Getting Back to the Good

Good God, I've actually done two posts in a row?! I'm determined to return to doing what I love most, one of those things being writing. As most of you will know writing has become a form of therapy for me. Although I did start seeing a new counsellor at the beginning of 2016, after a few months I decided that I needed a break. I'm fully aware that talking therapies aren't easy, it takes time to heal and talk through (in my case) almost 8 years of damaging thoughts and behaviours. I decided to take a break because the conversations started going in bad places, touching upon subjects and people that I hadn't intended discussing. After most sessions I'd sit in the car for a few minutes and simply feel shit. I felt worse than before I arrived for the appointment. I believe that counselling is very benefical for some people, particularly for those whom have never discussed life changing events in their lives or long term concerns of theirs. After concealing my illness for 5 years I was suddenly talking about everything very openly and then I started writing as a way of helping myself process years worth of thoughts and feelings on bullying, anxiety, depression, self harm and eating disorders. I've had a lot of time to process everything and perhaps my silence over the years caused more damage, but now I'm really dealing with everything and have found a great deal of clarity on matters that were once very confusing.

In the previous post I touched upon how hard the past few months have been for me. I had a HUGE operation which although it has been life changing for the better, it also caused a massive shift in my day-to-day life. Prior to the operation I had been eating healthily, attempting and succeeding to film videos, I was doing a lot of writing for my book and I was exercising 6 days a week. I was preparing my body for what was to come. I've had operations in the past which have left me feeling incredibly weak and as a result were the perfect conditions for depression to manifest in. This time around I wanted to give my body as much strength as possible. I succeeded in that. Of course any operation will knock you for six as your body has been pumped full of anasthetic and drugs. I was fully prepared for how long it would take to heal, I knew that I would experience discomfort as I tried to sleep each night and I certainly wouldn't be able to exercise for a couple of months.

I was, and still am very happy with the results. It's given me a lot more confidence but I know that I still have deep rooted self esteem and body confidence issues. Most of those issues come from being bullied, over-eating as a coping mechanism at that time and subsequently yo-yoing between diets and various eating disorders for years. All of that caused a lot of damage to my body and my mind. The combination of not being able to exercise, coming back from a tropical holiday to the grey skies of England and daylight saving all contributed towards a severe period of depression. The feelings of being useless, worthless and incredibly unattractive all came back. My anxiety reached all-time highs as I found myself hiding behind doors as the house was full of people, I'd be trembling with anxiety and silently crying until everyone left and I quietly whispered through the crack in the door to reveal my whereabouts to Robbie. There has been a massive contrast between those moments and me managing to drive to Southampton or Winchester to visit family and friends. It can be confusing for others to hear that I'm really struggling when they witness times when I seem to be on top form. It's true that some aspects of life have become easier, but those have been replaced by new fears and concerns. My lowest points have become dangerously low as I sink into a deep depression which may only last an hour or so, but those minutes are incredibly damaging to me. I sink into a short, sharp depression in which I could easily make some drastic and permanent decisions only for me to lift out of it an hour later.

After a second consecutive night of sobbing in bed about not being able to live like this, I asked Robbie what he thought I should do. It's usually directed at me, what I think I should do and frankly if I knew...well I'd be sharing that revelation to everyone else like me. We talked it through and determined that there were some things that had been making a difference prior to my operation, that was the last consistently stable period I had. Since then I've been exercising a lot less and my anxiety has been so severe that I've been unable to attend appointments for accupuncture which had been significantly helping my insomnia and mood in general. It took me a long time to realise that accupuncture had such a significant impact for me. There were weeks when I had really bad insomnia after having a good sleeping pattern for a while. It suddenly hit me, I hadn't been for an accupucnture session for over a month due to not being able to afford it. That was the only thing that had changed in my daily life.

So...along with my plans of writing, filming and keeping on top of my household chores, I'm going to be slotting exercise and accupuncture back into my schedule. Ideally I'd like to get back into blogging, perhaps on a fortnightly basis to alleviate some of the pressure I started feeling from weekly blogging. I put a lot of pressure on myself to create 'perfect' content in a limited time frame. Some bloggers manage to post more than once a week and sometimes daily! Unfortunately that's just not realistic for me as I'm attempting to juggle my mental health issues and attempting to find happiness in some of the things I do each day. For now my idea for the blog, 'Cheerful Chelsea 2.0' if you will, is to create updates on how my mood, anxiety levels and self confidence levels have been for two week intervals. I'll also be trying out various work-out plans and making a note of how much I enjoy them, whether they have an affect on my mood and any results I may achieve from them. I'm not becoming a fitness blogger I swear! I just want to help myself and others with mental illness by narrowing down some realistic, affordable and achieveable exercise plans. I know the struggle of watching late night/nocturnal hours of television when hour long product adverts come on teleshopping long after the usual channel has stopped airing. I get sucked in and become transfixed on them and a few days later I have some INSANE workout plan or fitness gizmo which ultimately gathers dust as I pile on weight, have super low energy levels and quietly sob over my desire to change but lack of means to do so. This idea for the blog might not be embraced by many, bet hey ho I'm giving it a go. Perhaps it will keep me on track with things and make me stick to an exercise plan. I simply can't live the way I have been for any longer, I just can't be a 24 year old that is this ashamed of her body. I'm young, I shouldn't be worrying about these things and I shouldn't have caused this much damage to my body and self esteem by dieting since I was 16 years old. I hope you will check back in a couple of weeks time to see what I have to say! If this idea goes well I will also be posting some time lapse videos of the exercises I've been doing to show how I'm progressing and also so I can see how much fitter or flexible I become over time. Remember, all of this takes time, that SUPER amazing body transformation video you watched took TIME. Healing takes TIME.

Follow 

Fading Fitness

Depression takes over the mind and the body. The invasion begins in the mind, it takes away all of the joy we once felt for life, our favourite hobbies and interests fall down around our feet and we skirt past them. In the days that I felt marginally better I longed for ways to maintain the high. I ate all the wrong things, I'd gorge myself on sugary things to get that sweet hit only to end up feeling terrible about my body image. The low moods made it difficult for me to leave the house let alone exercise on a regular basis.
Since then I've managed to introduce some simple habits in my everyday life such as getting up at the same time each day, taking Toby for a long walk or completing some kind of housework. Ultimately I wanted to feel like I had achieved something at the end of the day. It took me a long time to stop comparing my day to those of others who went out to work in the city each day. The things I do, I do for them and it enables them to come home and feel at ease or so they have a weekend free of housework chores. I've finally started to feel like I have a purpose.

I've been afraid of failure for as long as I can remember, be it exams, losing a friendship or falling of the waggon whilst on a healthy eating kick. Whilst I was at university I attempted to do something to improve my fitness. I started running in the evenings which helped for a while. I could only go when it was really late, in near darkness and when there were very few people around due to my anxiety about other people seeing me. It helped for a while until I started getting excruciatingly painful shin splints.

My pursuit of feeling fit, healthy and a bit lighter has followed my rising and falling moods. Doctors love to remind patients that exercise can help alleviate symptoms of depression. Unfortunately it isn't always that easy, it requires the right conditions. I never felt able to walk into a gym, I was too self conscious and knew that all the effort I should be exerting on the machines would be spent feeling anxious. Instead, I opted for an at home exercise plan. Insomnia and Teleshopping make for fantastic partners, or rather money robbing crooks! I'd be sucked into the paid for adverts displaying some fitness models and some real life examples of people using some fitness equipment or following a DVD and getting great results. I'd be convinced within 15 minutes of the 30 minute segment.

Unfortunately I learnt the hard, and expensive way that you can't jump from not exercising in years to attempting a full on, intense exercise program. I understand that some people are the exception, that they can achieve amazing results through commitment and determination. Sometimes there are those who have other factors working against us. As much as I wanted to feel and look better I struggled to get past the warm up routine for some of the programs I attempted. Slightly disheartening. It left me in a sweaty mess debating whether to sit down in the shower or just collapse onto the bed. The key is to start at a low level, reduce your expectations, save time and heartache by choosing a lighter workout plan. I like DVDs that work through different levels allowing me to progress to a higher intensity when I'm ready. Even if they say you should graduate to the next level after 10 days, only do it if you're body feels ready. I often get anxious about progressing to level 2, I worry that I'll struggle with the new moves and that a slip will send me into a spiral that causes me to stop exercising for a week or more...putting me back to feeling unfit. Panic not, watch the next level over and over until you understand how to do the moves, even take the time to practise them at a slower pace to familiarise yourself with them.

To summarise, my top tips are:

• take your time to feel ready to exercise again
• don't pursue an intensive exercise plan if you haven't worked out in a long time
• as excited as you may be to feel ready to get active again don't set yourself up for a fall by pushing yourself beyond your capabilities
• developing fitness and stamina takes time, you'll soon be breezing through work-out moves that you initially found challenging 
•  move up the levels as and when you feel ready, listen to your body and don't be disheartened if you see others making progress faster than you, you haven't seen their journey to that point, it probably took them a long time too!
• feeling that rush of endorphins after exercising isn't always the norm. Doctors often talk about it as being fantastic for combating depression but I rarely feel the hormonal rush they describe. 
• focus on how you feel after the workout regardless of endorphins! You finished it, WELL DONE! You are a magnificent sweaty beast. You are slowly but surely kicking your depression to the curb. Your body might ache the next day but we all know it's a satisfying feeling. Start up a sticker chart or tick chart for each time you workout, it soon builds up and gives you an extra boost if you feel like you aren't getting anywhere.

Follow  

Get Walking

As I write this I've just crawled out from beneath my duvet after having a particularly rough day. Technically I haven't seen any of the day to know that it was been rough. For once it isn't depression related. Everyone in the house that realises I've been absent for a day assumes that I'm beating myself up in my head. Today was simply feeling like I had the flu, feeling trampled and having only been tired enough to fall asleep at 7am.

Anyway, today's post isn't about that. This week was the start of FitBit's 'Big Billion Stepathon' for Sports Relief. I don't need to tell you what a fantastic cause it is. FitBit's idea is that for every 20,000 steps each person completes they will donate £1 to Sport Relief. The daily recommended steps for a person to be fit and healthy is 10,000 per day. Should be pretty easy to start raking in the money through doing something we do every day, right? The answer is yes for most people. For people such as myself it might be slightly more difficult. It's not that we are lazy, or don't care. I'll actually be pushing myself harder than normal in attempts to do my bit for the Stepathon! Feeling too low to get up and out of bed? Put on your FitBit and jiggle those legs around in bed, do the warm bed dance! Going out to walk the dog anyway? Give the little fella or lady a treat by stomping around a bit further than normal. Need a few bits from the shop? Don't go out in the car, make use of the local corner shop- getting the steps in AND supporting a local business at the same time, RESULT! Still in your pyjamas, working from home, feeling low or under the weather? Head to the kitchen, put the radio on, switch on the kettle for a lovely warming brew and whilst you wait DANCE IT OUT. Dancing isn't a cure I must say, but dancing like a loon free of all inhibitions is pretty damn satisfying.


The Stepathon is running until the 31st of March, so get moving! Check out the website here for all of the details. If you don't already own a FitBit, they are knocking off some money on all some of their products purchased during the Stepathon! I really recommend them. You don't necessarily need a super flash one. I own the 'Zip' as pictured above. It's easy to set up, can be clipped onto your bra strap, the waistband of your jeans or whatever and can be linked via Bluetooth to an app on your phone which shows you how many steps you're achieving throughout the day! So go on, give it a go! I'd love to hear how many steps you achieve!

Follow