work out thoughts

i didn't exercise for a few years (at least I can convince myself it's an experiment, although unintentionally) and my life quality went really bad, both physically and mentally. I essentially became a grumpy old man. I have severe depression to the point that if I don't attempt to recover, I'm going to harm myself. My circadian rhythm was disturbed, insomnia has driven me nut. My diet was crazy, like the worst kind of intermittent fasting. My acnes was bad, despite whatever kind of medicine and cosmetics, it was not medicinal and cosmetic problem from the beginning. I developed nasty belly fat (no body shaming, it's just nasty for your **health**, belly fat from lack of work out was linked to high risk of virtually every diseases, evidently). I rebooted my exercise schedule and here's some thoughts.

1. During the work out, I don't think much. I just focus on the work out, but thoughts happened after that, during the relax time.
2. More oxygen to my brain ✅ More muscle constriction ✅ More lung activity ✅
3. Despite health issue is crucial, I don't really do it just because of my physical health, that purpose was unmotivated at all. This time I want to set an achievable goal that I can enjoy fighting, like a reward at the start of the day. Also a disciplinary habit that I can keep milking reward from it to nurture this vessel, even if I don't have any better thing to do. And it was a successful sketch, I love it. I know it when I can keep thinking repeating it tomorrow and can't wait for it, not abhor it happening again.
4. I learned to value time. Before that my life was a mess, I really have time management problem, my mind was cluttered with things I don't bother putting my hand on uncluttering them. It was hell, it was agony. But work out was not "taking my valuable time" as I thought. It was fast, around 1 hour per session. And I gained more than lose. I learned that 1 hour of focus can help me to earn much more than I can imagine. The most important thing is, the reward feeling when I can get the job done, it's better than any other task. furthermore, I can channel that same energy to focus on completing other tasks, like they were just exercises.
5. I'm more confidently independent. No one will do the work out for me, I can't expect more than believe in myself. During the work out, there were some points when I was so exhausted, and then kick in the thought of how to get through this, like the champ I once was, or be the champ I'm gonna remember for the rest of my life. The same philosophy goes to my life. No one will get me through the hard time except myself. Now I can have all the courage to get out of the situation, as long as I can still thinking about it everyday. And that situation is what happening right now, I was having the hard time, and no one was around me, no one knows it, no one is able to help. Deep down inside, I know I was doing all of this for me and my joy of beating my own difficulty, not for getting anyone's impression.
6. My life was more complete. I always know I was missing something in my life at that point when I cease intense physical activities. The point is, I (wrongly) thought that it's not gonna add any value to my daily schedule, and I can save some more time to focus on more thing I want to do. But that was a horrible formula. without question, cutting time on work out was so destructive, instead of losing a few minutes on exercise, I lost the life purpose and seek out to good and bad thing to fulfill the whatever need that I can't even understand. It's just fruitless effort to fill the bottomless emptiness. I'm glad I change it today, now I have a sound structure of what a life can be built upon. I can recenter my life from what I have and stop hunting for meaningless things and hopelessly strive to give them meaning.
7. I have more sympathy and holistic vision. Before work out, I was looking at the world with the eye of a lame person. I mean I can't think like most of the population. Unpopular opinion is not a bad thing, it just at some points it's not appealing anymore, and worse, tend to be lunatic. When I can adopt the view that most people see, I can design solution and provide insight to reasonable issues. I can leave out the wicked details and align my view with the canon (or better pretending to it.)