My Love/Hate Relationship with the Gym

Lately, I've been really trying to live a healthier lifestyle. Really I've been trying to make this change for a long time. I truly want to be better. I want to feel better. Eczema isn't the only thing I live with. I also have struggled with Inflammatory Bowel Disease for a very long time now. I've had various surgeries and just overall a hard time when it comes to my health.

So I decided to start hitting the gym.

The gym is my happy place

The gym quickly became a place of comfort for me. It made me feel like I had somewhere to go to relieve some stress and not think about my health while improving it in the process. The gym quickly became addictive to me. I started going every day, certain days I would even go multiple times a day.

Feeling good

I knew the employees' faces and I became very comfortable with the idea of getting into shape at a fast pace. At the rate I was going I really felt good. I wasn't experiencing so many health issues and the overall feel of my body was just everything. I was happy.

Cleaner skin?

Because I was going to the gym multiple times a day, at times it would require me to take multiple showers daily. I didn't really consider how that would impact my skin. I honestly thought it would be better if anything. Why would my skin be worse because it was clean? That was my mentality for a bit at least.

Sweating, stress, and scractching

I didn't realize, it wasn't really about how clean my skin was. It really wasn't about my bathing at all. It was about the sweat, the stress, the scratching. I didn't realize it, but at the gym I would scratch my arms almost constantly. The sweat from working out so hard made me constantly itch, but I wasn't conscious of it for a while. Because of this, I also didn't realize just how rough I was being on my skin.

Diet and exercise not working

It wouldn't be until I arrived at home late nights, showering, that I really saw the full effects of what I'd done. It drove me crazy. Obviously I wasn't intentionally hurting myself, but honestly, it just felt like I couldn't catch a break. Everyone says diet and exercise are the keys to life, yet here I am, 26 with Eczema and Inflammatory Bowel Disease, yet diet couldn't heal my Ulcerative Colitis, and exercise wouldn't help my skin to clear. Frustrating to say the least.

Happy and healthy

I don't have a real solution to this issue. I can't sweat less and even if I could, I wouldn't want to. That's the goal. I want to sweat. I want to feel my workouts. While I do try to be more conscious with my scratching and how I treat my skin, I refuse to stop going to the gym because of my condition. My overall goal is to be happy and healthy. Until those goals are met I will continue to try different methods to take steps in the right direction.