Brief Goodbyes

I'm thinking about taking a break from (or maybe even quitting) the blogging, the researching, the calorie tracking, the exercise tracking, the FitBit-ing. I'm even thinking about disconnecting my Instagram from Facebook so as to no longer bombard my friends (and myself) with my near-daily #365daysofchange posts. I will not be taking a break from and/or quitting #365daysofchange because I feel it's important to finish out that commitment to myself. I've thought about maybe continuing to share things now and then with the friends and family who have decided to "like" my Jess vs Life Facebook page...but even that I'm iffy on right now.

Lately I've been eating what I want without worrying much about calories or macros, trying to sleep more, exercising when the motivation strikes, and playing more video games. I realized over the last couple days, I'm totally okay with all of this. That may seem like a strange statement considering some of the self pity that had been happening on my 365 photos lately. But I realized, I was judging myself based on what I kept thinking I "should" be doing instead of what actually makes me feel good. There is another side to all of this... and that is: I've been struggling with my anxiety a little more and feeling pretty insecure about many different things. As a result I have just about ruined my hair with all the dyeing and bleaching and dyeing and bleaching again... I have a tendency to take out emotional turmoil on my hair - I'm not sure why and I hope to one day grow out of this (as I'm sure my hair does as well). I think some of this anxiety and insecurity is coming from my inner-struggle of the Should vs What Makes Me Feel Better. I'm also certain some of it is coming from some lingering grief. I haven't quite pinpointed specifics, but if I'm messing with my hair color this much there's definitely something going on with me and I'm desperate to shed something or become something or change myself. I'm desperate for absolute control over something - and the one thing I feel like I can always control is my hair. I'm recognizing that and trying to be nice to myself.

Part of being nice to myself is letting go of my very public health/fitness journey/struggle. Maybe just for a little while. Maybe permanently.

In creating this whole space (the blog, my Instagram, my Facebook) where I shared my thoughts and experiences as a means to motivate, hold myself accountable, and inspire myself as I dealt with my health and fitness goals and lifestyle changes, I'm realizing what I've actually accomplished is creating a space where I constantly judge and put pressure on myself to perform at a certain level, to eat certain foods, to project a certain image, and to accomplish things that sometimes are not realistic - or not even what I want for myself. As a result, I'm constantly disappointed in myself and feel like I'm failing. Every time I start a new program, new diet goals, set personal goals - and every time I stop that program, that diet, do the opposite of those personal goals, it's like a giant shove down the self-hate spiral slide. And not only am I failing myself, but I feel like I'm failing the small group of people that regularly follow this blog.

I'm not helping myself very well. I haven't accomplished even a fraction of what I hoped to accomplish in this project. And I'm certainly not helping my readers. I read back over archived updates and feel like I mostly whine about things that aren't super important in the grand scheme of life and it surprises me that anyone actually reads on any kind of a regular basis.

...now I'm just self-deprecating, which gives you a glimpse into that insecurity I'm experiencing.

I don't know that any further explanation is really necessary. This is my brief goodbye, meant in two ways: 1) a brief post, and 2) I may be back in full-force in a few weeks depending on how I feel. It could be that I realize this offers more of an outlet for me than I thought and is actually doing more good than harm. But I won't know that unless I back off for a bit.

It's been interesting, y'all. And perhaps we'll do it again soon.

...and panic

Okay, now that we're tracking some positive points again.... on to the other stuff!

Beginning Monday night of last week, my panic/anxiety returned almost in full-force. After feeling really pretty good about my job (those of you who know me well know that that is HUGE for me), the stress and pressure started to pile on and I had moments of feeling like I was suffocating both physically and mentally. I kept telling myself I would take a telework day just to give myself some breathing room and a little peace and quiet, but Friday arrived and I had definitely been in the office a full day (and then some) every day. Last Wednesday was especially bad and I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin most of the day. It was the first full-blown panic attack I've had in almost a year. ...then I got a call as I was preparing dinner last Friday evening from my boss (who is also my mother-in-law) telling me that I had fucked up big time. I ended up having to go back into work for about an hour, and while I didn't get yelled at (like I thought I certainly would), I did get the "I'm disappointed in you" treatment. Which is almost worse. This has continued into this week. 

On top of this weird panic and anxiety, my body image is going down the toilet. I had a lot of issues with food and portion control last week spurned by the 10 lbs gain the scale reflected on December 5th after we returned from vacation. I'm not sure if this particular flavor of self-hate is a result of the stress/pressure at work, or if it is its own entity. I'm having a helluva time motivating to exercise consistently, and instead of wanting to take care of myself I seem to be punishing myself with too much food and not enough sleep. And do I even need to mention the inner-monologue? It's bad. I'm sick with myself over the way my body composition has changed over the last year, but that disgust and self-hate isn't helping me to actually do anything about it... it's certainly just making it worse. I'm so unhappy with my body, and while I know that "being skinny" isn't likely to make me 100% happy, I also know that gaining fat and reaching the point where I can't comfortably fit in my clothes anymore will definitely not make me any percentage of happy.

I'm struggling to recenter here. While this week I'm fairing a bit better with calorie intake, I'm still nowhere near a deficit and most days am eating above TDEE - although not by nearly as much as I was before. I did manage to run Friday and this Wednesday (I went ahead and started a couch-to-5k program after realizing it was a perfect "rehab" from my piriformis syndrome), and I've ordered some cold weather compression tights and a neck/face warmer thingie and hope to keep up with the runs despite the cold temperatures. I will say I have been very pleasantly surprised to find I haven't lost nearly as much of my endurance as I thought I would, having not run since August. That's both promising and motivating.

I tried to return to some sort of strength training routine Monday night, but I was all over the place. I can't decide what to do or what not to do; to stick with a bodyweight routine or go straight for the weights; for a beginner program or intermediate; a 5x5 or a more in-depth, complex structured program.

See? All over the place.

Not only was I discombobulated, but I wasn't putting in a whole lot of effort and sort of just stopped in the middle of the whole thing to stretch/foam roll and then go grab a shower. It may be time to consider joining the gym again. This would give me access to treadmills to run when it's raining/snowing and/or just plain frigid outside, plus access to all kinds of machines as well as a massive free-weight area with proper squat-racks, etc. to sort of poke through as I please.

I'm not sure what to do. A few local gyms have free week-long trial memberships, so that may be the best place to start. I belonged to Golds Gym for years and years and always liked it there, so I will probably end up back over there. It's also only 2 miles from my house, so it's convenient. Not much of an excuse to not go.

...now let's talk about sleep and some other issues that will be very TMI (you were warned).

I stopped taking my birth control in March of this year right around the time I began my whole 100 Days of Change thing. I had been having horrible migraines regularly for months and had tried cutting out all kinds of different stuff -- stopping the pill seemed to be the trick. The first couple cycles were totally normal and on-time for me. Very similar to how my body seemed to function as a teenager before I started birth control. ...then something happened. I have no idea what. I don't know if what I'm going through now is my new "normal", or what -- but my cycle is all over the goddamn place. I will start my period anywhere from 20 to 30 days (usually earlier, though), and every month, without fail, I have what I've begun calling a "mini-period" about a week before my real period starts. This is where my period pretends to start for 3 or 4 days... and then abruptly disappears... before reappearing for real 5 or 6 days later. Sometimes I'll even have TWO mini-periods in a month.

As you can imagine, it's incredibly inconvenient, uncomfortable, and frustrating. I have an appointment with a new obgyn (my regular ob is no longer in practice) on January 5th and I'm hoping he can shed some light on what the hell is going on. I guess it's entirely possible that this is just how my body operates when it isn't pumped full of artificial hormones... but it doesn't seem particularly normal to me. Going back on hormonal birth control is not an option for me. I tried that a couple months ago and immediately started having horrible migraines again. Stopped the pills, the headaches went away completely. So.. there's that.

Now, sleep. I've known for over a year now how important sleep is to me personally and how I operate mentally and emotionally. That's not even considering the scientific fact that sleep is what helps to regulate all the most important hormones in your body. I got pretty good earlier this year about regularly getting at least 7.5 hours of sleep. Sure, there were nights here or there where I got less - but they were few and far between. Lately I seem to have decided sleep is not important. I'm averaging about 6.5 hours the last few weeks and I'm starting to notice the affects on my daily mood and general functionality. As I get back into running and attempt to find some sort of strength training I can stick with, I realize more and more how important sleep is going to be if I want to be at all successful in changing my body composition, let alone any kind of successful weight loss.

And this is where we begin to harp on priorities - which may seem to be my most favorite past-time on this blog.

I need to get my priorities straight. Either exercising regularly, recovering from that exercise properly, and getting enough sleep to have the energy for the exercise in the first place and to recover from it once it's been done is my top priority OR getting drunk, smoking cigarettes, watching television, and staying up until 2 or 3am every Friday/Saturday/sometimes Wednesday night is my top priority.

Now, I'm trying really hard not to default to my usual black-and-white thinking on this issue. Getting enough down-time and sleep in order to assist in my get-healthy efforts is important, but spending time with my family and friends is also something that is almost equally important to me. As an extrovert, I thrive on my social interaction. To cut myself off from that is generally a big red flag that my depression is swallowing me whole -- and to inadvertently get cut off from that social interaction fuels my depression and anxiety big-time. That being said, there's no reason that all of that socialization must be in the form of imbibing alcohol and/or staying up late. There most certainly is some balance that can be applied. ...I just have to tell that voice in my head that says, "You're missing out" to shut the hell up because it's time for bed, damnit. 

At this moment I'm sort of in a "I give up" place with food and calories. If I keep stressing over it it's just going to fuel binge-like behavior. Better to focus on getting enough rest/sleep, embracing to motivation to exercise when it comes, and managing my stress levels.

So, that's where I am, Dear Readers. ...now, if only I can manage to update this thing more than twice a month...

Kitchen Ghosts

It’s 1:30am and I’m standing in my kitchen eating a bowl of granola cereal, hoping I don’t throw up and wondering if there are demons in my house trying to possess me. I want to cry, I’m so tired. All I want is sleep. If I lie on my left side, my left arm and leg go numb, my cheek tingles – if I roll to the right, the same thing happens on that side as the pins and needles subside on the other. If I lie perfectly still on my back, my neck hurts slightly, my feet want to cramp. I had dozed off for a little while, but then I saw these flashing lights above my bed… and I was so hungry… I’ll realize later that I was seeing migraine auras. This doesn’t occur to me when I’m standing in my kitchen in the middle of the night worrying about the supernatural. I have the hood light over the stove on, because it just seems unnecessary to turn on the bright pot lights overhead… but right here, in this moment, I’m a little bit scared of the dark. I don’t want to fully admit it to myself, but I'm also scared that if I turn the “big light” on it might just make it easier to see the boogey man that is surely lurking in the shadows of my living and/or dining room, keeping me from sleeping.

I eat as quickly as I can. I’m so hungry. I don’t remember ever being so hungry that it’s woken me up in the middle of the night, so hungry that I almost feel like I need to vomit from the tempest of stomach acid churning inside me, forcing me to sleepily slog downstairs and find something quick and hopefully filling. I finally finish my late-night cereal, shove half a banana in my mouth and chug a large glass of milk.

I half-almost-run back up the stairs. I leave the stove light on. I don’t want the shadows to get me. The upstairs hall is so dark. I’m 5 years old again at my grandma’s – if I can just get down the hallway I can hide in the bed. Deep breaths while reminding myself that I’m adult and this is my house and nothing scary or bad has ever happened here, I make myself walk slowly, walk quietly, to the bedroom. The only ghosts that are chasing me are the ghosts of a familiar irrational feeling...

I’m so scared of the numbness. My mind starts telling me that if I fall asleep I’ll probably just stop breathing altogether because my lungs will go numb or some other weird thing that’s probably not even possible. I’m panicking as my husband snores. He’s slept more soundly in the last two weeks than he feels like he ever has, he tells me at dinner Monday night.

I lie in corpse pose (ironic) under the covers and try to breathe deep into my belly, slow on the inhale, slower on the exhale. I think it may have been close to 3:30am before my mind finally gave up on creating horrendous organ-failure-due-to-numbness scenarios and the yoga breathing allowed me to pass out. The baby woke up at 5:50am.

I slept on the couch from about 6am until close to 8am. I didn’t go numb at all, I didn’t imagine my organs failing once. I just slept… but on the way to work, it started again. My right hand was all tingles, my hip, my foot. I was starving. Again.

I had breakfast (two breakfasts, actually) and popped a bunch of B Complex thinking that all this tingling crap might all be some kind of bizarre migraine side-effect. It seemed to help a bit.

You know what else B vitamins are good for? Keeping stress and anxiety hormones in order.

I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s a pretty clear sign of high stress/anxiety when one is awake in the middle of the night concerned about being possessed by demons due to seeing some migraine auras. …this could also be made worse by the fact that American Horror Story can be scary. Or late-onset paranoid schizophrenia. Let’s just really hope it’s not late-onset paranoid schizophrenia.

Tomorrow I go and meet with a new therapist. Tomorrow can’t come fast enough. I also called and scheduled a physical/check-up with my regular doctor for later this month. Sure as hell couldn’t hurt to have some blood tests run, check hormone levels, etc. I don’t know that I’ve had a regular check-up since I was 17 or 18.

The point of this bizarre story is not to make you realize that I’m even crazier than you already thought I was (though I am sure it probably accomplished just that!), but more to show myself what a breaking point I’m reaching.

I had made a promise to myself within the last couple weeks, that come April I would be making some serious life and lifestyle changes. Some of those changes I can begin working on immediately, some of them I originally felt like needed to wait. I’m not sure how much longer those other things can wait anymore. More and more I wake up in the morning and think to myself, “I can’t live like this.”

You’d think I was in some kind of abusive situation or something… I know I seem a bit dramatic, but it feels very stifling, smothering. I can’t even get into a lot of it here because it would be unprofessional and could get me into trouble. Even in saying that I feel as if I’m not being quite vague enough.

Something’s gotta give, and as much as I want to say, “This is what I need and want and this is how I get it, so I’m doing it right now!”, I know that it’s also a delicate situation and a delicate balance and these decisions are ones that I cannot take lightly or be reckless with. I’m hoping within another couple weeks I’ll be able to have the energy and focus to put a plan into place and start taking responsibility for bettering myself and my life so that I don’t have to spend any more nights cowering in my kitchen over a bowl of granola worrying about the boogey man and organ failure as I listen to my husband’s quiet snores coming from upstairs.