It is no secret that I use my blog as a bit of self therapy and I guess that is one of the reasons for this entry. As I have mentioned before I think that at my height of “unhappiness” with my weight and low self esteem I may have been nearing depression and withdrawing from so many aspects of what would seem to many as a happy and fulfilling life is testament to this. I attended a course today on supporting people in the workplace with Mental Health Issues. Contrary to popular belief mental health issues extend beyond Personality and eating disorders. While the whole day was extremely interesting I found the discussion on Depression to be most relevant to me. I asked the course facilitator how to differentiate between feeling sad as opposed to depressed. She summed it up by saying feelings of sadness come and go whereas depression is “sadness” all of the time. Bearing in mind of course that this was only a small component of the whole day. She said that depression was a combination of many factors but some of them are withdrawal, loss of self worth, lack of motivation to the point where you don’t want to get out of bed and you don’t want to achieve. Everything that she said rang true for me. During the morning tea break I explained my reason for asking her. At that point I explained that since I have been exercising and losing weight I have been more motivated, my self esteem has increased and I am no longer withdrawing from situations that I used to avoid.
It is fair to say that over the last few weeks I have slipped back into some old bad habits and I have lost focus. I have become complacent and I believe that this may be because of my injury but also because my self esteem has started to reduce. I have lost weight and yeah I am fitter but at the end of the day I am still overweight. Externally I am still the person that I was before even though I am (or I thought) I was feeling different.
I don’t believe that others can motivate you to exercise or eat healthily and that it really must be something you do for yourself. Messages of encouragement are nice and so is recognition, positive feedback can go a long way however change can only come from within.
My complacency worries me because clearly I need to do more. Funnily enough during the challenge I felt absolutely no pressure from anyone to achieve. Now though I find the pressure that I am placing on myself unbearable and at times stressful. As I have done for the last 7 months I constantly have healthy eating and exercise on my mind. I can’t think of anything else. It worries me because I am so consumed by my thoughts that the goal, my goal, is blurred and concern of failing myself and what I want to achieve is more apparent than ever.
I wanted to share this with you all because more than ever I have realised that weight loss is psychological whether it be positive or negative. If your mind is not right then you can never be successful in what you need to do.
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2 comments:
Michelle, there are so many things I want to say here, as I both disagree and agree with you. But I wont go into any detail here, perhaps a chat on email another time. The only positive I took from that blog was your wonderful way of being able to share your personal thoughts. You truly are a brilliant writer.
Shell you've raised some extremely important points, and that is why it is often highly recommended for people to make the sorts of changes that you are making, with the support of appropriately qualified health professionals (and I don't necessarily mean Certificate III TAFE qualified gym instructors).
An accredited dietician will have studied some psychology as part of their grad dip or Masters degree in Nutrition and Dietetics, so they are trained in how to provide appropriate encouragement and support for their patients.
Hang in there. You know you can do it, but you also know that we all have lapses and 'down' times. Take care.
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