Activity

Intro:


During the COVID-19 pandemic, life changed quite a bit for everyone. This means that routines were changed and places were shut down, disturbing how I approached the Action section. Nevertheless, I found ways to keep myself active and to keep my body moving. However, after while I found that once again my plans were disturbed when I started facing cardiovascular issues, and after a while it was discovered that I have always had these issues, but my medicine was causing it to be much worse than before. Of course, I didn't let this stop me.

Walking and playing with the dog:


Anybody who knows me know just how much I love my dog, June. Since she's pretty old at 13 years old, she has a complicated relationship with exercise. Sometimes when I go out on my daily walks she'll "Ask" (cry) to come with me, and when she does, I'll gladly take her. She can't go more than 10 minutes at a time, so we do small short walks together before I go on my long one.

Playing with June actually what made me realize that I was having heart issues, as a few minutes of chasing her around the house left me completely winded. Obviously, the issues could never make me stop playing with her since she's the light of my life and gives me quite a bit of activity.


This activity really is related to the first learning outcome as walking with my dog allows me to really think about how much I love her and the effect she has had on my life. She is my strength

Time: ?? Don't really count the time and im not even sure if it belongs here but I really enjoy her so now everyone reading this has to see her cute face

Daily walks


Before the COVID pandemic, I walked to and from the bus stop to go to school. This was my main source of exercise since I would be busy for the rest of the day unless if I went out of my way to go somewhere. When the pandemic first started and we were in lockdown, I would actually track how often I left the house and it was... Not very often. Due to this, I started pushing myself to go on walks. It started with short half-hour walks, then evolved to one hour and then an hour and a half each day.


Time: Average 1 hour every day for a year and a half

Reflections:

  1. Going on these walks makes me happy and I enjoy pushing myself to go for a bit longer or take a new road.

2. I honestly believe that some of the challenges happened when I moved houses. My grandparents' house that I moved into is on a mountain, which made my routine a lot harder.

4. After I got into the routine of doing these walks, it felt wrong not to, and I always try to make sure I can get them done.

7. On these walks I also sometimes run errands for my family, which I think is important since it saves a car trip aka does a little to help the environment.

Hiking up the Mesa De Ocote


My town is surrounded by mountains, so it's common for people to take hikes up them and sometimes even camp there. In the summer between 11th and 12th grade, I hiked up the mountain with some friends and we camped overnight at the top. During this hike my cardio issues were affecting me and I nearly passed out on the way up. Luckily, we made it, after my friends lent me some of their water. Both the hike up and down the mountain were lovely, though it took quite a while.

Time: 5 hours (Not counting the camping)

Reflections:

  1. While doing this I realized that my endurance level had gone up a bit, though I still got tired.

4. Even though I wanted to give up, I persevered and made it to the top

5. During this trip, a lot of my friends were sharing things with others and encouraging each other to keep going.

Helping my family rebuild their porch


Over the summer between 11th and 12th grade, we went to Ohio (while following travel restrictions and quarantine rules). When we got to the house of my aunt and uncle, they were working on rebuilding their porch. Everyone was working on it, even my grandparents, so I helped out too by removing nails and wood and tossing it into piles as well as tearing down the old porch. Working on this project as a family was really nice because I enjoy that side of the family and it was satisfying to see how much work we got done in just one week

Time: 4 hours


Reflections:

  1. One of my most important strengths is how I really care for my extended family which helped motivate me to do a family activity where we were all working together

5. During this, the whole family was working together on different tasks. I found this really cool since when we were all working side by side we got everything done pretty quickly and we had fun doing it.

The gym:


Near the end of the 2020-2021 school year when the country started to open back up, I decided to finally get back on track with going to the gym and working out. One of my goals was to lose some weight, and the other was to gain some muscle in order to pass better as a male. I never took any pictures due to being self-conscious about my body, but I ended up losing around 15 pounds in the span of three months.

I found it difficult getting the motivation to put this in the blog because, though it definitely counts as physical activity, it wasn't really with the best motivations behind it. I struggle with an eating disorder, and compulsive over-exercise is one of the main methods I use to lose this weight. Though I understand it is both wrong and unhealthy to exercise as much as I do, I think it's important to include it in my blog- despite the goal of CAS to be something positive, not negative.

Time: 6-10 hours a week

Reflections:

  1. Though it became a bit of an unhealthy obsession, one thing that I really did enjoy about the gym was being able to train my muscles. I started to focus on each one and how it works with my body, every now and then increasing the resistance in order to push myself harder in the right direction.

4. Going to the gym became a part of my daily schedule, though I would sometimes take breaks in order to give my body a rest. Going three to five days a week became my main goal, and I managed to (almost) always follow through with that plan

7. This is the main one I had to consider, Often when I think of ethics, I think about how my actions are affecting others, but in this case I had to reflect on whether or not it was ethical for my body. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a healthy amount of exercise, and I know many people who go for much longer periods of time. The main difference between me and some of these other people is the food intake and actual BMI.