breathe
So this blog is becoming less about exercise and more like mate you should probably go talk to a professional. Which I am doing, yay. But I think that writing about this stuff helps because once you put it out there you realize how fucking nuts you are (because people you don’t know will tell you so on Instagram) or, that there’s a bunch of other nutcases who can relate and say things like ‘OMG I spend all day thinking about my frozen banana TOO’ and somehow that makes you feel a bit less crazy. Or, just as crazy, but surrounded by other crazy people, which is somewhat comforting (or terrifying).
This morning (Friday) I woke up with the now familiar lump in my throat and breathless feeling I’ve recently come to associate with anxiety. I set my alarm to go off half an hour before I’m supposed to get up because, despite the fact that I’ve only slept in once in the past year (and was still on time for work thanks to my overly generous alarm buffer zone) being late or even the thought of being late is beyond terrifying. I check my sleep tracking app and feel a crushing sense of failure if I’ve gotten any less than my self-dictated 8 hours. Even if I’ve gotten just over 8 hours I am disappointed. I should really be aiming for 9, but increasing my sleep goal and by default the risk of failure is a potential stress I do not need.
Before I can do anything else I have to make my bed properly and tuck the sheets into the side. If I don’t it will eat at me all day and when I come home after work I will be embarrassed by my half-assed effort and have to re-make it. I weigh myself (obviously after going to the bathroom, and also after having a shower because for some reason I think this will improve the result) and record my weight in my diary, which I have been doing for about a year. A ‘good’ result will set me up well for the day and I’ll feel positive about whatever I’m eating, whereas a ‘bad’ result will send my brain into overdrive searching for reasons why, and lead me to question my training, eating, and general self worth. Before I can eat I have to take my supplements, which have grown over the last few months to about 6 different bottles (in case you are that interested : creatine, magnesium, fish-oil, vitamin D, olive leaf extract, B12 and apple cider vinegar). On the rare occasion that I forget to take these I will worry all day that I have caused myself some kind of deficiency which will have some noticeable knock-on affect, like I probably wouldn’t have missed that lift at 90% if I’d taken my fish oil on Tuesday.
I then get to have breakfast which has already been prepared the night before, each ingredient weighed out and already logged in My Fitness Pal so as there are no margins for error. I sit at my kitchen table with my coffee (black, no sugar) and eat my 30g of oats, 20g additional protein and 100g Greek yogurt with my designated Breakfast Spoon. I have certain kitchen implements that correspond with different moods/ meals (obviously). While eating I complete my morning mindful tasks, reading a page from the Daily Stoic and writing in my journal, which is supposed to be filled with things I am grateful for but as of late I have struggled to think and just sit there scrolling through Instagram and feeling the dulled reward activation of likes and comments, overthinking the likes / lack of likes from people who should have little to no impact on my life. It’s not that my life is bad in any way and I know that I should be able to fill a fucking encyclopedia of things that I’m grateful for. This lack of gratitude only serves to compound my anxiety and disappointment in myself.
The rest of my day at work is basically spent thinking about my training later on, making sure I already have my percentages worked out so I don’t have to waste time, planning my warm-ups to include my various rehab exercises and deciding whether I will have my baby food pouch before or after the session (Banana, Quinoa & Kumara are the best and I have a compulsion to buy all of them every time I’m at Coles because I’m certain there’s a dickhead baby out there who also shares my enthusiasm for this flavour) . The amount of deliberation behind a seemingly simple decision such as pouch timing stresses me out, as there are so many considerations. How many carbs will I have leftover after training, and is that going to be enough to support recovery from said training, but also, can I have my frozen banana after dinner AS WELL if I include other carbs in my meal? I like sweet potato better than rice but I already had it for lunch and I need more iron but hang on I had meat for lunch so does that count or is it different ?? I obviously need carbs for training BUT I think about that frozen banana from when I wake up and if my day doesn’t end with one I will literally be upset. If I haven’t already logged my nighttime meal during the day or on the way home from work I will literally stand in the middle of the kitchen unable to start making my food until it’s been logged and I know that I’m (ideally) under my calorie goal. Not too much though obviously because gains.
My nighttime routine involves yin yoga / stretching, analyzing the day’s training in (another) diary, making sure all my food is made / and logged for the morning and going to bed embarrassingly early because basically I am fucking tired of thinking and obviously if I don’t get my 8 hours I will literally berate myself for the next 24. Last night I couldn’t sleep because the decision of whether to take my lifting shoes back to NZ in 6 months when I go home for a visit kept me awake. Along with which bag I should take and wondering whether the gym I train at back home will let me use the facilities for my own program or whether I should just follow theirs for the week and will this destroy my chances of achieving my goals for the Open. Despite the fact I achieved 9.5 hours sleep last night and earnt myself another tick (because obviously I have a physical tally) I wake up breathless and exhausted, nervous for my daily weigh in, worrying over whether to buy eggs OR flowers at the farmer’s market, and whether the clothes I pre-packed for training later in the day will conceal my gunt (it’s a thing). The decision to get flowers momentarily relieves the pressure, before I start worrying that I’ll have to get eggs from Coles now and which one should I go to because I suspect the dickhead baby is on a pouch rampage and the thought of having to resort to Blueberry & Quinoa is distressing as fuck.
I hope reading that stressed you out because literally my palms are sweating and my heart rate has elevated to 69 BPM (normally sits around 45 because Athlete). I have of course come up with a list of strategies that calm me, but, much like all of my other lists and systems that rule my universe, this seems like yet another opportunity to fail. One of my calming strategies was to go for a walk every lunchtime, which worked well, until obsessively checking my step count throughout the day and having to meet a certain self-imposed target added itself to the list of stress-inducing tick boxes.
It honestly did not occur to me that perhaps this way of thinking wasn’t ideal until my close friend (who understands me probably better than my own family) casually posed the question; ‘Have you ever considered talking to someone about your anxiety?‘ over dinner a week ago (a dinner which I had entered into MFP hours earlier as the rest of the day’s nutrition depended on this). It was a fucking light-bulb moment. I’ve felt like this for so long, it didn’t really ever occur to me that my obsessive nature and necessity to control every aspect of my life was perhaps not essential, and that I can / could potentially be successful and live the life I want without berating myself over every minute fucking detail. I probably won’t miss a lift if I forget my fish oil one day, and let the baby have his fucking pouches, they literally say ‘baby’ on them. He’s probably like “fuck that crazy old bitch who buys the entire shelf of Kumara pouches every week”. If he was old enough to talk obviously he would swear. I know that loosening the reigns would probably actually improve my life, but where the fuck do I start? It’s taken me so long to build a million systems / habits / control mechanisms that I feel that removing even a seemingly inconsequential one (resentfully purchasing the Blueberry pouches, for example) would cause the carefully stacked house of cards to come crashing down. And also, I don’t fucking like the Blueberry ones.
If you know me (like in real life, not just on Instagram) and it does your head in that I have to know a week ahead of time what we’re going to be having for dinner, or that I have to do the dishes as soon as you’ve finished eating, or know what time we’re training on Thursday next week, please know that it’s only just occurred to me that there’s an alternative. I’m not sure what a happy medium would be though, because honestly I ENJOY rigidity and structure and feel that being obsessive has its benefits. But it would be nice to know that I can comfortably eat breakfast without my skull spoon and that if I don’t take my lifters to Auckland in January I probably won’t do any worse in the Open. Basically, the world is not going to fucking end if don’t know what socks I’m wearing at my next weightlifting comp in 2 weeks, (don’t worry, I do) or what I’m going to have for breakfast that morning (again, I’m on it).
Just writing this has made me need to simultaneously employ abdominal breathing, light a candle, drink tea, and pat Graham while listening to Sia’s ‘Breathe Me’, which are all good strategies, if you can totally relate to this whole spiel and wish to utilize them. I finally opened up to my Mum about all of the crazy recently, and she helpfully gave me another strategy which she calls calming affirmations. Basically this is repeating to yourself in a calming voice (whilst employing the previously mentioned strategies) that everything is going to be OK. “Calm down, cunt” works better for me, but I’m sure she would overlook the profanity knowing that my heart rate is now down to 51 BPM.