Getting fit and healthy

I’ve neglected this blog for about a week or so now because I’ve been busy doing other things. I often find that when my mood picks up and I get more motivated and enthusiastic, my writing suffers. I suppose it is a good indicator that things are improving but I do need to ensure that I give myself some reflective time each day and that is best done by blogging.

The sun has been shining and the lovely weather has spurred me into digging over the garden to plant some vegetables. This is something I have been intending to do for several years now but had never got round to it as it is a big job (the garden has been neglected and overgrown for the time I have lived here and probably for years before that) and in the past I have done the odd day out there but then the weather has changed and I lost interest. However, this prolonged dry and sunny spell of weather has meant that I have spent hours out there, day after day and I am now nearly at the stage where I have an area dug over, which is big enough to plant some spuds, with compost from the compost bin mixed in, all the stones sieved out, and nearly ready for planting.

I have enjoyed doing this work, being out in the sunshine for hours, feeling my unfit muscles straining and protesting, feeling the stiffness in them in the evenings, and knowing that I am burning calories at the same time. Aswell as the gardening, I’ve been making a real effort to walk every day with the dog and to walk for longer and faster.

As yet I haven’t noticed much difference except that I am really tired at night, sleeping reasonably well even without the Mirtazpine (I am have now reduced the Mirtazpine dosage to 15mg every 3rd or 4th night or if I feel that I need a good night’s sleep). And so because of being outside during the day, and being too tired in the evenings, I haven’t been blogging.

I’m not sure what the newfound motivation and enthusiasm for gettng active and fit and slim again is – there are 3 different factors all of which could be partly responsible :

1. Reducing the dose of the Mirtazapine so that I have virtually stopped it
2. Reaching a “maintenance” dose of the Venlafaxine of 150mg
3. The prolonged period of dry and sunny weather – I thrive in the summer, I love the sun, and I love being outdoors in the sun, I love feeling the sun on my skin and I can almost feel the energy of the sun being absorbed by my skin and energising me

This burst of energy and enthusiasm has meant that I now have the motivation to get myself physically healthy again, and the assessment appointment with an Occupational Therapy Support Worker (OTSW) a couple of days ago came at just the right time, to keep me motivated and supported to do this. The appointment was really good – I feel like I clicked with the OTSW, and she listened to me, considered what I was saying and formulating a practical support plan.

 At the end of the session, she said that she could offer me 8 sessions with her, probably fortnightly, with the aim of resolving my eating problems, (basically, I have no proper eating routine – never have breakfast, usually a piece of toast mid afternoon, and then either a ready meal or just more toast or a packet of biscuits or several packets of crisps and carbohydrate bingeing all evening), the reasons for these problems (ie long standing ingrained habits, self-esteem issues, and other psychological issues relating to food and meals), a gradual introduction of small changes towards healthier eating habits, and support and encouragement with regards to exercise.

I was pretty happy with this and felt like I’d been taken seriously, that my needs had been identified and a proactive plan formulated. My task for the fortnight until the next appointment was to cook a meal once each week using the slow cooker (I did this the following day and was pleasantly surprised at how quick and easy the preparation was and how tasty the result was), to maintain the maximum amount of coffee each day at 4 cups (I have reduced my caffeine intake following the recommendation of the pyschiatrist at my last appointment with him, from 8+ cups per day to 4 cups max), to continue to try to find a healthier alternative when I get the food cravings at night (eg raw carrots instead of half a packet of biscuits) and to keep a food diary for the next 2 weeks so that we can see what I am actually eating, and when, to identify where the problems are.

So far over the past couple of days since I saw the OTSW, I have managed to do all of these without too much extra effort, but the food diary is scary. I go from around 11pm at night till about 3pm normally without eating anything but drinking 3 or 4 cups of coffee. Then when I get those “I’m starving, must eat now” urges, I have several pieces of toast, and then don’t eat again for another 4 or 5 hours. And then between 8pm and whenever I go to bed, I am more or less eating constantly. I had kind of been unconsciously aware of what I was doing and that it wasn’t good, but the food diary has brought it home to me, and made me realise that I need to change, and that it is not just a case of changing my eating habits, but changing a lot of my other daily routine habits too.

So all is reasonably well in MHSU’s disordered little world. I feel much better about myself than I have done for ages. I still feel fat and unfit but I don’t feel lazy and idle anymore, and I want to change. I deliberately don’t weigh myself because I don’t want to know my weight ( I would be very happy to be 9 stone, my ideal is 8 and half stone but people tell me I look too thin at that weight – I would guess I am probably well over 10 stone at the moment). I haven’t measured myself for the same reason – I don’t want to know, but I do need to do this so that I can then monitor any weight loss. Once I start to see inches come off, and I can start to feel more comfortable in my clothes again, that will give me a huge boost.

And now having sat in front of the computer all morning in my pj’s, I am going to disappear off into the garden and do some more digging, and visualise the new slim, fit, toned, suntanned and healthy me.

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