Why are so many things in my life a downward spiral? I get stressed out and depressed so I eat comfort food. Food which makes me gain weight. When I gain weight, my clothes don't fit and I don't like how I look in the mirror, which makes me more stressed and depressed which makes me want to eat more comfort food which makes me gain more weight... See what I mean?
Say I don't have time to work out because I work such long hours, so I want to eat better to try to lose some weight. Think about how long it takes to go through the drive through at McDonald's. Now think about how long it takes to go to the store, buy some healthy food, take it home, prepare it, put it away, then pack it for lunch. If I'm already running short on time, how the heck am I going to fit all that in?!
I bet you're thinking "But Kaylyn, what about all the pre-packaged health foods at the store?" You don't even want to get me started on those... Oh wait, it's too late. First let's look at the frozen meals. They're expensive to begin with, so you pretty much have to be working crazy hours just to afford the stupid things! Then, if you actually look at them closer than the big pretty graphics on the front, although they may be low in fat, the sodium is through the roof! I've seen some that have an entire day's worth of salt in one dinky meal! Lucky for me, high blood pressure is pretty much the only health issue I DON'T have, so salt isn't a huge issue for me. With that in mind, I go ahead and splurge on a couple of these supposed healthy meals. Since it's a "treat" I get pretty excited on the day I'm going to have one of them, especially 'cause I have this extra time in the morning so I can savor a nice cup of coffee before work for once. Lunch time comes around and I pop my nifty little lunch in the microwave, tote it back to my desk and dig in. Now, I usually read a book at lunch (I'm nerdy, I know) and don't always pay a whole lot of attention to eating, but when it seems I've barely gotten through two pages when my fork starts coming up empty, things get a little iffy. I look down and find the little tray completely devoid of even a single morsel. Just then my stomach lets out an unhappy rumble as I even go so far as to check my lap to see if I dropped anything there. Going back to my McDonald's comparison, for $7 I can get two Big Macs, or about five bites worth of "healthy" fast food. How often does my budget and stomach agree on something??
Now I bet you're thinking "What about all the protein bars and shakes and such?" Have you ever checked the nutrition info out on those suckers?! Yeah, they manage to cram 25gm of protein in three bites, but it also has 45gm of sugar! There's probably a bagillion diets out there all saying different crazy things, but a lot of them agree that processed sugar is bad news for your waistline. Or even your health in general really. So why do so many of these "health" bars have ridiculous amounts of sugar? It's near impossible to find one with what I would call "acceptable" levels of sugar (unless it's Atkins, but I'm not even gonna go there).
And then there's the "diet" drinks (not the ones that claim to make you shed pounds, just the regular old Diet Coke, or Diet Sprite, etc). I'm a total caffeine junky and I love my lunch-time soda. Since I'm trying to be healthy and lose weight, I reach for a diet soda. It's got all these lovely zeros on the nutrition information, so I'm good, right? Wrong! The chemicals they use to make all those zeros taste good actually inhibit weight loss! I haven't yet decided if I'm better off just drinking regular, but does anybody else feel like it's getting to be a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of thing?
So, what's a pudgy person to do? Exercise more to offset the food issue? A body needs energy to do that. At my new job I'll be working 5x10's (that's 10 hours a day, 5 days a week for those of you not in the know, and yes, I realize that adds up to more than 40 hours a week, hence the time issue) possibly more. I try to be in bed for at least 7 hours a night, even though that means going to sleep early enough that my coworkers tease me for it. But I'm still tired every day when I drag my sorry butt out of bed. If I'm tired when I wake up, is there any way I'm gonna be able to convince myself to partake in any sort of physical activity when I get home from my 10 hour shift?! I mean, if I had more energy, I wouldn't be in this situation. Maybe, if I had more energy, this all wouldn't seem like such an insurmountable task.
So maybe, before I try to figure out how to change my diet and fit exercise into my schedule, I need to figure out why I'm exhausted after eight hours of sleep. Perhaps I have sleep apnea, my man thinks I do. Maybe it's something else. I think it's probably pretty obvious that I have *some* sort of sleep disorder. That means I should probably get a sleep study done. Now that I'm closer to something you could call and actual city, it should be fairly easy to find a sleep center that takes my insurance. The only problem is that I probably need a referral from my regular doctor. Since I'll be working 5x10's I either have to find a doctor that works on Saturdays, or late nights, or take time off to go to the doc. I only get so much time off from work, and I already have to horde my precious hours so I can visit my family, so it's really hard for me to willingly take time off for something as unattractive as a doctor visit.
Unfortunately something has to give though. I think I've gained probably 10 pounds since I got laid off, and that's on top of everything I gained when I fell off the WW wagon. All that combined puts me at the most I have ever weighed in my life. If you don't think that's depressing, you're either male, or crazy. And of course when I get depressed I reach for the Twizzlers, or cookies, or chips, or potato salad (hey, don't judge me!)... And we're back to that downward spiral.
And on top of not wanting to do anything 'cause I'm depressed, I also don't want to do anything 'cause I hurt. Like, all the time. From the moment I put my feet on the floor in the morning, to some time, several hours after I sit down in the evening, my foot feels like I'm stepping on a hot marble. Sometimes it's worse, sometimes it fades, but it's always there. The easiest exercise activities, like the elliptical or stationary bike, make it hurt so bad I'm almost in tears in about 5 minutes. The treadmill gets me a bit farther, I can usually do 30 minutes or so, if I go no faster than a brisk walk. Swimming, on the other hand, is awesome. I totally forget about my foot when I swim. But it's near impossible to find a pool that I can get to at a decent time and that fits in my budget. And it takes a lot longer to get a 30 minute swim workout than it does a 30 minute run, so we're back to the whole time crunch issue. Yoga is another good one, although some of the poses are kind of hard (imagine trying to do Mountain pose while standing on a marble!). But again, it's hard to find places that offer classes that I can both afford and actually get to on time (thanks career for making sure I'll always live in the middle of nowhere!) and I haven't yet found a yoga DVD that I like (if you have a yoga video that you love, please tell me about it!).
I'm going to be all over the place for the next month or so, bouncing back and forth between the two projects and trying to move, tie up any loose ends, and get going on my new job. This seems like the perfect excuse to put off doing anything until things "settle down." Although I am tempted to try to find a doctor ASAP so I can maybe get my sleeping fixed before they put me on 70 hour weeks or something, but I don't want to piss off my new boss by immediately asking for time off, so I should probably wait a bit. Same goes for trying to find a pool or yoga class before I really know what my schedule is going to look like. I've pretty much convince myself to wait until I'm settled in for a bit to start dealing with these issues, but I have this really bad habit. I pick some event or whatever and say "as soon as *this* is over, I'll enact *that* change." but as soon as the time comes, I go "oh, well *this* is coming up soon and it'll totally mess up *that* change, so I'll just wait 'til that's over..." You see where this is going right? Again with the downward spiral!
So I guess the moral of the story is that, well for one thing, I'm a whiny brat. And I should probably, while I'm at it, admit that I'm a lazy bum (as if you hadn't figured that out for yourself). But that's besides the point. What I'm trying to get at is that I need to find some way to get myself turned around. I need some small, tiny little thing I can use as a starting point. And then I need to find a source of motivation that won't fail me when I look in the mirror and don't see any progress, or when I have a bad day/lapse and mess up my progress. Maybe I'm just needy, but I need someone to show me that there really is a light at the end of the tunnel, to point me to the beginning of that yellow brick road. Something that will really convince me that there's a way out of this pathetic, dark, miserable hole I've dug myself into. I mean, my brain knows there are plenty of people out there who got themselves out of way worse situations than I'm in, but my heart refuses to believe it's possible. Maybe putting this out there for other people to read will shame my fat ass into motion...
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