 8 jeans (I mean, I do), but I overall felt way better around 15-20 pounds less than I am now.

But. For today. I will continue to bribe myself with some Urban Fruits (I hope a baby step in right direction away from the Haribo Tangfastics that I may have been too fond of for a year or so there).

And the main reason I think this will work is because it has worked for my financial goals in the past.

• Figure out what’s stopping me.
• Identify if it’s a temporary season or a full lifestyle change needed to fix the problem.
• Start chipping away at the list.
• Patience
• Continue chipping.
• More patience.

What’s standing in your way today?