Workout Motivation

Once I left my last job, I realized how affordable the beauty premium was. Or at least, as an Asian male who’d like to stand out — us Asian men are stereotyped as shy (for those who don’t know me, I think sober drunk is a good descriptor of my personality, plus I don’t drink) and scrawny. My sibling taught me that in our society (and personally I don’t think stereotypes will ever go away), you can impress people easily by beating back stereotypes. For Asian men, that means looking less nerdy, appearing more confident, and in this case, looking fit. The thing that clicked for me was that I never had a tailored suit, so I would wear a suit, and a girl would say, “You need this tailored,” because I didn’t fit in it; specifically, my arms being thin and my shoulders not being very broad. The other issue was my girlfriend starting sleeping over, and we started talking about marriage, and I realized I wasn't strong enough to -- I know it's cliche but -- carry her down the aisle. So in 2025, I started working out, but with intention: look good in a suit and carry my girlfriend.

I stopped doing front raises and started doing lateral raises again. The front raises were starting to hurt my back right below my neck. I think in my journey, I feel rewarded for developing a habit for once. I feel like growing towards a goal that wasn’t some big career goal was rewarding; I was not consistent in a lot of things growing up, which led to a personality of distractions. I loved bouncing between infotainment YouTube channels. I skipped medication. I sometimes skipped brushing my teeth. I stopped using my retainers (luckily only one tooth really moved, and it’s the same tooth as my dad’s, so it’s just genetic :/). It feels good to have done this habit of working out for a good amount of time, that I’ve started developing other small habits: actually waking up and cooking breakfast/lunch depending on when I sleep, sleeping on time, and developing a normal schedule/circadian rhythm around 11p–12a.

Lately, I've been seeing a trend on Instagram on what women think is an ideal arm shape/muscle amount/tone definition on men (e.g. [What is the perfect arm definition](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY6i7Ezte1x/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==)). I think I would go for 3 (out of 5). Rosa agrees about not being too big otherwise it's scary. I'm currently probably at 2 (maybe even less; ChatGPT says 2.25 because of triceps size, but my arms are still not large enough to be able to have definition) but with some fat on me oof. The funny thing is, my girlfriend doesn't care; she watched c-dramas and was looking for a shy, Chinese-Canadian software engineer because c-drama leads are notoriously very skinny; instead, she got a chaotic, Chinese-American startup founder. I started off skinny, and she liked that, so my whole workout goal is intended to help my beauty premium and general random physical requirements.

Now in my current workout, I think my weight increments are slowing down now that I’m doing both push and pull instead of 4 push days. I'm starting to cut after peaking at 160lb. Now that I have a long-running workout habit, I’m stacking even more on: I want to compete in a marathon one day. Since playing soccer, I’ve always played defender, so it was a lot of sprinting rather than anything endurance wise. One of my best childhood friends mentioned my endurance was shit, so I took it to heart, and from junior year running at an 8 min/mi pace for 1 mile (I stopped exercising during the school year outside of high school soccer; in freshman year, I could achieve a 6 minute/mi pace), I started running longer and longer (inconsistently; habits is just hard for me). I had an internal injury unfortunately by senior year as I was gunning for a marathon, so I had to stop. At that time, I was running 1 mile uphill at a 6:30/mi pace and going at least 4 miles per day. I think I can beat that consistency and mindset back into me. I think building habits has been vital in building confidence in myself to do a bunch of things. I'm just much heavier now.

If you read my goals blog, I mention I’ve always struggled with marketing. There is a public perception anxiety that runs in my family, particularly me and my mom. But with habits, I think I can overcome the anxiety and do better.

And now same goes for marathon training. Same goes for marketing. Unlike coding, which back then I had a love and passion for, these things aren’t necessarily a love or passion but more so just a thing I like and is good for me. At least I like it. But it wasn’t something that drew me, just more like “I should probably do this” without the “ugh” feeling in the beginning for many dreaders of exercising. I think I don’t really dread it since I’ve been cardio wise pretty fit and skinny my whole life. I’ll write a blog on what I think “interest” means in people, but it boils down to what are you good at. I’m not the best at anything — maybe I’m highly proficient at pattern matching, thus conversationally I make a lot of analogies — but this is probably why I’m constantly drawn to exercise.