Dear Readers,
It’s been awhile, I know. I've missed you quite a bit. I've
missed writing quite a bit. I've questioned my decision to leave the blog many
times, but have been equally exalted by the decision many times as well.
I don’t really know where to start, where to go…
When I left Jess vs Life dormant I had already begun abandoning
a lot of fitnessy pursuits. I was not exercising regularly first due to my
injury, then due to just plain feeling sorry for myself. I had taken a big step
in managing my depression by starting medication, but the medication didn't
seem to be doing what I hoped it would do (because, guess what? It’s not magic.
Duh.) My relationship with food was… tumultuous, at best. My thinking was
becoming more and more disordered, my guilt over eating too many “bad” foods vs
“good” foods was leading to more and more binge behavior causing my weight to
continually creep up which would then spur a full-blown self-hate cycle… wash,
rinse, repeat.
The time has both flown by and crawled since I last put my
thoughts down in this place on the internet. Most days I feel like an entirely
different person than who I was on January 6th when I say my brief
goodbye here. Here just a few things that have changed in the last three
months:
- My pharmacy refilled my anti-depressant prescription with a generic from a different pharmaceutical company just a few days after I wrote my last post. It was like being on a completely different medication. All of a sudden, it was working. Instead of just feeling numb to everything, I actually felt things. And most of those things were positive, happy things!! Yes, there were (and are) some down days, but even that felt good! I didn’t realize how apathetic I had become toward life since starting the medication originally – while I no longer necessarily felt depressed all the time, I certainly didn’t necessarily feel better either. I was very “meh, whatever” – but then when I got the other version of the generic… holy moly. I don’t even know how to describe it. Needless to say, I immediately asked my pharmacy to put a note on my file to order my refills from that pharmaceutical company in the future and have been feeling so much improvement since.
- I joined the gym again at the end of January. I reached a point where I only had one pair of pants that fit and it was breaking me. I woke up on January 26th and I went to the gym straight after work and enrolled in a month-to-month membership. I’ve gone 4-5 days a week nearly every week since. I’ve managed to keep in a routine despite the bad weather here in Virginia trying its hardest to throw me off-kilter. I made the decision to spend my lunch break going to the gym instead of going out to eat every day – that money now is funneled to my gym fee. This also affords me the workout time without the Mommy Guilt. Lifting weights again has been… I can’t even describe. It’s like breathing again. And I’m currently training to run my second 5k race in April.
- I eased back into counting calories by simply tracking without restricting. I stopped labeling foods as “good” or “bad”. My daily mantra became “food is food”. I ate whatever I wanted and aside from shooting for at least 100 grams of protein and at least 30 grams of fiber per day, I didn’t pay much attention to macros. Not quite 2 weeks ago I decided to begin eating at a small deficit. My first week I lost 1.8lbs. So far so good. Every day I eat more and more veggies and find it easier to make food choices that make my body feel good and fuel my training. I’m reaching a point where I’m consuming alcohol less and less and therefore don’t have to compensate for that additional caloric intake.
- At the beginning of March I started wearing my FitBit again, and while it has assisted me a bit in seeing where I am with my general activity level outside the gym, I’m beginning to feel less and less like I “need” to wear it and will probably put in back into retirement here soon. …also, it has a tendency to be glitchy, and ain’t nobody got time for that.
- While I haven’t been blogging, I have begun journaling ( or just “keeping notes”, as I generally think of it) my exercise, how much I’m sleeping, where my mood and energy levels are on a day-to-day basis, and how my diet and exercise is affecting my menstrual cycle (if at all). And speaking of that, I’m happy to report that since mid-January I seem to have returned to a more regular cycle which likely means my hormonal health in starting to improve. My recent bloodwork came back excellent, with improvement in thyroid levels, as well as a 20 point drop in my triglycerides which were elevated in January of 2014.
- Although I slipped back into my smoking-if-I’m-drinking habit back in July/August, and then again in November/December – I am so very happy to say that as of 1/1/15, I’m back on the no-smoking bandwagon. I've smoked a total of 3 cigarettes since the beginning of the year, but have felt zero draw to make it any kind of a regular habit again – if consuming alcohol or otherwise.
- On March 3rd I reached my 365 day mark on my #365daysofchange project.
As I prepared to post that final picture for the project, I
found myself thinking, “Well, not really that much has happened in the last
year.” But I was wrong. As I started writing out just a few things in the post,
I realized: goddamn, I’ve been through quite a bit in this last year and I
survived. I may not have hit my weight-loss goal, I may not have fully attained
my fitness goals – but I am healthier, happier, and improving. And, really,
that’s all anyone can ask for.
