Chip Butty & Cherry Cheesecake

I was going to start this blog by telling you how it doesn't matter that I just stuffed my face full of chip butty followed by cherry cheesecake for lunch (with a 'zero' Lilt - oh, the irony!) because I'm not on a health kick or anything, so what's the harm in a lunchtime blowout eh?!

However as I sat there eating I realised that I am on a bit of a health kick after all.  A mental health kick, if such a thing exists (and if it doesn't, it should).

I have been using exercise as a very effective tool for helping with my mental state for a long time now - in fact being put on medication by my GP in late 2015 was the wake-up call I needed to make a change, and as anyone who has read any of my blog recently will know, I have been regularly attending the gym and got back into the running since then.  It has been the exact thing I needed to help my mental health, with the beneficial side effects being that my physical health is probably the best it has ever been too (and I only needed one course of those drugs and a couple of weeks away from work as a result!).

Thing is, the first half of this year has had its ups and downs, and the downs seem to have coincided with times when I haven't been able to keep up with the gym stuff for various reasons - my PT moving to a new place and therefore having a couple of months with no training, stopping a couple of classes due to work commitments and also starting to doubt my ability etc etc.  And along with the decrease in exercise, I have experienced an increase in anxiety and stress levels, and have noticed some old patterns emerging as a result.  For example, a good gauge for me is how many days do I work from home, and on those days do I get up and have a shower?  When I am feeling good, even on a work from home day I would be up and dressed.  When I am below par I tend to find myself still in pyjamas in the afternoon, and then beat myself up about it.  I berate myself - why can't I just be like everyone else and get up and dressed like a normal person?  Everyone else can manage it, so why can't I?  Then there's the housework, which I just don't keep on top of so well when I'm down.  And it's an ever decreasing circle, because being in the house when it's messy makes me stressed out from looking at the mess, and yet I don't want to leave the house, so I am spending more time there looking at the mess, and yet don't have the energy to clean it up....... You can see where I'm going here!

You would think that the solution to this would be pretty simple - get back into a routine with the exercise.  And I know that would help me immensely.  However, my brain won't let it be that easy!  My brain is convinced that because I have let everything slip, it is going to be too hard to start it up again, and I am a failure.  A failure because I'm not going to the gym as often, and because I have let the running slide to such an extent that I missed a 10k race I had entered this week.  The day before the 10k I was still going to run it - I decided that I would just take it really easy and aim to run/walk it just to get back out there, but on the morning of the race I chickened out.  I regretted it all day, to the point where I nearly got in the car an hour before to see if I could still make it to the start on time, but talked myself out of it (this pattern repeats over and over).

So, where do I go from here?  How do I get myself out of this funk?  I can't change the things that are getting me down as I have no control over them, so instead I have to change the way I am reacting to them.  I need to stop beating myself up all the time.  Yes, I ate a chip butty and a cherry cheesecake for lunch, but so what?  Feeling guilty about it won't help, just start again tomorrow.  One day at a time.  One foot in front of the other.  I'm sure I have put my favourite saying on here before, but in case I haven't;