Diary 8

September 17, 2015

I went through some stuff in my room today. I had many bankers boxes of papers and god knows what else all tossed in together and stacked in my room. Depression & anxiety does not play around. Its mantra is, "Fuck this, fuck that, you don't deserve to be able to see the carpet." I didn't exactly do a lot of filing, but I threw away lots of junk mail (YES I had junk mail from 2010) and receipts. I still have a dozen boxes to go. Egads, I know.

I finally FINALLY finished putting together my desk. I moved into this house in 2009. I have an L-shaped glass desk. I think I put together a half of it so I could have SOMETHING in 2010 or 2011. Today I finally put the entire thing together. There's so much room for activities!

I even found my bookends in a box! I put my study materials on my actual desk so that they can stare at me while I browse things online that will in no way determine my earning power.

Among the office supplies & old receipts in the boxes was a Queen box set, a compilation CD of the music they played at the Frankfurt Galaxy American football games in the late '90s, and a CD with about 15 pictures of a vacation I took with then-friends in 2003. So much fun listening to that music again and looking through those pictures! Great memories that I probably wouldn't have revisited today if I hadn't decided to find the junk mail to throw away in one single box.

We made pork chops & spinach for supper. That's all I had to eat all day besides coffee & milk. I consider it intermittent fasting. I wasn't hungry, so I didn't eat. I didn't miss the food. I hope I have more days like that. Maybe the pictures I found today will help remind me of what it takes to get back down to my 2001 weight (I'd already gained 15 lbs in 2003).

Tonight I'm grateful for being able to remember some good times. I can't remember them all, and I feel like I should be able to remember more than I do. I don't know if it was the decade of medications or the insomnia that they caused. In any case, it makes me sad. So I'm super grateful that I can remember some.

I'm also grateful for the odd day when I feel super motivated and not hungry. I don't know whether that's hypomania or the pills I'm on for my cold sore. Meh. Doesn't matter, still cleaned.

Take care.

"Screw it, why should I even care about fitness?" (Updated March 24, 2015)

I'm fat, ya know. Overweight. If you care about BMIs (which I think are bullshit...oh, I need to add that to the list), today I fall into the "obese" category. But if I were to lose three pounds (water weight or whatever, the BMI calculator DNGAF), I would be in the "overweight" category. Regardless of how I feel about BMIs, it is true that I would look and feel better if I lost about 40 lbs.

I wasn't always overweight. I am 5'2". I had to gain three pounds to join the military at age 18, as the minimum weight for my height was 95 lbs. I was 120 lbs and 30 years old when I received my official depression diagnosis. The antidepressants they put me on were supposed to cause weight loss, but I gained weight instead. The nausea that the pills caused made me constantly feel like I'd gone too long without a meal, so snacks helped keep the nausea at bay. My job was fast-paced, we didn't receive lunch breaks. We ducked into the break room and gulped down a snack or meal whenever we had a few minutes. As a result, anyone who was eating would be left alone. Anyone who happened to be in the breakroom without food in their hand could be asked to come back out and work, even during their break. So I ate on every single break.

Here it is a decade later, and I haven't gotten back down to 120 lbs even once. I maxed out at 170, and I am close to that now. There are so many reasons, excuses, things that sidelined me. The antidepressants caused sleep disturbances. I could fall asleep, but my body wasn't truly sleeping. The sleep study the doc sent me for showed 50+ arousals per hour (no sleep apnea, even though I'm fat!), so basically I did not have a solid night's sleep for almost a decade. I (seemingly) slept long hours, 8-18 hours per day. When I was up and about, I was dragging. I drank coffee all day, every day. I rarely had the energy to work out. In retrospect, it's amazing that I even held a job.

I realize there are people with harder, more difficult lives than mine. But there it is.

So now that I'm 41, I've pretty much trashed my body (super weak, flabby, & chubby), I don't have a significant other and don't care to find one in the near future and, as a depressive person, I kind of don't care if I die of a stroke or heart attack tomorrow, I am trying to find reasons to get my shit together.

Some days, "I want to wear cute outfits again someday" is not enough of a motivator. I might need a memory jogger that, say, pulmonary fibrosis runs in the family and the better my cardio is now, the easier it'll be to tolerate when I'm 80.

That's where you come in. I'm collecting reasons to get fit and stay fit besides the usual generic cosmetic and health reasons. I want to hear your personal reason in 140 characters or fewer. If you don't want me to use your name here, just let me know. Thanks!

1. "I have a long family history of diabetes. If I get too heavy, I put myself at an even greater risk to develop it." --@dcas1978

2. "To lose weight so my back and knees won't hurt so much!" --@Zaerion

3. "I try to keep active to help keep the black cloud at bay. And because I don't want to end up like my father." --@racerabbit

4. "I've got a bad back. When I get too fat it really starts to hurt. :)" --@ocularnervosa

5. "Pulmonary fibrosis runs in my family and the better my cardio is now, the easier it'll be to tolerate when I'm 80." --@binkytoes

6. "Free drugs* with every excercise session! 
*endorphins" --@binkytoes