Depression is fun! Wait… No. No, it’s not.

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!