I Skipped the Gym for an Entire Week for the First Time in 10 Months. When does wanting to improve yourself become an inability to accept yourself as you are?

And suddenly it doesn’t matter that I’ve been going consistently for a year and a half, that I always eat perfectly, or that even when I think I ate too much, I probably only ate 200 extra calories.

I know our bodies aren’t supposed to be machines running at maximum capacity every day, but every time I miss a workout, the tiny voice in my head drives me crazy with questions.

For the past week or so, I haven’t felt like going to the gym; that’s it. It feels like a big deal in my mind, but it is really only that. I can’t believe it has gotten to the point that if I skip a workout, I feel that I’m going to lose what I built over a year of working out. And if, on top of all that, I’ve been eating more carbohydrates, you can only imagine how I feel.

After this terrible experience, I’ve decided I’m not going to push myself this hard, and that I will give myself permission to stop and recharge when I need to. After all, I’ve proved myself time and time again that I’m not a quitter; there is no reason to worry that much.

Habits are built over time, and skipping the gym for a week doesn’t suddenly erase the 500 weeks prior when you showed up. What began as an attempt to improve my quality of life can become another scenario where you scrutinize yourself, and that wasn’t the point.

If rest is no longer rest, and it has become a pause from constant productivity: congratulations, you’ve succesfully trapped yourself. My new gym objective is that being active is just another thing that I do because I enjoy it and not something I constantly obsess about and that it runs my life.

Consistency is not the same as perfection. If I intend to do this for the rest of my life, I have to be able to accept some degree of ups and downs. I would like to reach the point in which I no longer stress about it, like I don’t stress about taking showers or eating; it’s just something that I do and that I will continue to do (hopefully) forever.

I will probably go back to the gym soon, when I feel ready, and I suppose I’m going to feel ready as soon as I stop treating the issue like a court summons. Until then, I will eat what my body tells me to eat, and if later this week I need to detox, I’m going to do it, but I will resist the urge to compensate for what I’m doing now.

The point of getting healthier was to enjoy life, not to find another way to suffer or feel guilty. Has any of you had this issue as well? Any tips to get over it?