Damn it's so hard!

So I don't even remember what my food/exercise goals were for this week, so needless to say I wasn't successful....
So I'm pondering over what I can set as a realistic goal for this step - one that I feel confident I can achieve. So I tried to tell myself that all I needed to just cook meals at home (which was clearly not as easy as Jeremy makes it out to be.) and I couldn't make myself have dinner without him.
I'm thinking it may be best if I set a goal to avoid certain types of junk food, perhaps it's time to put a ban on McDonalds, Red Rooster and KFC. Ok I vow not eat any of these for the next week, and if I can make it past 1 week then I will extend the ban. Fingers crossed....

Things don't always go to plan

Ok, so on the very same day that I was determined to stick to eating my home cooked meals, I was the one that caved at dinner time when I had an intense craving for a steak burger from the local  fish and chip shop. Can I use the excuse that I am sick at the moment and well... that sucks really excuses won't get me anywhere....

Though in my defense I kind of feel like I set a goal but another one got in the way... exercise. I sit on my bum all day so I don't get a lot of it, in fact the extent of it might be climbing two flights of stairs to where my office is every morning. If I do all the naughty things like sit a my desk while eating lunch and not leaving my desk all day, then the amount of exercise I do is almost zero.

Yesterday I was in the middle of battling a bit of a cold but I came to the realisation that I could stop my nose from running if I got on my exercise bike, so I did. I rode for an hour and it felt great, I felt like I had detoxed my body of all the evil stuff. Unfortunately as soon as I got off the bike my nose started to run again and when I woke up this morning I still felt horrible. As the day went on I started to feel a little better, and this strange desire inside me was pushing me to get on that exercise bike again, and I did, for another hour and once again I felt great.

So it seems that I have a new goal for the moment, to get on that bike every day for the next month. I still want to keep an eye on my eating habits, maybe try and eat more protein to keep my energy levels up. But exercise is my focus for now. And while things don't always go to plan, that doesn't mean that it has turned out for the worst, either way, I benefit by positive change :)

Changing my taste buds

So you may or may have not figured out by now that I am the kind of person who sets out to change the things I don't like about myself. Though I acknowledge some things are harder than others - otherwise known as everyone has their weak point.... For me it's my eating habits.

I can have such determination and confidence in overcoming social anxiety because I know underneath all the anxiety I am happy, bubbly and sociable girl, but when it comes to food, I am the girl who is completely unhealthy, a little overweight but I feel like my eating habits are more like those of an obese person....

My eating habits never used to be bother me.... well when I was 18 years old, I fitted into a size 6 jeans, and had a large amount of energy all the time despite what I can best describe as a diet of french fries, coca cola and double cheeseburgers. I grew up with my mother who taught me to live a fast food diet... (with a little bit of home cooked carbs every now and then.) Cleaning up after dinner for me was throwing out my fast food containers, and when I moved out of home the only thing I could cook was pancakes, canned or microwave meals and toast. I thought a healthy breakfast was chocolate milk and Vegemite on toast (white bread of course)

Naturally as i've gotten older this kind of a diet is becoming less sustainable for me... Getting fat kind of crept up on me, I've gone from being 4ft 10in and weighing 49 kilos at age 18 and at 30 i'm at my biggest... 70 kilos.... which might not seem much to some people... but I must remind you that I am 4ft 10.... Looking back I can recognise how I came to my demise, when I was at school I was dancing 3 times a week for 3 hours each night, after school... that ended. At age 23 when I finally decided to get my licence, this also meant that the days were gone where I would walk everywhere. And then at 24 I went from a job where I was on my feet all day to one where I sat on my ass all day, and from there is was all downhill.

Though I hate how big I am now and the struggle I have with fitting into clothes and hating the way I look in the mirror, none of these things made me want to change my eating habits. I got sick of feeling tired every moment of the day and finding that the only thing that would fix that was a sugar hit. I hated that I was craving a double cheeseburger at breakfast time, I hated how my addiction to coca cola was also making my anxiety worse and probably stopping me from getting a decent nights sleep. I hate how junk food makes me feel, I hate the impact it has on my health, and I hate that it has taken control of me.

So here I am desperate to stop. But asking myself how am I supposed to do that when I am the girl who hates vegetables and when I am falling asleep at my keyboard by 9am every morning unless I get a sugar hit??? How am I supposed to be skinny and healthy when I see myself as an unhealthy obese girl?

A diet would never work for me... I would have quit by 9am on the first day... and since I am stuck in a vicious circle where food makes me too tired to exercise but the bad food is also the only thing that is keeping me functioning, I am scared that I will never get out.... I have thought and thought and thought about how on earth I can do this... I have come to the conclusion there is only one way... and that is to slowly eliminate things from my diet... so far I have had one success, I have stopped drinking Coca Cola... (perhaps disregard that I have swapped it for a Sprite addiction) and keep in mind that as someone who doesn't drink tea or coffee, Coke was my source of caffeine and I would drink it to keep myself awake even though I started to hate the taste of it.

Now I have almost managed to swap my Sprite addiction to a Sprite Zero addiction, which I feel is ok because hey, at least there is no sugar, the only thing in my way is the fact that I eat so much take away and most places don't actually have Sprite Zero for sale... and then I go back to my sugar filled version.

Other than this... I feel completely stuck at changing, I've tried to tell myself I need to home cook my meals at night and I need to stop snacking at work... but I can't seem to stick at anything. It also doesn't help that I have a partner who encourages my bad eating habits, yet also manages to blame me for our bad eating habits and who tells me that change is a simple as ME cooking us dinner every night.... This might be ok if I was his stay at home wife who had nothing better than to feed and clean up after him, but I work just as many hours in the day as he does. I have also tried to tell him that we need to sit down and decide on a plan to change our bad habits and that it needs to be something we both agree on, we are both committed to and that we are both prepared to work hard towards. He disagrees, "No, no, no," he insists, "Us eating better is a simple as ME changing my habits and cooking us dinner!" then he has the cheek to imply that "Perhaps we should do our own thing for dinner, and then he would be healthy and cook for himself, while I will continue to get fat eating take away." (Says the boy who ate take away every night while I was away on a month long holiday in Europe!)

Maybe he's right though, maybe we do need to do our own thing eating wise, cos if I was copying his eating habits I would be drinking a 2 litre bottle of coke every two days. I just need to set that goal and stick to it no matter what, hopefully by writing it down on here it will help me keep focused on that one goal.

Hopefully this isn't too big to expect from myself...
I set myself the goal that I will eat breakfast and dinner every day, that they will be meals cooked by myself, for myself, no influence from my partner. I will be secretly watching every day to see how many times I have take away in comparison to him. I also would like to get as much protein into my diet as possible, since it seems to be the only thing that stops my sugar cravings.

Well I better go off and set myself a plan for the next fortnight, so that I can stick to my goal!

Perspective

Take a look at this picture, and think about how it makes you feel. 
Me.... it makes me feel peaceful... what about you?

Would the real me please stand up?

To my close friends and family I am happy, bubbly and I never stop talking. That me is confident and hardly bothered by the little voice in my head that brings on my anxiety.

To those who I don't know well or who I don't feel comfortable around,  I honestly don't know how they see me, but I do know how I think everyone else sees me. I live in constant fear of the judgement of others, I get tense if I hear someone whispering or laughing, it makes my mind race with paranoid thoughts as I imagine all the possible things I could have done 'wrong'. Of course when I am really thinking of what I could have done wrong it is really me thinking of every inadequacy I feel about myself and fearing that everyone around me sees and judges me for those inadequacies.

I know deep down that when someone is whispering that they are probably just saying something about themselves which they don't want everyone else to hear. After all when I get paranoid of people whispering it's because I am thinking about myself not them, and the reality is, most people think of themselves, of how things affect them and how the world views them.

Though Social Anxiety is so much more than being self conscious about oneself, for me it alters me to the point that my friends don't recognise me. The girl who excitedly greets everyone turns into the girl who is too scared to say hello to people, I'm always hiding in corners where people can't see me, and being so quite that no one knows I am even around. I get scared of asking for help, making telephone calls... pretty much anything that involves me approaching another person or potentially being judged by another person.

This would all make sense and maybe be ok to me if I was not at all a social person, but I am not that kind of person and I don't want to be that kind of person, I don't want to feel changed and trapped by anxiety, I just want to take away the fear, stop hiding behind a mask, I want to stand up and be the real me.

sunset though the grass

Because it gives me that happy feeling :)

http://youtu.be/c1acLwi-jos

Depression and why I know I can do this

Like most anxiety suffers I also have symptoms of depression, however I am lucky enough that my symptoms of depression are low to almost non-existent. Though any time I'm feeling like those depressing feelings are creeping up on me it is a reminder of how far i've come and how capable I am overcoming anxiety and anything.

About 9 years ago I was at my lowest point, I worked a part time job and this was the only thing I left the house for, most of my time was spent in bed sleeping my misery away. I'd cry at random times often overwhelmed by the thoughts in my head. During this time I gained the nickname 'Smiley' because I never smiled. When someone asked me how I was, I would respond, "Crap." 

"Why? " I was asked

"Because nothing good had happened." (Of course it didn't with that attitude!)

Soon people stopped asking how I was and most of the time ignored me (which of course didn't help my anxiety since I was already convinced that everyone hated me.) One day it clicked, I realised it was the way I was behaving that was pushing people away, I had a terrible attitude and not only did it suck the happiness out of me but anyone who got to close to me.

I could have just closed my eyes and let myself be stuck in the same place, but I was fueled by a strong determination to overcome depression and be the person I wanted to be. As a kid i'd grown up with a Dad who suffers from depression and anxiety, he would often dwell on all the miseries of his life and missed opportunities, not only did I hate seeing him like this but I could think of nothing more depressing than living a life with no hope for the future and only regret about the past. I needed to feel like I was at least trying to change my situation.

So I set out to change, one step at a time, starting with how I responded people, I made a promise to myself that when someone asked how I am, that no matter how good or bad my day was that I would respond with "I'm good thanks, how are you?" And I was determined to do this not for the benefit of others but because every time I said out aloud that I was good, I felt good on the inside and slowly my attitude started to go from the glass being half empty to half full. 

There were many other things I did to change my attitude, I read self help book after self help book, plastered my wall with happy photos, positive quotes and things I liked about myself. But the most significant thing I remember doing that was an instant pick me up was watching Hilary Duff movies and listening to her music while dancing around my living room singing at the top of my lungs - I'm not afraid to admit this because it did what it needed to do for me, it made me feel positive, empowered and happy, - and you really have to do whatever works for you.

It wasn't easy, but I eventually reached a time where I didn't feel weighed down by depression anymore. It was a time where I didn't spend all day in bed, I didn't hate myself, and I started to look forward to the future with hope, and it is for this reason that I know that I can overcome everything - including anxiety. I hope that anyone reading this will be filled with the hope or determination that they too can overcome anything they set their mind to.

Live for the present

Anxiety

Anxiety, it’s a frustrating illness to have. It’s a frustration that cannot really be understood by those who have never had the unpleasant experience. Sure, all of us get a little anxious at times, such as when we have to make a speech, attend a job interview or want to ask our crush out on a date. What I’m talking about is suffering from debilitating anxiety that is so bad that you go about your life making sure you avoid any of the things that make you anxious. You don’t face your fears, you find your way around them, and that way around them becomes part of your daily routine. For some people it becomes so extreme that their lives are confined to staying inside their house, though thankfully I am not someone who suffers from anxiety bad enough that it stops me from leading a fairly normal life, and most of the time others won’t even realise I suffer from anxiety or how bad I suffer from anxiety unless they are around me when I meet my fears…

I can get anxious and become distressed to the point that I have a panic attack over things that are seemingly small to other people and for reasons which I am often unable to directly explain. If I look deeper I can see the complexities of why I’m anxious over that activity or thing, but other people can take the attitude that they don’t really want to hear about it, they don’t want to listen but are happy to judge that your silly and why can you just ‘Get over it’

I certainly just would like to Get over it, if only it were just that simple, like flicking a switch and turning that fear off. I certainly could do without the physical symptoms, that feeling like there is a brick on your chest, suddenly your lightheaded, but the most embarrassing bit is feeling so overwhelmed that I start crying, and even if I start to calm down a bit just a slight thought of the thing that made me anxious and the tears start pouring down my cheeks again. When I have a panic attack I can feel it for the rest of the day, from the headache I have from all that crying, to that constant self conscious feeling that I have for the rest of the day because I feel so silly.

It’s frustrating having to make adjustments to your life, like having to allow extra time to climb the stairs because I’m too scared of the lift or driving 10 minutes to the doctors just to make an appointment because I’m too scared to make a phone call. While I know these things are frustrating and I wish they would go away, they certainly aren’t going anywhere if people are judgemental and dismissive about my fears. Actually, it’s probably the lack of understanding and the judgements which are made which build up the anxieties in the first place.

The more anxiety affects my life and my ability to do the things I want to do and the more I’m criticized about those fears, the more I start to think to myself that I hate these ridiculous irrational thoughts and I wish it were just as simple as getting over it. It’s certainly not easy to admit your weaknesses to people and to admit to them that something they find easy and can do without a thought, scares you to the point of a panic attack.

Being the ambitious person that I am, I know that if I could change one thing about myself in an instant it would be to be a completely carefree person who does things without hesitation, I would love to live life to the fullest and chase my dreams without anticipating what I’ll do if I’ll fall over.
I dream of a day where I can walk into a room full of people, with a smile on my face, being the first to say hi to everyone, to start a conversation with someone without a self conscious thought in my mind. I want to do things like climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge or bungee jump, and I want to enjoy myself while I make it instead of being tense and anxious the whole way up and back down again.
I want to live life, have minimal or no anxiety and BE HAPPY!