by Fiona likes to blog | Aug 8, 2016 | ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, LIFE
Suffering from anxiety and depression is a full-time gig. I’ve come to realise it’s the little things that add up everyday to either make or break my mood, and when I can feel my mood start to take a dip I have a few ‘go to’ habits that will often stop me from slipping into a low state of being that lasts a few days.
I have gone through various forms of medication and treatment over the past few years, and this is by no means a cure for this horrible illness. It’s simply a few pointers for when I feel that dark cloud start to appear overhead – a few things that help me day to day and you might find useful.
What are your top tips to boost your mood?
by Fiona likes to blog | Aug 5, 2016 | ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, LIFE
Success is a strange thing. It’s one of those terms that we tend to use to describe other people, but never ourselves. We can say we are unhappy, hard-worked, stressed and dedicated all day long in the hope that we somehow appear successful – or at the least extremely busy – to others, but to stand up and proudly say “I am successful” seems too much. Too cocky.
How dare we have the audacity to praise our own accomplishments?
Yet, isn’t it the one thing most universally desired amongst most humans? Don’t we all want to be successful at whatever is that we do? Well after years of self-doubt I’ve taken a good hard look at my humble little existence and I’ve realised that am successful. Fuck it. I am my own success story and you can be too.
No one knows what I’ve been through
I don’t mean that in a dramatic “I’ve survived a zombie apocalypse” type of scenario, or even “I’ve survived a traumatic event”, something that many people really have gone through and emerged beautifully from the wreckage. I just mean that no one has the right to judge my success without personally knowing my circumstances. I mean really knowing me.
Even if you saw my life history down on paper, you still don’t know what’s gone on inside my head all of these years; the low self-esteem, the body image issues, the problematic eating habits and social anxiety problems that have reared their ugly heads in the past few years alone. No one can possibly tell me how successful I am because they don’t know the breakthroughs I’ve had to make on my own, in my head, repeatedly every day before I could even consider tackling practical barriers like getting a god job or buying a house.
I’m not saying Poor me, quite the opposite in fact. I’m saying Yes! Go me! because I’ve began to conquer my internal struggles and that’s a success story in the making right there.
I set my own standard of success
The universally recognised checklist for success is generally made up of a respected career, good income, marriage, home ownership, flashy car and maybe a couple of kids thrown in for a laugh. I have one of these things and the rest are unattainable for me at the moment so I’m just writing a new checklist. And guess what – its constantly changing.
At the moment I’m on a roll with regularly putting out blog content and getting more visitors to my site. I don’t get a lot if traffic so a successful day for me means increasing my traffic by 10% or getting my post retweeted on Twitter.
On a day when my depression has set in real deep, a home run for me is getting dressed and managing to pop to the shop for some milk. That’s reality for me, and I’ve come to terms with that. I will have days like that on a regular basis and that’s just what I have to work with to be happy.
Once it clicked that the bar was set by me – not my family, friends, employers or society – it seemed obvious that I could easily be a success in my own world. I set my own private goals and work towards smashing them.
I found out that salary means nothing
I’m well aware that it’s been said a million times, but money doesn’t necessarily make you happy. Money is a clear motivator to work hard at something, and having extra cash makes life easier and means you can support your family. So does this mean we should continue to pursue money as the root of all happiness? I’m not convinced.
Once you’ve worked hard to achieve a salary that makes life comfortable and enjoyable, the need to continually better the number on your wage slip year on year is a trap that many people fall into because they see it as the holy grail of success. The only way to prove their worth to the world.
I’ve been on a really nice income in the past and I was incredibly unhappy for a lot of that time. For some people it brings them genuine joy and that’s fantastic, I’m glad that they know what makes them happy. I’ve realised that job satisfaction, or even just having a job that allows time for the hobbies I enjoy is where it’s at for me right now.
If I can earn enough to get by and have the time and energy to do my favourite workouts, blog every couple of days and maintain strong relationships with my husband , friends and family then that’ll do. That’ll do just nicely, thanks.
How do you define success?
by Fiona likes to blog | Mar 6, 2016 | ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, FITNESS
I stared blankly at my to-do list. This list had been growing steadily for many months since my department had lost two members of staff and I had naively offered to pick up the extra work in a bid for praise, more money or a promotion – looking back I can’t remember exactly why I thought it was a good idea.
Working weekdays meant I had every weekend off for the first time since I was a teenager, and I tagged along to a Zumba class one Saturday morning with my mum out of sheer boredom and the hope of losing a few pounds. I had tried running and trained for 23 mile walk previously so I was surprisingly fit. As I bounced around my local sports hall in my mum’s old gym clothes I felt like I was at the weirdest, sweatiest party on a Saturday morning and although it was filled with a variety of ages and abilities I felt completely accepted as part of the team.
I joined my local gym and as the weeks went on I became more and more dependant on exercise as a form of stress-relief as well as a way to lose weight. When I was banging out burpees, grave-vines and planks no one could touch me.
I was pushing my body to do things I never thought I would be able to do – simple things like running for longer than 10 minutes and doing full press ups – and it was all my own doing. The people at work couldn’t take that away from me, it was my space and I was owning it. I looked forward to clocking out at 5.30pm so I could head to the gym and let out all my anger and frustration in a physical way. It was an exhilarating and new form of expression for me.
As I became more proficient at exercise my ability to complete my ‘to-do’ list at work was seriously waning. After some time work became overwhelming for me and I was unable to work for 6 months whilst I got my mental health back on track. I am so thankful that during that time I was still in the early stages of my fitness journey, because my love for exercising undoubtedly minimised some of the damage that could have been done by my mental state.
Exercising got me out of the house when I didn’t want to do anything at all. It made me set an alarm and get up at a certain time, have a shower afterwards and eat something substantial to keep me going until my next session. When you’re depressed these things are a daily accomplishment, and exercise seemed to kick-start that routine for me. Don’t get me wrong; there were many, many days when none of these things were accomplished but sooner or later the gym would reel me back in after a few days of endless sleeping.
It also forced my to interact with other human beings. I know, it sounds icky right, but in local gyms people actually say “Good morning!” and “Have you been to this class before? I’m new”. A lot of the time I stood right up the front of the room (where no one wants to be) because I was so focused on getting the most out of the class.
If this seems like strange behaviour for someone who was depressed and anxious, I completely agree! The only way I can explain it is by saying that I was kind of anonymous in those classes. No one knew anything about my condition, my job or my financial situation so I felt like they couldn’t judge me.
I was just that girl who showed up everyday for a workout and stood up the front like a teacher’s pet. That anonymity made me comfortable enough to make polite chitchat with complete strangers at a time when I struggled to even send a text message to my best friends.
The most rewarding thing about exercise for me has been the feeling of doing something I thought I was previously incapable of doing. I ran a 10k after years of trying to run without any success. I pushed myself further and ran a half marathon, and lets be clear I do NOT have the natural ability for endurance running!
I love lifting weights and seeing the number on the bar steadily creep up over weeks and months, or completing an extra set when you’re sure you can’t do another single rep. I started my first spin class feeling like Bambi on a bike and within 40 mins I was increasing my RPM to a respectable standard and within weeks I felt like a pro.
I don’t feel like a particularly strong-willed person, I get easily stressed and anxious but when I’m tearing it up in the gym I honestly feel like I can take on the world. I am focused, hard-working and excited there and it’s where I feel at home and that’s why I keep going back again and again.
by Fiona likes to blog | Jan 9, 2016 | ANXIETY, FOOD, LIFE
As I sit here with a belly full of porridge and and nice strong coffee in front of me, it’s easy not to think about food. Well when I say easy, it’s not consuming my thoughts like it often does during every waking moment of my life. In fact, forget the ‘every waking moment’ crap because I regularly dream about what I’m going to eat for breakfast (usually some sort of pancake affair lovingly decorated with blueberries) only to wake up late and grab an under-ripe banana on the way out the door.
As I was saying; I’m currently not obsessing over food. I know I’m not alone when I say that this rarely happens and it’s a pretty hard state of mind to achieve on purpose. I’m among the millions of young women who have spent their teenage and adult lives separating foods into categories such as;
good, bad, calorie free, post-workout only, post-goal weight only, weekend only, carb free, fat free, good fat, bad fat (these are the tastiest), emotional crutch and I’m on my period so screw you world
…..and so on. I’ve been conditioned (partly through my own doing) to label foods, or at least see them in a certain way so as to choose the best ones to lose weight. I’ve read a lot of diet books (Atkins, GI diet, carb-cycling, Scottish slimmers, 5:2) and the cumulative effect of this has been an information overload.
The truth is that all of these diets work (short term at least, I don’t recommend any of them) but only on their own. You can’t retain all that knowledge and apply it all at once as it simply won’t work.
Correction: it might work but will leave you nutritionally deficient and acting fucking mental because you’re deprived of anything substantial. Have you ever eaten condiments because you’re craving pure flavour? This is real people, I’ve eaten onion chutney straight out of the jar.
I’ve read that I need to eat low fat, low carb, lean protein, grain-free, gluten-free and sugar-free to get ripped. Let me tell you, that doesn’t leave a lot of tasty food on offer. I’ve lived a life comprised of eggs, chicken, broccoli and NO FRUIT for crying out loud. If that doesn’t make you run screaming for the ice cream isle then nothing will.
That’s the point I’m getting at here. The more you focus on what you can’t eat, the more you want it. It’s simply inevitable that you will fall off the wagon and eat the food you’re not supposed to. The act of eating the forbidden fruit isn’t the problem though – it’s the affect this has on your mental state. You feel guilty, unhealthy and like you’ve failed at life.
But what if there were no good or bad foods? What if we just forgot about food entirely until our bodies signalled to us that they were hungry? What if we learned to listen to what our bodies craved and found out that it wasn’t really garlic bread after all?
I believe I’m on the path to figuring that shit out. I’m trying to embrace all foods for all their beauty. Avocados are no longer relegated to the ‘high calorie’ pile. They are now my go-to food when I need an energy boost of B vitamins, amino acids and anti-oxidants. They are a great fat source that leave me feeling satisfied and satiated.
Carbs are no longer the enemy. If I’m craving that kind of food I choose the best version I can, instead of avoiding it altogether and caving in later with a bag of Doritos and a bar of Dairy Milk. My carbs of choice are basmati rice, brown tortilla wraps, rye bread, sweet potatoes and regular potatoes. I don’t eat pasta because I’m honestly not that fussed for it, but I know some people go mad for it.
I’ve started to notice these little things, how my tastes have changed, and it’s amazing what you pick up on once you really start to tune in to your body (wow I sound like a totally hippy right now).
We had a fry up for breakfast the other day and as soon as I sat down to eat I realised I wasn’t hungry. Alarm bells should be ringing right now, people are rejoicing in the streets and shouting “Hallelujah! She’s finally full”…. But honestly, this rarely happens. I normally scoff it down quicker than the rest of the family and sit staring at my empty plate with my mouth half open waiting to see who will toss me seconds.
But after a few weeks of eating freely, this plate of food suddenly didn’t meet my expectations. It’s not that there was anything wrong with it, quite the opposite in fact as my father-in-law is a great cook! But after a few weeks of listening intently to my body’s needs and fuelling it accordingly I could somehow sense that it didn’t want to eat a fry up today. It wasn’t that I consciously chose not to eat the food, but rather that my hunger signals simply told me that the food was not required.
I find that to be bloody extraordinary. Even though as I write this I realise that I have just described the way the body and mind should naturally function!!!!
As you’ve probably figured out, I love food. The hard thing about dieting is that it makes food important for all the wrong reasons. Eating out is difficult,as is cooking and socialising,even eating your lunch in front of other people can be enough to send you to the bathrooms to hide your green salad. The great thing about forgetting about food is that you give yourself the freedom to eat whaveter you want, whenever you want. This means you can live on beans on toast when you’re skint, eat lobster when you’re rich, eat avocados for breakfast, grab a burger on your way home from work in a rush and have scrambelled egg for supper if you want. To someone who has lived a life planning out each meal hours or even days in advance, this idea of essentially ‘eating what you want’ initially seemed terrifying and a recipe for disaster.
I thought, and many people do, that if I allow myself to eat whatever I want then I really will eat whatever I want. Because I have restricted my food intake for so many years this is unfortunately how it goes down for the first few weeks. I gave myself permission to eat all the things on my naughty list like; cake, biscuits, chocolate, pizza, bread and cheese. Lots of cheese. Embarrassing amounts of cheese. But honestly, after eating like this for a few days at a time all my cravings had been somewhat satisfied and I could hear a tiny little voice inside screaming EAT SOME BROCCOLI!
Over the course of a few weeks this voice began to say other interesting things such as;
Eat more for breakfast
Eat some fat
You don’t need protein for dinner, just eat some veggies
I’m craving sugar but rice with dinner will be good
Eat more
Eat less
You’re hungry
You’re thirsty
Don’t be fooled though, the voice comes in many forms and recently had said things like
Eat that whole chocolate orange
Eat pizza for dinner
Eat pizza for lunch
Pizza
Pizza
So as you can see it’s an ongoing struggle, where above all I am learning to listen to what my body is saying. It sounds airy-fairy, and I guess in a way it is, but everything else I’ve done up until now has given me such a negative and complicated relationship with food that at this point I’m willing to take a stab in the dark and try this intuitive approach to eating.
Learning how to think positively about food is a long and bumpy road. I can’t fix all the problems overnight when it’s taken a lifetime to rack up all the mistakes. I’m taking it each meal at a time, if I have a crap day I try and understand why and move on. If I don’t understand then that’s OK too, but I still try and move on.
There were many days over Christmas and New Year where I ate uncontrollably, just because it ’twas the season’ but that doesn’t mean I’m going to restrict myself for the rest of January. I now refuse to restrict myself, and the truth is that may mean not losing weight quickly or even at all. The priority for me now must be long term. I’m on a journey to build a healthy relationship with food, and that starts with forgetting all about it.
Is this something that you are struggling with too? Please comment with your tips!
