I Could Go For a Run, Or…

I could go for a run, or I could listen to my tired body at the end of this long day and give it the rest it’s asking for instead.

I could go for that long run I had planned on, or I could do some gentle restorative yoga and give my muscles the TLC they have been aching for all day.

I could go for my run, or I could take a day off after the long bike ride and hike yesterday that seems to have depleted all of my glycogen stores.

I could go for a run, or I could do a self care activity, like taking a cold shower that sounds so good during this Kansas fall heat.

I could go run, or I could eat a snack that will help replenish my body after an already physically taxing work day.

I could go for a run…or I could recognize that it is ED who wants me to run.

I could choose recovery today instead.

Knowing Your Limits

T.S. Elliot once said “If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?” I was trying to find a way to open up this post and wrap my head around what I wanted to say, and that quote just popped out at me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should bury yourself in whatever struggles you have until you drown, nor am I saying that if you aren’t struggling you’re doing something wrong. But I do think that sometimes pushing yourself to the limit is appropriate. I think also IDENTIFYING your limit is important. Being in over your head doesn’t have to be a bad thing because then you have that information and data saying “this is how far I can go and that’s ok.”

I feel like I’m rambling and not making much sense so I’ll throw in my story that I wanted to talk about. My boyfriend and I were going on a date that we had been wanting to plan for a while. Things had been crazy busy for a long time and I was wanting something romantic and something for just the two of us. So we were doing a simple dinner and mini golf. I thought it would be a good idea to go to dinner at this Italian restaurant that I had loved when I was a little kid but that I had prohibited me to frequent for a long time. I have really been pushing myself hard with my meal plan recently, have gained a little weight, and have really been struggling to sit still with those feelings of discomfort, but I thought I could handle it.

We got into the restaurant and were waiting to be seated and I began to panic. I wasn’t feeling good at all about what was about to go down, was afraid of the menu, and just wanted to leave. Conversation was filled with my high anxiety filled energy and nervous/half manic laughter. I joked about how I just wanted to run out of the restaurant, but forced myself to stay, telling myself that this was what I wanted and we had planned the whole thing and by god I wasn’t going to ruin this date with my shit.

The waiter seated us and we began to look through the menus. I felt tears well up in my eyes as I scanned the menu and found NOTHING that I felt like I could eat. Maybe I could’ve on a good day, but that day I felt so utterly overwhelmed and ginormous and all of my normal go-to options didn’t seem to be there. I don’t know how long I sat there, eyes glued to the menu, choking back tears and panic, but it felt like half an hour (we were probably only seated a few minutes as the waiter hadn’t even brought us our waters yet). I couldn’t breathe, looked up at my boyfriend as the tears began to stream from my eyes and tried to speak. I don’t know if I actually made any noise or not, but my mouth said “we need to leave”. He looked confused for a second, then realized what was happening as I stood up and began to run out. His arms around my waist, and my face buried in his arm we rushed out, leaving confused waiters who were just bringing our waters and coming to get our orders. I was in full blown melt down mode and gulped in the fresh outside air in the parking lot. (By the way, shout-out to my amazing boyfriend who was there with me the whole time, and joked that he wanted to leave too because there were too many vegetables on the menu anyway. Thanks for making me laugh!)

Now it’s tempting to look at this as a failure. I went in with a plan and was unable to execute. I couldn’t hold it together in a restaurant and had to abort mission. But this experience actually gave me some very valuable information!

1. We all have a limit that no amount of willpower or grit will let us push past, and that’s ok! Willpower is not a strategy, growth is a strategy! The day will come when I can try that restaurant again and I will have grown enough to manage it.
2. You are so much stronger with your support than you’ll ever be alone. I was an absolute mess, but with my boyfriend helping calm me down and get me laughing, I pulled it together and we went and played our mini golf. I even beat him by one hit! Then (albeit with a great deal of persuasive effort on his part) he coaxed me into eating a “safe” dinner afterwards.
3. Knowing “how tall you are” and what you can manage is so important! If you simply exist in over your head, you’ll never get anything done. You’ll just be overwhelmed and panic all the time. If you know where your limit is and can operate under it, you know when to push yourself and when to back off.

And as always, and you guys know I feel this way because I’ve said it a thousand times, grace and compassion win the race.

The Magnitude of a Sunflower

Sometimes the best answer to hard times is getting into nature. This is one of the many reasons I am in absolute love with where I live! Whoever says Kansas isn’t beautiful is seriously missing out.

Find something beautiful today and take five minutes to close your eyes and truly be present in it.

Journaling How-To’s and Tips

It’s no secret that journaling can be a very lucrative way to start bringing mindfulness and intention to your life. We hear about it all the time from any mental health professional, article, or self help book. But the concept of journaling can be a very daunting thing, especially if you’ve never done it before. A lot of people have no idea where to start and it can sound like just something else on your to do list. “Soooo, do I start ‘dear diary’?” “How much do I have to write today?” “I’m not a good writer and don’t know what to journal about!” So I thought it might be helpful if I wrote a post to give you guys some ideas on where you can start and let you in a bit on what I do.

I, of course have this blog, and this can be a lot of the more traditional style of journaling. I of course don’t put all my deepest darkest secrets on the internet and have some level of privacy, but its the same concept. Talking about your day, your feelings, etc… What can really be helpful here is using writing prompts or journal prompts that you can find online to give yourself a bit of a boost. Often once you start writing, the rest just kinda happens. Getting started is the hard part.

Then there’s another kind of journaling that you guys often don’t see but that I think can be just as helpful, if not more so. Below I have a few example pages from my paper journal at home.

This journal I use for gratitude, goal setting, behavior tracking, mindfulness activities, etc… and I find that when I am consistent with it, its intensely helpful. For example, the first page is a goal page that I printed out and colored (because yay coloring!!!) before I began to lay out a plan for a recovery goal that I am going to try and stick to for the next month. The important thing to remember when making goals is what we in psychology call SMART goals, meaning the goal needs to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and have some kind of Time parameter. Then you can use your journal to track your behaviors and goals. I like to list action steps I will take to give myself some direction and affirmations to remind myself why I’m doing something and that I can achieve it when things get hard.

Gratitude journaling is also a method that is hugely backed by science and greatly encouraged in a branch of psychology called positive psychology. I have shown above an example of a gratitude I did when things were rough and I needed to remind myself of the good I had in life. It doesn’t have to just be a bulleted list if you don’t want it to be. Journaling can be as creative and abstract or as simple and straightforward as you want it to be.

One style of journaling I like to suggest for beginners is called a “bullet journal.” Bullet journaling is kinda a strange concept at the beginning so I’ll link some examples in the comments section to give you guys a visual of what its like, but its basically a grid style journal of charts, lists, pictures, etc… That help you keep track of whatever you want. A lot of people use them for calendars, to do lists, goal tracking, finding patterns between habits and emotions, food and exercise logs, the possibilities are really endless.

Like I said, I’ll link some of those examples down below. I hope this was helpful information for some of you! I know journaling is something I could absolutely not live without and has helped me so much through the years.

Titles Are Hard Sometimes

I know that a lot of you live in all kinds of areas of the world, or even all sorts of different regions of the US! According to my stats, in this past month alone, I’ve had visitors coming from the UK, the Philippines, France, Croatia, Australia, Germany, Canada, Turkey, Ireland, and so many more. So I’m going to take a moment before I get into the meat of this post and give you some background on where I live.

Welcome to Kansas, home of BBQ, Tornadoes, and flat rolling fields that go pretty much forever. The weather here is…eclectic to say the least. Winters have been known to get down to -40 degrees F (-40 degrees C) and summers have hit records of 129 degrees F (54 degrees C). The weather also likes to do this crazy changing thing where it can be snowing of a morning and sunny swimming weather that afternoon with thunderstorms or hail that evening. It’s pretty normal for us, we’re used to it.

Oh, and it’s humid. Really humid. I’ve visited a LOT of places and heard people complain about the humidity, but I’ve never been anywhere that has felt as humid as home.

So for about the past month it’s been 100+ degrees F (38+ degrees C) with 80-95% humidity at times. Heat indexes have been even higher. That’s just how July and August in Kansas goes sometimes. The past few years we’ve been blessed with really mild summers and this year we’re getting hammered. It’s made outdoor runs and bike rides very uncomfortable and rather sweaty. I often come home looking like a drowned rat and spend the days guzzling water because my body is so desperate to re-hydrate.

I’ve also always envied the girls who can run outside in just shorts and a sports bra. They don’t have a sweaty shirt sticking to them adding another layer of oppressive heat to their run. They must be so much more comfortable in this humidity! The sweat can evaporate right off of their skin! And how confident and sure of themselves they must be, going out like that where everyone can see them. But I never thought I would be one of those girls, running in a sports bra. I’ve always been too self conscious and that was a goal that eluded me for years.

Well one evening this week at about 7:30 pm I decided to take advantage of the evening and go on a quick run before it got too dark. It had fallen to about 95 degrees as the sun set and the humidity had been going up all day (I think it was about 80% at this point and going up as the temperature went down). I don’t know what sparked the desire in me, or if I was just done being the hot and sweaty runner girl who always covered up because she was too self conscious and worried about decency and what people thought to actually be halfway comfortable in the oppressive heat, but I stepped outside in shorts and a sports bra and went on my run.

I’ve never felt so free!

And the interesting thing is, after about 10 minutes I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore! I wasn’t trying to suck in my stomach. I had forgotten what I was wearing and was just focusing on my run and my music. I didn’t even care! I passed another woman runner about halfway through and it briefly popped into my mind that I was wearing a sports bra and she was wearing a tank top and maybe she was judging me or thinking I was looking for attention. But we just exchanged the friendly “runners nod” and went by each other. The world didn’t end. About another half mile down the road I went by another runner and she didn’t give me the feared glare or judgement look either. I caught no flack from passing cars and finished my run in my own sweaty peace.

This was a huge victory for me! As someone who is very self conscious about my stomach area, I often wear t-shirts and baggy clothes even when I’m swimming! I hate having people see my body and am especially nervous when I exercise that people are judging my physique. But the fact that all of that so effortlessly fell aside and I just focused on my run was so unexpected!

I know so many of you are probably in the category I was in, where you thought you’d never be able to run in a sports bra. Or maybe you’d let yourself run in a sports bra when you feel like you look lean enough or when you reach X weight. I encourage you to just let go now and give it a shot. No matter how you look. Do it because it’s comfortable. Do it because nobody’s judging and if they do it’s their problem not yours because lord knows its sticky this summer and you deserve to run in the best possible conditions, not covered in a blanket because someone says you may not have a “runners body”. Just give it a try and see what you think! You may surprise yourself.

Procrastination Station

Doing this from my phone right now because I’ve been promising you guys forever that I’d deliver this life update. Ive been honestly procrastinating on this part 3. Bot really sure what to say. But we’re just going to keep it short and sweet.

Basically over the course of 2 weeks, we found out a bunch of horrible news in my family and the family of those I care about. People have been sick and struggling with cancer and there were 5 deaths over the course of 9 days. This was all about a month ago while I was job hunting, struggling with illness, and right after we got back from Europe. So of course it was just a lot to deal with and I’ve really been fighting depression and issues with eating. My weight has been less than ideal, which isnt great as I’ve needed to be present for people I love and needed to fuel my body so it can recover from illness. Thats also one of the reasons I’ve been with my BFs family so much and having to endure meals with them, because we’ve spent endless hours helping and supporting them through troubles and I was exposed to a lot of family events with extended family.

So whew! You guys are basically now caught up to date from my time since I returned home from Europe. Exhausting I know! Yes, that is me drinking a beer, actually on the floor of my BFs new house! (Dont worry, I helped him shop for a couch). Normally I really avoid alcohol because it makes my workouts absolutely suck the next day or 2 (even if I only have one beer or glass of whatever) but you know what, sometimes its ok. Alcohol doesn’t really fall into the intuitive eating plan, so we’ll call it flexible dieting (even though I’m not supposed to be dieting. *Sigh*)

Depression and anxiety have been super real through all of this. I’m a very intuitive person and will pick up on the emotions of people around me. And of course a lot of the emotions of people I love dearly have been very strong and in certain cases that I’m being intentionally vague about (hey its the internet) it has been ansolutely heartwrenching to see the agony and mourning of some people very close to me. I can’t even begin to describe some of the emotions I and vulnerability I was both blessed and cursed to be a part of.

I don’t know why I’ve been so silent about everything going on with you guys. I think I feel like this should be a place of positivity, so in seasons of pain and struggle for me, I don’t want to expose you all to that. I want to be the perfect image of recovery and strength in life and be a good example of positive coping.

But life is not always rainbows and unicorns and I’m not perfect (what?!?! Shocker!) And there is freedom in vulnerability and honesty.

Ok this is turning out to be a bit of a longer update than I originally intended, but whatever. Welcome to my somewhat pathetic life of chaos. One more note on dieting and weight. I went into my dietitians office the other day and she said for the first time in 2 years “so it looks like you lost weight.” Busted. I went on to confess to her the struggle I’ve been having with using diet products masked as “health products.” I kinda feel like I’m in junior high again, but this is my confession. I live in a very well off kinda infamous county in KC. Its basically the “orange county” of the midwest. And theres a lot of messages about diet and “clean” eating in my age group. Its very much almost a righteousness deal with a lot of the more popular crowds (I know I said popular. I told you I felt like I was in junior high) and theres a lot of pressure to use certain products (like greens, oils, diet pills, etc…) from peers and friends who may be distributors. Even a lot of gyms I interviewed at sold these products that a friend of mine refers to as “steroids for women.” I’ve been using the excuse that its not in the finances for me to partake of some of these green drinks and shakes, but a friend of mine has been sending me some seemingly harmless samples and that can’t be so bad right?

Well its bad when it gives you a sense of self righteousness. Its bad when you have an eating disorder and you use diet products or drinks instead of food. Its bad that its harmful to my personal menatal health and well being.

Note: I am not saying its bad to use these products, nor am I saying its good. My personal opinions aren’t relavent to all ya’lls decisions about what you chose to put into your body and why. I’m not saying anything one way or the other about any particular company. I’m just saying for me I know that purchasing these products is a negative for my recovery.

So yeah, side note there that that has been a struggle. I did order some products against the advisement of my dietitian (another *sigh*). I’ve been doing a lot of research on the science of these products and if you DO want my personal opinion let me know. Otherwise I’ll just leave it at that.

Sorry for the tangent. Maybe that was just another top on the way to procrastination station to keep myself from thinking about the mourning and everything thats going on.

Hope you all are doing well.

Getting Into the Field

Life update part 2!!! Something else that has been taking up a lot of my time and energy over the past 4 or 5 weeks is I’ve been job hunting. It sucks, I know, but I’ve actually had a relatively good time, with 8 or 9 interviews over the course of about 4 weeks. I’m fairly comfortable with interviews and they don’t make me too nervous, so that wasn’t so bad. And I’m happy to announce that after much deliberation I’ve accepted a spot as the personal trainer/fitness instructor at my local Planet Fitness!

I’m really at peace with this decision. I was looking at a number of jobs, including counselor at a children’s psychiatric ward and ABA therapist, but I’m really looking forward to a year or 2 of rest and a lower stress job before I pick back up with grad school and I really feel like Planet Fitness is a great environment that isn’t the “stereotypical” gym. I’ll be working with a lot more of my kind of clientele (seeing as how my degree is in the clinical track of exercise science and my certification is with a specialty in exercise therapy) and I feel like I’ll be able to use my psychology degree more with the behavior change component. I really like Planet Fitness’s process and methodology as well and am looking forward to starting.

The catch is that in order to get the position at the location I wanted (there is only 1 trainer/instructor at each location) I had to accept a start date at the very beginning of October. I’m really ok with that though. I can really rest up and continue to let my body heal and be the healthiest it’s been in almost 4 months (6 months by October) and I can start getting my grad school applications rolling.

And rest! There’s nothing wrong with rest and vacation and that’s something I need desperately right now, if for no other reason than to learn to let myself rest. The past 4 months, even post-graduation, I have not allowed myself to slow down or rest at all because I was afraid of being unproductive and being a bum living in my parent’s house. I hated where I was post grad and refused to slow down, and I think that’s part of why I’ve remained so sick for so long. But maybe now that I have a job lined up I can slow down and really allow myself to give my body what it needs.

Still, I can’t begin to express how beyond excited I am to get the ball rolling and really get into my field! When I was interviewing, the director I was speaking with took me onto the gym floor and pointed to everything and said “This is your gym. You’re the trainer. You’re in charge. It’s your playground!” And believe me, they have fun toys! Everything I could ask for except a rowing machine, but we can work on that!

I think the thing I learned the most from this job hunt was that everything you do, every experience, is valuable. Even if you interview with a company and never hear back from them again. Even if you have multiple interviews and are considered in the top 2 for a position but they pick the other person. Even if you interview and afterwards are no longer interested in the job. You can learn something from EVERY experience and none of that time is time wasted.

Spanish Flu and Tummy Troubles

Ok, so this is addressing part of why I’ve had such a crazy month upon returning home from Europe and touch a little bit on a personal update (I’ll hit part 2 and 3 later) but yes, you read that title right! Spanish flu!

Well…not really…but a pretty nasty bug that my family picked up in Spain! We came to calling it the spanish flu because that’s where my dad first got it before passing it to my mom, brother in law, and myself. My sister was the only one who escaped unscathed.

Now as you may recall I had my tonsils out about 6 weeks prior to contracting this virus and my body functions were still very much affected by that slow recovery. My immune system was NOT at all working at peak capacity (especially after 3 weeks in Europe) and while everyone else threw the bug in a little over a week, mine hung on. A long time. I got bronchitis and had to go on antibiotics, but it still wasn’t over. I was coughing so badly that I sometimes literally was gasping for breath, and the spot where my tonsils used to be was inhabited by these horrible blister looking things. I had no voice, a terrible sinus infection and ear infection, and was not sleeping because I couldn’t stop coughing.

Sooooooo…second round of antibiotics! Yipee! This time, they hit it with the big guns, an extremely powerful antibiotic 3 times a day. The doc had me prep with 2 days of a probiotic and then take a double dose of probiotic for the whole round of antibiotics. In addition, I kept taking my acid reducer and digestive enzyme. But still, the antibiotic hit me hard.

Like really hard. It was pretty much 2 weeks of vomiting and the worst diarrhea ever.

So a couple days ago I finally finished the antibiotics (yay!) and my sickness was obliterated (double yay!!) but the battlefield that was my stomach is a micro-organism ghost town (insert dramatic music here). We’re talking no survivors post apocalyptic nuclear war style! Yay for embarrassing farts, shits, and stomach cramps.

Now you’re probably wondering why I’m sharing all of this TMI information. Well, I feel like this is a prime time to focus on self care and on healing my gut through the foods I eat and returning it to normal and health function. This is a prime time to symbolically take care of my body and be gentle to it and nourish it through food. This is not a time to binge, purge, restrict, coffee-load, or any other high impact high stress disordered activity.

This is an opportunity to be mindful and listen to my body and work with it for what it needs.

Today’s Affirmation

You may see me resting, but you won’t see me quit. You may see me recharge, but I will never stop giving. It’s ok to ask for what I need to keep myself moving. You walk until you can’t walk anymore, and then you begin to crawl, and when you’re too tired to crawl, you find a good friend to help carry you for a little while.

You may see me struggle, but I will never give up. I will take a moment, catch my breath, re-affirm myself to my goals, and then start all over again.

Because it’s ok to fight. It’s ok to cry. It’s ok to get discouraged and frustrated and to do what you need to do to take care of yourself in this moment. As long as you go back to doing what needs to be done, it’s ok. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will my life be lived in a moment.

Consistency, tenacity, perseverance. Keep chipping away at it buttercup, it’ll happen.

Semantics Part Two

“So…are you vegan?”

Ugh! Here we go again! Another dinner with the boyfriends family, meeting new people who had come into town. Another question I didn’t want to answer. Unfortunately, this is something people who struggle with eating disorders are all to used to. “Um…no, I’m not.” Awkward trail off as I changed the subject.

Fear of being found out or discovered. Guilt that I was acting abnormal enough that people were asking questions at mealtime. Shame for what I am.

Shame that the true answer to this question was no, I’m not vegan, I’m anorexic.

A mental illness and medical condition. Not in any way a character flaw or some kind of path of immorality or mar in virtue. How does such a word as anorexic come to so encompass and define a person, as opposed to “I have anorexia”. Cancer sufferers are simply that: people with cancer, not cancerics. People with multiple sclerosis aren’t multiple sclerotics. And yet we are vegans, vegetarians, paleo, and anorexic/bulimic somehow got linked into that category. Something we are, not something we have.

Shame

Here’s my question: how does the emotion of shame get linked to a life threatening medical condition? I follow several vloggers on youtube who talk about fitness/lifestyle and I’ve seen at least 2 videos in the past 24 hours alone that follow the story line of “I’ve been accused of having an eating disorder/orthorexia/anorexia and I don’t! I’m not an orthorexic (or insert choice adjective here)!”

Nobody “accuses” people of having cancer. Nobody defensively refutes the presence of fibromyalgia or lupus.

Shame: I am something bad. Guilt: I have done something bad.

See the problem here? And how do we heal when we feel like we are inherently so poisonous, after taking one of these labels upon ourselves? Defining our lives. Just another thought about the weight of words.