Still Workin' It

Today in boot camp I had a realization. It's not necessarily the cardio that was making me feel dizzy and lightheaded last week - it was looking down in combination with cardio that was kicking my butt. I had to skip boot camp on Tuesday due to stomach issues, but I was okay to go today. About a third of the way through I started to feel a little queasy, which quickly turned into that feeling where you can just feel the bile rising at the back of your throat, so I stopped what I was doing. At that moment, it happened to be bear crawling on my hands and feet across the floor. I let the feeling pass and was fine until we started doing something called a burpee, which involves getting into a push up position and then standing up, then going back down again. Going up and down brought back the nausea full force, so I had to once again stop.

Every time we did anything where I was down on all fours, or going up and down, I felt like I was going to vomit, but I did not get dizzy today. This reinforced my notion that this is just an issue with my body not knowing what the hell is going on and having a hard time adjusting. The instructor agreed with me. She mentioned that when she started working out she had the same problem with being inverted; it brought on nausea. She also said that one of the other girls, who has been taking this class for a really long time and is in excellent shape had mentioned that she was dizzy and lightheaded earlier, so it can happen to veterans too.

The heat is not helping. Luckily we're inside, but it's still kind of hot. I don't know if people in other parts of the country understand just how hot it is here. Sure, it was hot in other parts of the country to rival the heat here, but that only lasted a few weeks. It's still hot here, it's been hot here, and it will be hot for another month at least, if not longer. It's September first and it's supposed to get to 112 degrees today. The prolonged heat just takes a huge toll on our bodies and we tend to forget about that because we're sort of used to it at this point.

Also, we live in a valley and pollution (we're the fifth largest city in the country! there is a lot!) tends to get trapped here. I was talking to one of my sorority sisters who is a nurse (she's getting her masters now) and she said that the ozone and pollution have been really high here the past few weeks and that tends to cause breathing problems in people even if they haven't had problems before. Think about it - you're exercising, so you're breathing hard and taking in more air. You're getting more oxygen into your body, but you're also getting more of the other crap that is in the air into your lungs too. So there's that.

I have a friend who said her trainer warned her that it's really common to get dizzy and/or nauseous when you first start exercising because your brain is used to using a certain amount of oxygen, and it hasn't had a chance to adjust to how much extra your body needs for this extra work. The dizziness is your brain giving you a warning that it wants you to stop because it can't regulate the oxygen yet. As you work out more though, your body learns what it needs and what it's supposed to do so it will happen less.

I just think the issue is a lot of little things that have added up, not one big scary alarmist thing. I knew this in the beginning and I just need to learn to trust my instincts better.