Health of the mental & physical kind

Ever have one of those days where the world just conspires against you? Okay, that’s a bit dramatic but yesterday was not my favorite day in recent history. It all started with the reality that I slept like crap on Sunday night which left me extra tired and out of sorts all day yesterday. I hit a big 4 PM afternoon wall slump yesterday and didn’t feel like doing anything. I made it to the gym, but was less than impressed with my effort and then I went to therapy.

In hindsight it might have been because a part of me was dreading therapy all day. I like the therapist and I don’t dislike therapy but yesterday was a rough one. It left me with that exposed yucky feeling all night. I cried during therapy. Too much and I shut down. I actually had to say, I’ve hit my wall, I have shut down. Right there in therapy. And I had to stop and the therapist had to tell me to breathe. She could literally see that I was not actually breathing. I had to stop and consciously tell my brain to actually perform the function of breathing. It was hard. Some sessions are just like that I guess. Obviously it hit a nerve with me. By the end of the hour I felt a little better but I was such a “drained” wreck that as soon as I got in the car to drive home I cried. It was not the same tears that came out in therapy but tears of just exhaustion I think. Tears of my brain has been probed and fucked with and its hard and I don’t like it. It was all necessary I am sure, but it was still hard.

I got home and immediately took a shower. Perhaps I thought that if I cleaned my body it’d wash off some of the mental yuck I was feeling. I have noticed that some of my worst times of body image perception come AFTER a therapy session. It is crazy how liked our mental state is to how we feel about our physical self. My therapy has little to do with my body image issues. I am not discussing weight or my personal insecurities in there so it’s not like any of that was triggered by therapy. I just find it interesting that after feeling raw and exposed that when I see a glimpse of myself in the mirror that my first inclination is to go, ugh, I’ve got so much work to do. And I know that it is the result of my overly emotional state. It’s like a doctor taking a sharp pointy object and poking it around in your brain. Part of that brain is connected to the other parts that control things that they perhaps didn’t mean to affect and suddenly I am crying because I am so disappointed in my physical being.

This could also be an avoidance tactic on my part. I have a hard time dealing with some of the issues brought forth by therapy so I transfer them onto issues that I am more used to, things I feel more in control of, like my health and weight. Anything to avoid having to deal with some of my less than ideal characteristics.

I woke up today feeling better about things as a whole but still with a feeling of dissatisfaction with myself and my progress. I think it boils down to this, in the last month for whatever reason I don’t feel like I’ve really made any noticeable progress at all. Fundamentally I know that things have to be improving, that all the effort I put in has to account for something and that maybe one day It will all perhaps just come out in one fail swoop but for now it’s getting disheartening. I know I sound stupid by saying this. In about a month, the scale is about the same, my body fat percentage is about the same, and I don’t notice anything different in my body. I feel stalled. I feel like after the first 3 months my body has gotten used to exactly what I’m giving it. Like in order to see some progress I need to do something different. And since there is pretty much no way for me to do more on the exercise front it has to be with the food. I fully believe like 80% of this boils down to your food anyway. I need to figure something out. When I get restless I know it’s time for a change of some sort, some sort of new challenge. I like new challenges and I like to have something I am working on/towards so even its something as simple as adding a new food group daily, I need something.

Something else occurred to me this morning as well. Despite being less than impressed with the last month’s results, I had a moment where I had to stop this morning and feel utterly blessed for my body. Not the visual aspect of it, but the physical capabilities of it. I have lived a relatively pain and injury free existence despite the torture and abuse I have sometime bestowed upon it. No doubt the constant yo-yo weight has damaged it or should have caused more damage than it did. Yes, I did have to have my gallbladder removed 5 years ago, most likely as a direct result of my fluxuating weight and quick weight loss. But aside from one setback on a daily basis I am pretty injury free.

For the amount of torture I constantly put myself thru, the hours of extensive limit pushing exercise, my body has not quit on me. That is amazing. I am in great physical health. Aside from the physical capabilities, my internal medical side is great too. I feel no weird discomforts, I feel generally in great physical health. I far too often take for granted the ease of which I can physically perform hour after hour of strenuous activity and recover enough to do it again the next day. I have been blessed with a body that has endured despite my best efforts at times to destroy it. Both thru neglect and weight gain and then thru over training and over working and starvation even at times. My body just keeps on ticking at an amazing pace.

For all of the hours I have logged running I have never suffered a strain/sprain/tear/pull. I have never twisted an ankle. I have never broken a bone. I think that is probably a relatively amazing feat all things considered. So today I am most thankful for my health. I should really try and not take that for granted as much as I do. It really is a blessing every day I don’t hurt myself and am able to perform the things I ask of my body. I know the older I get the harder it will become to remain injury free so I need to cherish the time now and treat my body respectfully enough now so it will carry me thru my later years in great physical health.

I realize that we ultimately are not the best judges of perspective in terms of ourselves. We are our own worst critics, etc. But sometimes I look at pictures of myself right now and don’t see any progress or change and I don’t see the athlete that I want to be. Then other times I am just so full of confidence and courage and strength and I see her, that girl who is a beast at the gym. My perspective is so off.

All I can do is keep on going, which is all I intend to do. Tonight is gym time again but there is only one half hour class to take so then I will be totally on my own. I really don’t know what I’m planning on doing after that. Probably some strength training for a while, maybe a 30 minute run? Guess it depends on what I feel like. Tonight the Biggest Loser premieres which I have always in my past life watched via the treadmill, not sure how that one is going to go down tonight for me. Typically watching at 8 PM is a little late for me for exercise considering I will be at the gym from 5:30-7:00 most likely. But sitting on the couch watching the Biggest Loser just seems wrong for me. Maybe I’ll feel different come 8 PM, after having already worked out tonight. We will see.

Just a heads up that I’m thinking about mixing something up with my diet and some changes are coming. I have to figure it out, as we all have to figure shit out from time to time.