Keri McKibbin Personal Training

Freedom is something society has fought for over centuries through protesting, until draconian laws were crushed through sheer weight of opinion, endless cases of injustice and eventually the overwhelming will of the people.

Freedom has come a long way, but many of us choose to imprison ourselves through our own restrictive thinking and our worry about what others would think of us if we went against the status quo even it was for the best for us and our families.

For example, since I started training people, there are far more individuals who train with us who done’t drink alcohol anymore for all sorts of different reasons compared to 30 odd years ago. 

Some over-drank every day and it eventually destroyed everything in their lives, but over time and a lot of help, some overcame it and eventually reclaimed their lives from seemingly certain oblivion.

We have youngsters in the gym who have just decided alcohol is not for them, and the circle they hang out in is often alcohol free.

Then we have people who now drink much less and decided to quit, and feel fantastic and don’t miss it at all. The positives are huge, but the feedback I get is that they can lose some friends along the way. Maybe they say, their friendships with others were based BECAUSE they drank with them, instead of being a real friendship?

Our habits often make us gravitate towards those who’s lifestyle resembles ours the most, and I have found often that when we decide to change that lifestyle often for the better in terms of our health, we often meet a lot of resistance from others who don’t want us to change it, which makes the task 100 times as hard unless we see it out.

Whatever your choices (and we respect you all), when you get healthier, the likelihood is that some of your friends are likely to change along the way. It’s like going down the pub every day, once you don’t do that anymore, you often will develop a new group of friends that share your healthier interests and your interests are likely to broaden hugely.

Freedom comes in all categories and remember it’s exactly YOUR choice on how you want to live, how healthy you want to be, and whilst it may take some courage along the way, your true friends will always be your friends, and it should never depend on how much you drink to impress others.

Mood swings can happen because of events and upsets or great things happening to us or to others we care about, ups and downs are part of life. But what about the self-inflicted mood swings?

If you had a few drinks and it got a bit heavy, then today you will suffering “the monday blues” and write everything else off for the day, instead of sweating it out and automatically lifting yourself out of it. Plenty will say “look after you”, but sitting on the settee contemplating too much is not looking after yourself, getting some fresh air, and moving your body is much more like it.

If you try to “cure” irritability, feeling low with food from takeaways/convenience stores, then that may indeed give you a sugar lift for 30 mins, but ultimately pushes you into a slump of sometime epic proportions for the rest of the day.

Continue that for days, weeks and months and it’s no wonder you will get depressed from all the weight you have put on, all the stress that is now on your joints and accompanying pain. You find yourself in a hole that seems very hard to get out of, physically and emotionally.

As a society, we are told we must do these things regularly and often to excess, to make us more “fun” when the reality is those closest to us have to pick up the emotional pieces, when we find ourselves at our lowest ebb.

Drinking too much and eating too much all the time leads often to “fake moments of happiness” which we do just to please other people just to look as if we are having “fun”.

Be yourself, take care of yourself really and properly, take care of your body and your mind, get some fresh air, get a decent workout, eat well and healthy, have a treat now and again and get the balance right in your life-now THAT would really be fun and keeps you much happier and fulfilled when NOBODY else is looking and you don’t have to please anyone else, which is your most important time.