It’s been over a month now since I tested positive for covid and almost 4 weeks since I tested negative. My energy levels are still not back to normal. They’re well under where they normally are: On a regular day without exercise, just doing my daily business (which comes down to 10-12km of walking), I am done at about 6 pm. I then feel like I felt after a really intense workout before covid, probably even worse. It has gotten to the point where I could barely stay awake a few times.
This text is not for me to complain about my situation. I know it could have hit me worse. Much, much worse. But this is the first time in my life that my body is hit hard by something and taking longer than a week or so to recover.
I guess the invincibility I seemed to have in my 20s is gone now. Likely a normal part of getting older. But it sucks nonetheless.
I’m not sure if what I experience qualifies as post-covid or long-covid, but given the research I did, it seems to be quite common. For the most people, it seems to last between 5 weeks and 4 months. I hope I’m on the shorter end of the timespan.
I’m uncertain on how to tackle this situation. Some people have had good experiences with just resting. Other people think that you have to rebuild your fitness from scratch and you have to take baby steps (and being exhausted is part of training).
Today was the first day in a week or so where I still have energy at 10 pm. I ate a lot today, probably 4000 calories (and most of them healthy). Not sure if this is the cause of having more energy or just a correlation. Or pure chance.
Again, I don’t want this text to be me complaining about my situation. I just wanted to have this written down for my future self somewhere. However long this goes on, I’m optimistic that I will cope with it and come out on the other end with some new learnings.