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It's not a "lack of discipline" that precludes people from "self-improvement," especially in the realm of physical exertion.

"Know your limits and work to push past them" doesn't work if you are you are limited by invisible conditions.

Here's an illustration: You've always been an "average person." Not exactly a powerlifter, but you exercise intermittently. You've had ups and downs throughout your life, periods of being in decent shape, periods where you've slacked off, not paid enough attention to your diet. But overall, healthy. Most recently, you were going through a period of more deliberate self-improvement. Going on longer walks every day, cutting out fast food and minimizing sugar, you even got some strength training equipment for home workouts. You were proud of your progress. A few months ago, you got COVID.

You've been pretty careful: you always wear a mask to work, you don't eat in restaurants, and you're pretty sure you can trust your friends to do the same, so you're fine being relaxed and unmasked around them.

Somehow, though, you got it. It wasn't the most sick you've ever been, but you know that's not the only danger from COVID. You know it's important to let your body fully recover. After a few days, the symptoms seem to have completely passed, other than a little lethargy. Walks become short and sporadic, you aren't doing your strength training, and you prioritize rest.

After a couple of months though, you come to the realization of how far you've regressed. You're being too idle these days. It's time to get back in shape! You're not that disappointed that you get exhausted more easily and aren't as strong as before. Totally natural after such a gap. But you know that the only way to regain your losses is to just power through. Progressive overload! Push your boundaries! One day, empowered by an inspirational post on twitter, exhorting people to get stronger to better serve their communities and defeat the fascists, you go as hard as you can. It's been months since your infection, you're feeling better, and you want to finally surpass yourself. But you are clearly hitting a wall. You're getting exhausted and you're still not where you were before. But you know the only way to improve is to power through. It's a struggle, and you juuuust miss your old personal best.

Frustrating. But you're at least almost there. You take a rest day, as prescribed for maximum gains. And frankly, you both need and deserve it. You pushed so hard that you can barely move. Maybe you overdid it a bit. You resolve to pace yourself in the future -- gains should be slow and steady. You still feel weak the following day, but you know that's just your body adjusting. You'd been idle for so long, and you've really only been back on your regimen for a few weeks.

Consistency is key, though. So even though you really don't feel like it, you can't be lazy today. You focus on cardio instead of weights. Gotta balance consistent exercise with avoiding overdoing it. Slow and steady.

Today is a SLOG. Incredibly frustrating. You started off on a run, not even planning to go as far as you usually do. But you're out of breath halfway through. After a few minutes of walking to catch your breath, you get back up to speed... then crash again. What the hell? Did you really over-exert yourself so much the other day??

The walk back home is slow and painful. You collapse into bed. You'll just have to try again tomorrow. At this point, let's shift perspectives from you to your body.

If you were to test your serum and urine metabolome, you'd find a sharp deficit of hypoxanthine compared to the average, indicating a glycolytic anomaly that directly correlates to the intense crash you're feeling. Urine excretion of methylhistidine, mannitol, and acetate would be off the charts. You're not just tired: you're experiencing hypoacetylation and excessive muscle catabolism.

In response to the exertion, your muscles are literally breaking down. In the coming weeks, you grow ever more frustrated with yourself. Your workouts are getting more and more exhausting. Even when you push yourself harder, you only ever seem to backslide further. You take more rest days, which makes you feel lazy, so you push hard again later. But it's not working. This goes against every bit of common sense. You're working harder, but getting weaker. That's not how it works.

You decide to see a doctor. First you try your GP, who gives you a checkup. He says "This might be psychological" and gives you a referral. You briefly ponder the psychological aspect, but you doubt that's it. When you first got back into exercising, you had been incredibly motivated. You've always been able to pump yourself up and get moving, you've just been getting physically exhausted too quickly. Next, you try a specialist, who came highly recommended by a friend. She interviews you about your experiences, tests your breathing, your heart rate, your stamina, your blood, your flexibility, all sorts of things you hadn't even thought of. Once all the results are in, she gives you the verdict:

"You have chronic fatigue syndrome."

You have a million questions. You've heard people talking about things like ME/CFS, chronic pain, and such on twitter. You've had empathy for the disabled. But that's not you, right? You get checkups all the time, and even got genetic testing done at one point. You've never been told you have any risk factors for anything. You haven't had any serious injuries. You don't smoke or do drugs.

"So what's the treatment?"

She looks at you, sympathy in her eyes. There is no cure. There is no treatment. The only recommendations made by medical agencies are to avoid overexertion and to get treatment for depression and anxiety.

This is your reality now. It's the shocking, new reality for tens of millions more people every year since the start of the pandemic. Most of whom don't even realize it. The symptoms and disease progression are highly variable and recognizing them is very difficult to do when awareness is so minimal. The impact this disease has can be intermittent, subtle, delayed, and very slow. But it does eventually catch up with you. And fighting against that slow decline by powering through with progressive overload is disastrous. The problem isn't that you're not working hard enough. It's that your biochemistry has been altered, and now you break down muscle faster than you repair it.

Your only option now is to take a step back from exertion.

You need to be disciplined.