Soooooooo I’m back, after way too long, and it’s a little scary and a little weird.
Okay, here’s the deal. Last time I posted was for Halloween, but even in the few weeks leading up to Halloween, I was posting less and less and things were just getting bad. Things were getting really hectic with midterms and just classes in general and I just figured it might be good to take a week break. Just a week isn’t bad, right?
So I feel like I just need to explain what was going on, and then just move on, even though this might be way too much for a blog. Ready?
Basically, I was in a really bad place for about a month. You guys could probably tell from some of my posts during the end of October, but emotionally I was just not doing well. I was crying everyday, having panic attacks multiple times a day, binge eating sweets and anything sugary (even though I’ve never really had a sweet tooth and have always had a sensitive stomach when it comes to sweets), and I was just sleeping all the time. I was very aware of the fact that my emotions had gotten out of control and that I was experiencing very obvious signs of depression, but I couldn’t make it stop simply because I had no idea what was causing my random tears and panic attacks.
I started seeing a therapist at school just to get all my crying out and to talk some things out, and even my few sessions helped dramatically. I just got to sit there for an hour to talk about what was going on and to just cry and cry to someone with some outside perspective.
So as you can probably gather, my week hiatus from not blogging turned into about 3 weeks because I just had so much on my plate that I had to deal with first.
The break was definitely good for me because I didn’t have to think about any of this for a while, and I got to focus on some of my deeper issues and really spend the rest of my energy on school. Unfortunately though, I did take a lot of my emotions out on fatty foods and raw cookie dough and just bread. So much bread. I’m pretty frustrated with myself because I feel like, in terms of body fat percentage, I took a huge step backwards after all my progress this summer, but realistically, it’s nothing I can’t fix, and I’m prepared to make the commitment to get myself back to where I was.
The problem now is that, while I am significantly better than 2 weeks ago when I was crying every day for no reason, now I have started having emotional breakdowns about how I “let myself go” or whatever. I don’t know, my roommates think I’m absolutely insane, which I definitely am, but for some reason when I look in the mirror, I see minor changes in my body and think that I look like I did when I was 185 lbs my freshman year.
I’ll be honest, I have put on some stomach fat, and in particular, the upper stomach fat, which for me is always directly related to stress and sugar (I call it my toxic fat… unfortunately, everyone gets this toxic fat, but it’s just in a different place for everyone). What I need to remind myself though is that the tiny fat that I am noticing is fat that nobody else notices (mostly because nobody really sees that part of my body) and that it is fat that I have very easily gotten rid of in the past, and can do it again just as easily. And I’ve reincorporated the gym and pilates into my daily schedule again!
During my mental health break, and before it, I had stopped doing Pilates because of my knee originally, but then because I would use my knee as an excuse not to work out. I have no doubt in my mind that my emotions were partially related to the fact that I had stopped exercising, because once I started again, I started feeling so much better.
In particular, I had this week where I had 5 “exams” (one was a lab quiz, but like, it was worth a lot, so I’m calling it an exam) back to back, even though I’m not even in 5 classes. Seriously? That can’t be real life. I stayed in and studied for about a week and a half prior to that week in order to prepare for all of them without feeling too overwhelmed. Well, this may not come as a shock to you, but I was still very overwhelmed. All of the stress and lack of sleep combined with a really emotional incident led to my peak emotional breakdown in the middle of that week. I was a wreck. I think I cried for about 6 hours to literally anyone who would talk to me. I even ended up emailing one of my teachers and asking to take the test on a later date because I was just too emotionally exhausted to study.
Anyway, that night I realized that I hadn’t done anything for the previous two weeks except for sit at my desk and study. I realized that I had dedicated so much of my life recently to school that I had completely forgotten to think about myself or my needs. So in some act of defiance (I think I thought I was being rebellious because I was choosing myself of studying), I went to Pilates! And then I scheduled Pilates classes every day for a week. And guess what? Things got SO much better. And now I try to go at least every day, and things are getting better every day.
So even though I still look in the mirror when we are getting ready to go out, and every once in a while I’ll just start crying about how I look (it happened like 3 times this weekend), I do know that I’m making a conscious effort to change things. Realistically, while I am definitely seeing the effects of eating more sugar in one week than I’ve eaten in the past 6 months, I also am seeing the effects of going to Pilates once or twice a day for the past few weeks. There are parts of me I still want to change by changing my diet, but there are other parts of me that I am so excited about because I am very obviously getting stronger (literally, my arms are actually starting to get buff, it’s so exciting!)
The reason I started posting again today is because I noticed that over the past few days, I’ve actually started thinking about potential posts that I want to do, instead of thinking of these posts as a chore. Also, unfortunately for me and my crazy blood sugar, once I start eating sweets, it’s REALLY hard for me to stop again. I know that if I go a few days, I’ll stop craving it, but those few days are ROUGH. As of today I have decided to do a little “detox” if you will, where I am going to “moderately” cut out (with the exception of Thanksgiving) refined sugar and dairy so that my body can start functioning normally again.
I say “moderately” cut out, because I know myself, and I know that if I try to cut out things completely, I’ll never make it more than 2 days (the only exception to this is red meat because it literally looks disgusting to me now). But moderately just implies that I can let myself have them here and there, but for the most part, I am choosing not to have cookie dough for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And you all get to keep me accountable! Deal?
Yeah, we read that after eating half the package. And this is just the most recent package. Before we were actually making our own cookie dough and then just saving it in the freezer. Who still bakes cookies anyways?
Anyway, sorry you guys had to read all this, or had to see it and then decide not to read it. I really didn’t want to get that personal into what has been going on with me, but as soon as I started typing, I couldn’t really stop, so there you go. And as much as I needed a break from blogging, I also need to get back to it just because it is so therapeutic for me, and it actually really feels good to put all of this out there and move on. So I hope you guys aren’t totally freaked out by my crazy emotions, because if you are, I might make you teach me how to not be such a psycho. But for now I am doing a lot better, and things are looking up. YAY mental health!
I hope things are going a little better now for you.