Staying in shape is tough in a tropical country

If you live in a South East Asian expat community for a long enough time there is something you start to notice about a vast majority of the expat population: Almost everyone is in terrible shape. Over the years and as I enter my 40's I have tried to not become one of these typical people and I go out of my way to exercise. It isn't easy though because for those of us that grew up in countries with regular 4 season type climates the fact that the heat and humidity varies from "kind of hot" all the way up to "you are going to die if you do anything outdoors" makes it difficult to really do anything active.

Regardless, I try to do something so that I don't became a giant fat ass.

In the past 5 months or so I have been quite inactive and this is not something I am proud of.

Here is my rather modest Strava running stats from December of last year.

Now I am certainly not going to win any races with a pace like that but it was something I was quite proud of. At this point in my life I was running almost every day and even if the run was going to be weak AF, I still did something most days.

Then I moved into a building with a gym and decided to get into weights only because I hated it a lot less than the running in the heat. Also, December is the "winter" here so even though it was still quite hot, it wasn't as oppressive as it is now.

These days it is the hottest that it is all year long and the humidity is relentless. After 5 months of not doing any cardio for the most part I decided to transition into a more "balanced" level of fitness. Man oh man does 5 months off and a dramatic change in temperature and humidity make a huge difference.

The reason why I chose to simply run around the block is because a friend of mine found out that it is nearly 500 meters just running around this particular neighborhood. Also, after 3PM or so, most of it is in the shade. There is also a bench where I could put a towel and a bottle of water, which I used almost every time around the block.

Look at that tremendous drop in per km pace on my run. I expected to not be as good at this as I was back in December when I was running regularly but this is just ridiculous. I am nearly 2 mins per km slower than I was just 5 months ago.

I'm a stubborn bastard, so the next day I decided to push it and go even further and this time focused on pushing myself even harder. By the time I was done I looked like I had just been swimming and it also took me about an hour of sitting in the air con to reach a core body temperature of less than "close to heatstroke death."

The point that I am trying to make here is that this is one of the great dangers of living in an expat community in SE Asia in my opinion, especially if you like to drink ice-cold beer the way that I do. It is painfully hot outside and it's always easier to sit somewhere near a fan or even better, in the air conditioning of some bar than it is to get your body moving. This is why most of the expats are overweight.

I don't want to become another statistic so I am going to keep going although I don't really think that it is going to get any easier, I'll just have to get stronger.