Health Kick: Diet, exercise, fitness, and life

And it’s getting old. Last night, I slept for almost 13 hours, and woke up feeling like I could have slept for another 13. (I’d had only three hours’ sleep the night before, but still. Surely I should have been well rested after only 8 hours.)

We fly to the US on Saturday, for Christmas with my family, and I’m a bit concerned about how I’m going to deal with another case of jet lag. I’m not a fun person to be around when I’m sleep-deprived.

1) Due to travel, I haven’t seen my trainer for more than a week. I’m now coming down with something that feels like it’s going to get very unpleasant, so I am considering not seeing her later this morning (for what would be our last session before both she and I head abroad for the holidays).

2) About that travel: I had a blast in New York, and am just thankful I was pretty active, with lots of walking, and one early morning session in Central Park, but that was quite rushed due to the lateness of daybreak and the earliness of my appointments. Because, foodwise? I was not doing too well. I tried to stick to whole, unprocessed foods, and stayed away from alcohol every night but one (when I only had two drinks over the course of about four hours). But I was powerless in the face of genuine New York City cheesecake, not to mention the scrambled eggs and bacon breakfast quesadillas at Norma’s. Even that granola up there was deceptive – it looked like there would only be a sprinkling of it, with berries, on top of a cup of yoghurt. But there was actually a ton of granola, a little bit of yoghurt, and a few berries. I didn’t finish it, but hate wasting calories on stuff like that. PLUS, American Airlines said they had no record of my request for a low-fat, low-calorie meal on my flights, then later told me that they did, but it didn’t matter, because they don’t serve that option on the London-to-NYC route. So…WHY OFFER IT? Argh.

3) I’m jetlagged, tired, getting sick, and stressed about upcoming travel and general holiday crap.

4) Due to the amount of time and money I am having to devote to exercise, physiotherapy, and therapy – plus a heavier workload starting next month – I am tweaking my routine somewhat. I am going to see my trainer once a week, go to Pilates once a week, have physiotherapy once a week, and join a gym for workouts when I can fit them in during the rest of the week. Luckily, my trainer is very cool with this and understands completely.

5) I’ve had some pretty key breakthroughs in my therapy, which have blown me away in terms of what they have revealed to me. But what they have revealed is not really that pleasant, and actually quite hard to get my head round at the moment. Being told that you were denied the most basic element in developing into a well-adjusted adult, and that the window of opportunity for getting that element was small, and that having missed it, there’s no way you can ever compensate for it, and that the only option is to immerse yourself in the pain of having missed it, and to get closer to the ‘bad’ part of you, if you want any hope of living a healthier life…is kind of rough. (If you struggle with any kind of addiction or self-destructive behaviour, and you had a narcissistic mother, feel free to email me at dynamist AT gmail DOT com for more details.) Don’t get me wrong: It’s interesting and satisfying to put these pieces of the puzzle together, and to get to the bottom of things which I thought were inexplicable or all my fault. I walked out of my therapist’s office last week feeling really positive and good about what I’m learning – and I am going to learn how to manage all this in a way that will make my life better.

But still. It’s hard.

It helps to have a partner as incredibly and unceasingly supportive as the one I have, and to have good friends I can talk to about things, but in the end, I have to deal with all this in solitude. (The same is true for all of us, with our own individual baggage.) With that, I am not doing so well. Years of sweeping this stuff under the carpet is now catching up with me, and in a not very pleasant way.

Consequently, this past week has felt like a write-off in terms of food and exercise. People keep giving me gifts of chocolate, and I haven’t turned any of it down.

Starting today, though, I am going to be ‘good’ until we leave for America on Saturday. I’ll have to struggle to balance a couple of meals with family and friends before we go, but I’m not going to think, “Sod it, I’m having foie gras on Friday, so I’m just going to eat crap all week.” The all-or-nothing approach gets me nowhere but to guilt and revulsion.

I wish I could be more positive about things, because I am certain that I am headed in the right direction. And if you were to meet up with me in person right now, you’d find me as upbeat as ever. (Something else my therapist wants me to work on: integrating my public and private selves more fully. Now THAT I dread.) It’s just difficult right now, and although I fear I am revealing too much, I keep getting rewarded for doing so. Plus, I’m hoping that when I read this back in a year’s time, I’ll be very relieved at having got through such rough times. That’s the plan, anyway.

I guess I should be weighing myself, but I’m not. When I weigh myself, I feel compelled to do so about six times a day, so I’m just trying to forget about scales. Also, the floor is terribly unlevel in every room of this house, so readings vary wildly depending on where I’ve placed the scale. I might run to the doctor’s office later today and weigh myself on their scale, though, if they’ll let me in for a minute to do so.

The other thing is that I’ve been trying to concentrate on overall fitness, not just weight.

I can judge my progress by a couple of things this week: I was able to run for a lot longer than usual, and a couple of pieces of clothing that I was wearing quite recently are now ridiculously, unflatteringly big on me. (Antoine’s mother, who sewed for the couture houses in Paris and always tailors my clothes, is taking them in. She took a good two inches off the waist of a pair of trousers, many inches off around the legs of the same trousers, and is now working on a jacket that I am swimming in.)

I was also quietly pleased to be told yesterday by my physiotherapist that I am “incredibly flexible” with “very strong” leg muscles. Since I was doing back bends in my underwear for her, I felt I deserved at least a kind word or two.

It was my first visit to the physio, to whom I was referred (privately, as I did not fancy waiting the months and months it would take to see an NHS physio) by a rheumatology consultant. I’ve always had a problem which I thought was with my hips, where they can get sore after a lot – or not very much – exercise, limiting my range of motion and sometimes throbbing so badly that I have to take painkillers to fall asleep at night. I had x-rays, which showed that my bones are in great shape, and the rheumatologist felt that it was a problem with inflamation of the adductor muscles in my thighs.

After making me do various bends, giving me physical challenges to gauge my strength, and pushing into my back for a while, the physiotherapist told me, “This is nothing to do with your legs or your hips. This is a lower back problem.”

I’m banned from doing sit-ups the way I have been doing them, and she showed me how to do them on a Swiss ball (one of which I thankfully already own). She also told me not to wear high heels, which almost made me cry, and so she modified it to say I should only wear them if I’m not going to be walking a significant distance or standing around a lot. I’ve got to buy all sorts of gear to modify my computer and desktop set-up. I’m also supposed to try to sleep on my back, something I have never been able to do. Oh, and I’m now wearing orthopedic insoles in my shoes at all times. Sexy!

I may need an MRI on my spine, but the physio is hopeful that we can sort out the problem without going down that road. The waiting list for MRIs is monstrously long, and to go privately for that would be about £700, so I’m hoping we can indeed sort it out. She also recommended that I start doing Pilates, to strengthen my core muscles and get me to really concentrate on my spinal health and posture at all times.

So I’m doing well, and I’m less down about my progress than I was last week. It is happening, albeit more slowly than I’d like, but that’s just how it goes. My biggest problem right now is that I feel tired all the time, and no amount of exercise gives me the much-promised extra energy I’d like to have. This may be a side effect of my depression, though. (Speaking of which, I am loving my therapist, who is really freaking smart and incisive. What a great investment in me he is turning out to be.)

I’m off to New York tomorrow, and I’m taking my running shoes so that I can jog in Central Park. I’ll need to, because I’m scheduled to have several meetings at restaurants almost every day I am there.

The dress pictured here is one that my fiancé bought me in Paris, for my birthday, in late July. At that time I wrote:

I don’t think I’ll fit into it…until next summer

Today, I was reorganizing our closet space and came across the bag containing this dress. I was right in the middle of a huge task, but immediately took off all my clothes and tried this on. When I’d tried it on in Paris, I’d asked Antoine to zip it up; it would only go about midway up my back, but otherwise wouldn’t zip (or maybe it would have, but he would have ripped the delicate linen in the process).

This time, I got Antoine to zip me up…and up it did zip. It fits very well, with a little extra room.

So, you’d think this would mean a lot to me. And, in a way, it does. I’m glad. I would have been really crushed if it hadn’t fit, but I also was not expecting it to do so.

I’m struggling right now, with a lot of things. I’ve been diagnosed as clinically depressed, which is actually something I view as a positive thing – it’s nice to be getting to the bottom of things that have troubled me my entire life. (I’ve probably been depressed since I was about five years old, which is perhaps why I never wanted to believe I was depressed; I can’t remember living any other way.)

So I’m starting to make the connection between my depression and how it manifests in my behavior – eating the wrong things, drinking too much, and arranging my life so that it is so hectic that I won’t have time to slow down and be hit hard by the feelings of depression. My therapist has also shown me how even my incredible impatience is tied to my need never to slow down enough for those feelings to take root.

There are other manifestations too personal to mention here, but my worry right now is that while I am finally making the intellectual connection between these feelings and how I act as a result of them, I am having a hard time feeling the way I should be. Logically, having made such good progress, I should be feeling fantastic. Instead, I almost always feel as if I am getting bigger, even though I know I am shrinking. I obsess on these feelings a lot more than I should. It all gets me down, and lately I am tending to drink more or be more careless in my food choices because I just want some relief. (Another aspect of how my depression manifests is a vein of wanting relief. This is either relief from depression and loneliness, or relief from the pace I subject myself to so that I “won’t have time” to be depressed.)

So, yeah, I am making progress in lots of different ways. Most days, it just doesn’t feel like it. I’m not asking for anyone to give me reassurance – believe me, I get it from lots of people on a daily basis (poor Antoine, always having to hear about how hideous I feel, has it worst) – but if anyone has had a similar experience and would like to share, I’d really appreciate it.

Cidre

Originally uploaded by dynamist.

I’m definitely not an alcoholic – I drink an average of once every two weeks, max – but I always drink way too much. If someone suggests having a single glass of wine or one G&T, I won’t even bother.

Here’s why I think I should quit:

1) My motivations for drinking are unhealthy

2) When I drink, I usually make bad food choices

3) When I drink, I usually feel at least a little ‘off’ the next day

4) I am unwilling to drink in moderation.

I had a LOT to drink last night – an entire litre of dry French cider and about seven or eight bottles of Corona. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I also ate a 6 ounce burger (with Monterey Jack, guacamole, and ketchup) and shared fat chips, onion rings, skinny fries with cheese, and a brownie with ice cream with friends. I mean, I feel gross just thinking about all that.

So I think it makes sense to stop drinking. Maybe I will make occasional exceptions – like my best friend’s wedding in January. I’m already thinking of how hard it’s going to be to be teetotal through the holidays, when we usually have loads of champagne (eating oysters with no champagne? Not looking forward to that.) and wine. But if I can’t do it, then I’m really not in control of myself – which I want to be.

Blogging things always motivates me to stick to them more. I’m not sure if I’m ready to stick to this one, but I am going to give it my best shot. (Speaking of shots, have one for me. Please.)