Failures and Finding The Positives

 I didn't intend on ever posting this photo as I look terrible, but it does clealy show just how unwell I have been of late.

Let me start by saying that I'm currently still processing the events I'm about to describe as for me they have just happened, although this post will probably go out a few weeks later. Way back in February this year I saw a post pop up on Instagram, it was of two lovely beaming ladies announcing their collaboration on their first ever fitness and yoga retreat. I've been a long time follower of the personal trainer, blogger and Youtuber Carly Rowena. I absolutely adore her approach of loving the body you have and learning to make it stronger, she also posts lots of content featuring her beautiful French Bulldog which helps too! I knew little about her friend Cat Meffan at the time but I now have much love and appreciation for her too.

I'd been considering signing up for some sort of a retreat for a while. Mostly because I've been more and more resentful of the body I have in recent years, I want to become physically fitter and stronger and of course lose a bit of weight in the process so I don't exude a sigh every time I catch a glimpse of my body in the mirror. Last year I resolved a major 'problem' with the relationship I had with my body. I had a breast reduction and finally felt some confidence in the way I looked. I felt feminine but not enormously busty and attracting unwanted attention. However, resolving one problem revealed another one, or at least allowed another one to resurface. Body dysmorphia. I've had it in varying degrees since I was a teenager. I used to be a whisp of a thing, although fairly well proportioned for my height and weight. Upon reflection I realised that I was dieting and exercising from a young age, I was obsessive with the amount I exercised at home. I was convinced I was fat, but looking back at those photos I can see how slim I really was, almost too slim. What I was really facing was puberty. We lack the proper information when it comes to learning about how our female forms change. Boobs, hips and bums pop out for most of us to accommodate for future child bearing. All I could see was what trash magazines had labelled as 'saddle bags' for thighs, 'love handles' for hips and a bum that didn't like to fit in the single figure size jeans that my friends claimed they slipped on.

Flash forward to today and I still experience body dysmorphia but in reverse. I look in the mirror and think OK, not great but not fat, right? Not overweight surely. The scales were telling me differently, clothes that fitted last summer were now not an option and I was having to buy size 14 jeans and shorts for the first time ever. Was I just not seeing things that everyone else could see? Were my hips really that wide? Possibly. I know that I need to face these issues in two ways. I need to address my mental and emotional feelings towards my looks and I also need to educate myself on what to eat, how much of it I should have and I need to find forms of exercise that I enjoy rather than dread.

So back in February when I saw that one of these lovely ladies I followed was heading up a fitness retreat, I was on board! I was also on a high dose of anti-depressants back then, feeling OK but still not quite right. In April Carly released her own fitness guide which was perfect! I started exercising three times a week and slowly started feeling the benefits, I felt firmer and had a satisfied albeit exhausted feeling after I exercised. After following the guide for 6 weeks I took my body measurements and weight again...nothing had changed. NOTHING! No inches lost, no pounds dropped and if anything my clothes were tighter than ever. I could have blamed it on the washing machine but I knew something wasn't right. That's when I realised my anti-depressants were causing weight gain.

As the date of the retreat approached (30th September) I was becoming increasingly anxious. I hadn't been exercising as my energy levels were depleted from battling with the withdrawal effects of coming off my anti-depressants slowly. I was still feeling incredibly uncomfortable in my own skin and I was shit scared of what was going to be my first ever solo trip on a plane and abroad. I was going to be surrounded by (hopefully) like-minded ladies that were either wanting to kick start their fitness journey or learn how to improve it, but I was still incredibly anxious about being abroad with a load of people I didn't know for a week. All of this anxiety combined with a terrible head cold left me in a fragile state as I set off.

Making my way through the airport alone wasn't too bad besides a steady trickle of sweat down my back and a fire alarm going off with a false alarm to evacuate right before my gate number was being announced. My anxiety was back in a BIG way. Every move I made, every word I spoke was analysed over and over again even long after they'd transpired. Fortunately I'd told those in charge of the retreat about my situation before I arrived. They were incredibly supportive and friendly towards me. We had a lovely welcome session and dinner but the idle time in between just felt wrong to me. I felt out of place and the whole thing had similarities to my first week of university. A timetable that I looked over and was thinking of ways to approach it or get out of, staying in the biggest room on my own out of the way whilst the other girls were sharing or in close proximity to each other and I was very unwell (just like I was during my freshers week) which isolated me further. I tried, I really tried. I engaged in conversations when I could but I always managed to be positioned in an awkward spot, slightly on the edge or blocked from view when groups spilt off into chatter.

After the first night there I woke up terrified. I'd been waking up in the night and having panic attacks and was due to go for our first workout session at 8:30 am. I struggle with sleeping and early starts as it is never mind getting up to do a HIIT workout that early! I went, I did my best but struggled at the back trying to do advanced moves, sweating bucket loads and feeling my body shaking violently the entire time. Once it was over I joined in the high fives over the first workout and left calmly but as I walked to my room, the closer I got the more I lost control over how I really felt. As soon as I closed my bedroom door behind me I was having a full blown panic attack, the biggest I've had since my first one ever. I felt sick, I was sick. My legs fell out from underneath me, I was sweating, hyperventilating, crying silently and felt my heart hammering against my chest as if it was about to burst out and land on the wooden floor in front of me. 'I shouldn't be here'. Is all I could think, 'I've made a HUGE mistake and I feel stuck'. It lasted half an hour and I then started packing my bags, texting my family and the owner of the place we were staying in, I booked onto a flight back to London for 4pm that afternoon.

I did everything I could, I'd just reached my limit. Before the trip I had managed to supress a certain amount of anxiety but as every unravelled I was shaken up like a Coke bottle and my top had come bursting off as it all bubbled out of me. It was a risk to book onto something like this in the first place and an even bigger one to go ahead as planned despite being in withdrawl from anti-depressants. I am disppointed that I didn't manage to stay but leaving was absolutely the right thing for me. I felt like I couldn't be myself, all the anxiety I felt back in my school days had returned, I could feel my voice being supressed back down into my voice box and my body shrinked a little as my confidence disappeared.

It would be easy to only see the negatives in what happened, but I can see what I did achieve.

The positives:

• getting through airport security alone, something which fills me with dread even when we go on a family holiday
• finding somewhere to sit amongst the huge crowds of people waiting for our gate numbers
• boarding the plane alone, lifting my suitcase up to stow away and flying along...all of which usually fills me with paralysing anxiety when I'm with someone never mind doing it on my own!
• introducing myself to strangers
• joining in the welcome games 
• talking to strangers about what I do, what I'm trying to accomplish (writing a book) and telling them about my anxiety and depression
• eating in front of others, I've had problems with this for years and struggled to do so in front of Robbie when we first started dating
• got up early
• completed a hardcore workout in the morning
• talked to two awesome (and well known) Youtubers one on one 

It might not have gone as I'd hoped it would but I'm still glad that I went and gave it a go. I tried and have no regrets. If I'd never headed to the airport, boarded the plane, met all of those people and done a workout...I would have been wondering 'what if?' that and I would have been stalking their Instrgaram stories and posts for the entire week. Things might not always go as we plan but try not to mark them up as FAILURES entirely. Take a moment and think through what you did do, see the positives in what you did achieve. 

Progress Report

Example of mood tracker using bullet journal system, photo from Pinterest.

As promised at the end of my last post, this week I will be discussing how I track my progress. Around the turn of the new year I was seeing a lot of blog posts and Instagrams about bullet journals. I'm aware that the concept has been around for a while but it seems to have taken off recently. If you search for 'bullet journals' on Pinterest you'll see dozens of beautifully illustrated pages that have been painstakingly planned ahead of time. People go to town on their journals using various pens, fonts, doodles and numbering the pages. Despite being a creative person myself, I couldn't get my head around spending hours on setting up the structure of the journal. I respond best to simple plans with some kind of easy to read visual scheme, which is exactly what I created for myself. I decided to take the general concept of the bullet journal; using a dot paged journal and creating a code to easily decipher progress in various topics.

My main areas that I wanted to track included my mood, quality of sleep and daily activities in terms of fitness. Each page contains a view of the entire year ahead, each square represents a day and is coloured in at the end of day according to how it went, whether I had insomnia and how active I was. Over time I can see patterns emerging such as how my activity levels drop if I've had a period of insomnia or a number of low days in a row. I decided to also created a two page view of each month to show how many steps I was wracking up and summarising what I got up to each day. I have to make a note of what I've been up to as my short term memory is terrible. If I forget to sit down and fill the pages in, I really struggle to think back on what I did a few days ago. For the step count pages I've been writing down the numbers provided by my Fitbit. At the end of each month I total up the steps and compare how well I've done against previous months. So far the total monthly step count has increased each month which is brilliant.

Using this type of journal has been a great way for me to track my progress. It also shows how well I'm doing in terms of meeting my fitness goals. I've always known that I experience a particularly bad period of insomnia each month and this has helped to outline when it happens. I love that I can see so much information from month to month on one page. I also find these tables a great way of keeping track of various chores I need to keep on top of such as when did I last change the bedding or clean the bathroom as well as things like when I last gave the pets their flea treatments or whether it's time I changed my toothbrush! I definitely recommend giving it a go, it isn't too late to set one up either!

  

Uphill Struggle

This time of year is particularly difficult for those with depression. January went by all too quickly as did February. I was willing myself to really kick start my 'health kick' all the while feeling incredibly down, exhausted and hopeless. This desire to feel fit and healthy isn't a new year fad, it is a constant desire to be the best version of myself for me. I'm not doing it for anyone else, I'm not attempting to meet anyone elses standards or views of the 'ideal' body. I just want to like what I see reflected back at me, I don't want to feel the pinch of too skinny jeans, I don't want the constant reminder that I'm slightly unfit as I can't catch my breath as I walk up a steep hill. Long ago I mastered the wrong ways of losing weight. I was thinner, I weighed less but I felt awful.

For the past few weeks I've been walking as much as I can. It's alarming to see how little I moved when I was really depressed. I walked my dog as much as I could, others subbed in for me when I was particularly tearful. Other than that my movements were limited to going back and forth between my bed, the bathroom, the kitchen and occasionally venturing out for a food shop with someone. A weekly trip to Waitrose (any other supermarket works just as well) really racked up the daily step count! Nowadays if my step count is lagging a bit I'll go off to ASDA because it's HUGE and pace up and down every aisle, even the ones I don't need to go along, just to push towards my step count. Most people can achieve the daily recommended 10,000 steps fairly easily if they work in the big city or are generally on their feet for most of the day. For me it is one of the achievements that I need to remember and hold on to when I am feeling useless and worthless. The small goals soon add up and as time goes by you'll forget when you last felt out of breath. Despite my good intentions, depression can still get to me, infiltrate my goals and set me way back along my line of progress.

The photo above depicts one of my greatest achievements last year. Surprisingly not mastering how to ski. I tried, I really put every ounce of effort in that I could muster. That doesn't mean that I will never try again. I hope I will. That trip was almost a disaster for me. I didn't feel like I deserved to be there, I failed at skiing therefor I didn't deserve to eat the lovely food or go out to beautiful places with everyone else. My subconscious was punishing me further when I had already been kicked down. I've recently realised that my subconscious frequently meddles with my thoughts.  Any compliment I receive is immediately squashed in my mind, declarations of love are translated into pity, even my own ambitions of losing weight and exercising more are stomped on by the voice telling me "there's no point, you'll always be chubby". It will take me a long time to reprogramme my subconscious, it has been polluted by anxiety and voices that really did tell me I was useless, fat, undesirable, the second choice and first to lose. I'm doing my best to stay on track by creating motivation boards displaying the things I really want to achieve, words reminding me what I enjoy doing, reminders of what I regret not doing during the days I feel down. I've also drawn up the next few months so I can see when we have social events coming up, my motivation to keep doing something physical each day so I feel comfortable and possibly confident when I have to dress up. I'm not going to let another summer come and go by with me feeling uncomfortable in summer clothing, feeling ashamed as my thighs chafe after being liberated from jeans only to feel super uncomfortable in shorts and dresses. Fingers crossed these thoughts carry me through the bad days. I just completed a 30 day squat challenge, I can't say that I've ever done 1,900 squats before! It felt great and after a rest day I will be progressing to level 2 of the squat challenge and adding a abdominal challenge into the mix too!

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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.

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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.

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Life Update

A hearty hello to you all, I know it's been a while since I lasted posted. As I explained in my last post I was having a difficult time after the death of a beloved pet, if you didn't see the post I have linked it here for you to read. I've had a break from both of my blogs as I needed some time to adjust without having the little critter around, that and his little home was in my office so the space left in his wake has been enormous and I haven't wanted to face that room for a while.

Since my last post I've been regaining some control over my life. I say some as it seems as if I have a fair few things hovering beyond my grasp and I can't reach out and grab them all at the same time! I've been seeing an acupuncture therapist for a few months now which has been incredible for me. Just having somewhere else to go during the day is nice and I've established a good relationship with Tracey who presses needles into me like a pin cushion for one hour a week. I'll talk more about that in a future post so if you have any questions about acupuncture please send them to my e-mail cheerfulchelsea@outlook.com or comment below and I'll answer them in that blog post.

After a couple of acupuncture appointments in which I have a 10 minute talk through the previous week's activities, highs and lows, I started to feel more comfortable with the idea of seeing a counsellor again. I've had some pretty horrendous experiences with health care professionals from various departments including counsellors. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to trust someone in that way again after having my words twisted back on me which made me feel worse than ever and guilty about everything I had disclosed to them. Seeing Tracey and becoming so comfortable with her made me realise there are genuinely nice people out there who want to listen and help, it's not just about getting paid at the end of the hour! I'll also be writing another post on how I found my new counsellor and how the experience feels so different this time.

Finally, I've been getting on top of my physical health problems of which there are many! It's hard to believe that I am only 23 years old some times as I feel pretty rusty, broken down and generally in need of a full service and oil change! I've had a bit more energy since I've kick-started my sleeping pattern with the help of magnesium supplements. As a result I've finally felt able to start exercising again. I often discredit myself for the amount of exercise I get just from walking Toby every day, but I haven't felt properly fit or comfortable in my skin for so many years now. It's the classic case of summer is coming and I'm not ready for it. I don't think of it as getting "bikini body ready" because that is applicable all year round, you've got a body, get a bikini and bam done. For me it's about not wanting to have another summer come around only for me to feel uncomfortable, wanting to hibernate and chuck on some winter clothes to cover every inch of my body and wondering why I didn't make some changes sooner.

It seems as if taking some time off can be good for the blog! I've got a lot to write about, a lot to share and hopefully some of it will help someone else. I'm also working up the courage to start filming videos. I think the majority will be beauty based. However, I have a few ideas for some videos that could help the readers of this blog. Some will be me recounting things I've already discussed on the blog. Sometimes people struggle to read long pieces of text and take in details, particularly when they are depressed so hearing those words being spoken and seeing someone they could relate to could be beneficial to them. I'll also produce some videos on things I haven't discussed before. My real aim is to show you that there is a real person behind this blog, that you can trust and confide in me if you wish. Much in the same way as this blog, you will only see what I allow you to see through videos, you still don't get the entire story or what someone is really going through when you only see a small viewfinder of them and their life. Anyway, I think it will be beneficial for me too, being able to flex my creative muscles in a new way through producing and editing videos.

No matter how many breaks I take from the blog I hope you all know that I'll always return to it, the exception being if I fall out of love with writing. I can't see that happening any time soon. In the last post I disclosed that I've been working on something big. I don't want to jump the gun so lets just say it's an extended piece of writing that I've been working on for over a year...

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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!

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