Mental health & something to make you laugh 31/12/18

I have struggled with my mental health over the years.  Bouts of anxiety and depression are not fun to live with but I'm fortunate not to have fallen completely into black holes and I have a loving supportive and understanding family.  I definitely have issues with control and find new situations challenging.  When I'm particularly anxious about things I need to know I can get to a toilet when I need to.  Issues around that make the anxiety even worse.

What I do know from my own experience is that the person suffering with anxiety or depression can only be really helped once they are ready to accept and face their demons.  Telling me to pull myself together or that it's all in my head would have the opposite effect to that intended.

Mostly these days I am coping and I'm challenging myself.  Our trip to Montreal was an example of this.  We were going somewhere new, visiting and staying with people I've never met and I was not in control.  But we planned ahead, were open with our hosts about the problems and we had a great time.  Yes there were a few sticky moments:  needing to get down from a hill top walk quickly when it had snowed and the path was icy in places was one of them.  Fortunately I made it in one piece and with my dignity intact.

Making decisions when you have mental health issues can also be difficult.  Procrastination can become a way of putting off things that seem hard, or even everyday things you don't want to do.  I'm excellent at procrastinating.  That's partly why I've set myself goals again for 2019 even if I didn't do too well with them this year.

On that note, yesterday I decided to resurrect my Wii fit.  I did have some good spells where I used it a lot.  Sadly it laid idle through the whole of 2018.  I decided I needed a clean slate and deleted my previous data.  So fresh start, new baselines required.  For those unfamiliar with the Wii fit, one of the things it does is calculate your weight and BMI and it also looks at your balance - do you lean too much in one direction.  Well I knew my weight and BMI would not be great but I was surprised at how bad my balance seemed to be.  I was prepared to put that down to always holding the Grandkids on the same hip.

I decided to start off gently with a basic stepping routine.  Again I was appalled at how badly I was doing.  I seemed to be completely out of sync and as a former dancer this was not good!  Next I tried a balance game and again was hopeless.

I changed all the batteries in case that was the problem.  Then, eventually, came the moment of enlightenment.  The wii board was facing the wrong way!

Hmm error corrected and my physical efforts were much improved.  Didn't do much for my mental health though! lol

Fitbit - Which bit?! 15/2/16

You may recall me mentioning that I acquired a FitBit at Christmas time.  One of those devices that records your steps etc and connects to an app where you can track your progress on losing weight/getting fit.

Well I think my FitBit must be wondering what it's there for at the moment.  I still can't shake off this cough I've had since last week.  My step count has been so low I'm surprised it's even registered them and as for active time.  Zilch.

I did manage to get out for a bit of fresh air today - but only as far as the local pharmacy to get a different cough linctus so I did a whole, wait for it, 15 minutes of walking and at present, clocked up 3278 steps.

My schedule of building up to the recommended 10,000 steps a day has been thrown out of the window.  I did a baseline week initially which showed I was doing about 6000 steps on average per day so I mapped out a plan to increase that gradually each week.  Plus to increase my liquid intake.  I was at 1 litre and want to get up to 2 litres a day but that has to be done VERY gradually - I make enough trips to the loo already so I need to work on that one slowly.

(Notice I said liquid intake - I'd find it hard to drink 2 litres of water every day but I reckon that cups of tea are mostly water and I drink a lot of them in a day so they're being included in my totals!)

Am I disheartened?  A bit of course but life just gets in the way sometimes and we have to go with the flow.  The flow is very slow right now.  The only good thing was, that despite feeling so unwell and doing very little, yet managing to eat fairly normally, I lost 2lb last week.

With that incentive I'll carry on!