I’m really sorry to have gotten your hopes up, Dear
Readers, with regular posts... and then to just completely disappear off the
face of the earth. It’s been a really rough month for me. My depression funk
just kept getting worse and worse. Last Wednesday was sort of a tipping point
for me. I almost had to leave work early just because I felt like I couldn’t
keep my shit together… however, I have a very real fear of taking time off from
my job for anything that is not a legit emergency or prior-planned vacation
(long story, maybe I’ll share another time – but here’s part of it: I work for
my in-laws), so I pushed through until 5pm only excusing myself to the bathroom
to cry a few times. Yeah, I know. I’m a mess.
Wednesday night I went and played about an hour of
tennis with my dad and it felt really amazing. I am super close with my parents
and really enjoy spending time with them on this level that is hard to explain
– it’s always a super satisfying experience for me and has this ability to really
build me up and reassure me even if I don’t talk to them about struggles I’m
having. Somehow just being around them makes me feel okay again. Last night was
this magical cure for me. I think. I hope. I didn’t talk to my dad about how
I’ve been feeling down lately. We just played tennis and chatted about normal
everyday stuff. But I tell you what, every time I would run down a ball and get
it back to him, every time I managed to finagle a tough shot he’d shout, “Great
shot!” and maybe give me a few pointers on form. Every “great shot” and “nice
one” was like its own special formula of cure-all. I ended my day feeling more
normal than I’ve felt in a long time. Thursday morning, aside from being a
little sleepy (stupid staying up late *grumblegrumble*), I woke up feeling
pretty good and emotionally even. That feeling, unfortunately didn’t last more
than a day and a half… and part of that is my fault for getting supremely lazy
and doing NONE physical activity Thurs-Sunday. I know I’ve said this here about
a thousand times, but I’m going to say it again: Physical exercise makes all
the difference in my mood and temperament. I know this and need to just force
myself to do something physical every
day – even if that is just a light 15 minute walk.
Because of the funk I’ve been in, I’ve started to
reevaluate some of the things in my life that might be stressing me more than I
consciously realize. A big part of the problem may be my sleep habits. After
doing well at getting at least 7 hours of sleep a night for a while there, it’s
all fallen to pieces. I find myself staying up later and later to the point
where it is not unusual for me go to bed at 1 or 1:30am on a weeknight. This is
unhealthy on so many levels, but even if I want to put the emotional
repercussions aside, I’m not allowing my body proper recovery time from lifting
and/or cardio activities. This won’t help me accomplish my weight loss/fat loss
goals. In fact, it’s doing nothing but sabotaging the efforts I am putting in.
I know this, it’s in the forefront of my mind every night when I look at that clock
as I crawl into bed and it’s past midnight… and it’s stressing me the eff out.
I don’t know how, but I need to really start making sleep a priority in my life
instead of chugging through with this “I’ll go to bed early tomorrow” mentality. It’s not doing me
any good, and it’s not doing my children/husband any good… especially my husband, since he usually stays up right along with
me!
Another issue is exercise routine. I have this set
schedule in my head of when and how often I will do lifting vs cardio, etc… and
if I don’t stick to that schedule I really mentally torture myself over it.
“Guess you just want to be fat forever, huh?”, “Just one more week of the scale
not moving” (this is especially stupid since I’m continuing to lose inches and
see changes in my body composition – the scale doesn’t reflect those things and
therefore shouldn’t matter anyway), “It’s cool. It doesn’t really matter,
‘cause you’re never going to reach goal anyway. Go ahead and add some Dairy
Queen on top of skipping your workout.. AGAIN.” I’m pretty mean and cruel to
myself. And it gets me nowhere other than Downsville with a quick pit-stop in
Guilty Town on the way. I’m regularly exercising/active 4-5 times a week (with the exception of the
last two weeks) and part of me is realizing that this should be what matters,
not necessarily what “type” of exercise I’m getting in. I have read enough to understand
and know full-well that strength should take precedence over cardio if there’s
only time for one, but sometimes I just feel like going for a long walk or a
run instead of lifting and I need to realize THAT IS OKAY. I appreciate any support I can get in this unexpected change in my exercise routine, as any outside negativity is just fuel for my self-hate cycle right now.
[Confession: Going back to the scale making
me feel down and how it shouldn’t, etc, etc… well, I weighed myself no less
than 3 times over the course of 3 days last week… water retention makes all the
difference. Thursday morning after an hour of tennis the previous night and
then a couple adult beverages revealed a weight of 194.4. Friday morning after
no exercise Thursday night, lots of water, and just a few beers the scale came
down to 192.2. Saturday morning after TONS of water, NO alcohol and very little
food thanks to an awesomely terrible migraine headache Friday night, revealed a
weight of 189.2. Being a full 48 hours out from any “exercise” and not having
any particularly salty foods or alcohol makes all the difference. Water weight
is evil and is why I simply cannot trust the scale. I know full-well I did NOT
lose 5 lbs of FAT in 3 days. Stupid scale.]
Here’s a big one: quitting smoking. I had one week
of success which promptly went down the toilet and I’ve been unable to really
and truly motivate to quit for-real since. I realize that if I can get my
priorities straight with sleep, it may be easier to let this one go… the main
reason I’m staying up so late is because I’m socializing and drinking. Drinking
= smoking for me. Always has. I’m well aware of the cycle, but I think part of
me is just not quite willing to fully break it yet. THAT’S OKAY. Once again we
come into a self-hate/guilt cycle… I feel guilty for drinking and wanting to
smoke, I feel guilty for not smoking if somebody asks me to, then I smoke
anyway and hate myself and feel like a liar. That’s not stressful or anything
*eye roll*. I’m not sure exactly what to do in this situation. Part of me wants
to say, “give yourself a break” and focus on working on the other stressors/priorities
in my life in hopes that when those are more settled that the motivation and
desire to give this piece up will come naturally. And then another part of me
wonders if that’s just a bunch of bullshit I’m feeding myself and just another
excuse I’m making. I haven’t decided yet.
Okay, so… work life. I have reached a place where I
just really do not want to have a job. I want to be at home with my kids. I
know I’ve said a hundred million times that I felt like I could never be a
stay-at-home mom - but right now, and for the last several weeks, I really feel
like I could do it. And I really feel like I want to do it. Unfortunately this is absolutely not an option for
my life whatsoever. My husband is 100% unwilling to be the sole financial
provider for our family, and that is not even taking into consideration that we
cannot afford for me to quit working right now or the fact that he and I
together are learning how to run the family business with a plan in place that
we will be taking it over fully and purchasing the business in the next few
years. The stress of this alone may be what’s pushing me to just not want to do
any of it. And there is nothing I can do or change about this situation without
creating several additional mountains of stress… and not just stress that I
deal with Monday through Friday, but stress that I would be dealing with every
moment of every day that could possibly ruin my marriage. Fun stuff, huh? I
just keep holding on to the knowledge that further on down the road I will most
likely be in a position within the company and in my personal finances where I
can scale my hours back to part-time and spend more time with my kiddos.
It feels so odd to be so down and depressed when
almost everything in my personal life is going well. Mike and I getting along
great, our only rough patches are because of my outbursts of illogical and
irrational thinking about little things that don’t matter which, I know, are
happening because of my depression. My kids are doing awesome and I’m doing
awesome with my kids. My friendships are maintaining well and I’ve even
reconnected with some old friends who I haven’t been close to in a long time
and am feeling like I’m getting so much emotional benefit from that. I would
say I even feel pretty awesome about my body 90% of the time, even though I’m
mentally punishing myself whenever I skip a workout – which just makes that
negative inner-monologue-ing seem even weirder!! I guess maybe what I’m
realizing is that I’m experiencing somewhat non-situational depression for the
first time that I can remember… and yes, there are some stressors in my life
that could be a contributing factor, but here after writing them out they just
really don’t seem all that huge. Except the sleep thing. Sleep has got to move
higher up on my priority list… this could totally all be stemming from some
serious hormonal imbalances due to my lack of sleep. So that’s my number 1
focus for “change” right now – Get. More. Sleep.
Here are some progress pictures (these were taken
Monday 6/17 - more to come 7/1!):
I can definitely see changes happening. Last week
and this week (so far) I feel like I’m finally getting back on the Eat Good
Food/More Protein bandwagon, and that will help tremendously. I’ve been trying
to get myself into a mindset of, “Feed your body, not your belly”. Meaning, not
everything has to be the tastiest, most savory/sweet/rich thing I’ve ever laid
my taste buds upon, because I’m not eating for the joy of eating – I’m eating
to fuel my body. This in no way means I will not still take the time to enjoy
food and cook things that are healthy and
delicious as well as enjoying eat-out/junk-food indulgences sometimes, but it
does mean that I need to break this thinking that I’ve gotten into that
everything must be “delicious” – which, for me lately, has meant “restaurant/bar/fast
food”.
The last
couple weeks I’ve been taking a little bit of a different approach to my food tracking
by trying to focus more on macros (carbs/fats/proteins – 40/30/30), meeting
those macros with nutrient dense foods and not focusing so much on caloric
intake. I have days where I lean more toward the primal breakout where my fats
and proteins will exceed my carbs, and I am totally okay with that. I’ve also
decided to give myself one day/night a week where I will not track food and
just indulge guilt-free in whatever I so choose. I should have added this to my
pseudo-list above: calories have been a MAJOR stressor for me lately and my
days of overindulgence and poor food choices I believe are what kick-started my
negative thinking again. This is definitely a stressor I can change and am working on as I described. I’m also realizing
that I may reach a point where I’ll need to take some time to intuitively eat
and ignore food journaling period if I can’t get into a “happy” place with it.
I also restarted Stronglifts last night. Again. I
haven’t been consistent with the 3x’s/week workouts like I should have been
from the beginning and it was definitely affecting my progress as the weight
increased. So, I’m back down to 45lbs for all lifts and will only be increasing
weight weekly, 5 lbs to all lifts except deadlifts which will increase by 10lbs.
This time around I’m really going to focus on form and performing my lifts
correctly and using the correct muscle-groups to move the weight.
I’ve continued to keep cardio as a regular part of
my routine 2-3 times a week, and am starting to really feel some progress
there. That’s been exciting! I’m really looking forward to playing tennis with
my dad and other friends more regularly, as well.
I just have to keep in mind:
I hope you all enjoyed THE LONGEST BLOG POST EVER
and are doing well!
