This high protein diet is doing wonders for my health and body, I am getting more good days than bad. Despite currently having a throat infection with a mild chest infection, everything else is improving a lot!
I believe the throat and chest infection has come about because of my birthday weekend splurge of sweet treats and refined sugars, something I am not known for usually, but I wanted a change this weekend.
I don’t normally have a sweet tooth more than three or four times a month and that’s because of hormones and then I usually opt for fruit. But this past weekend I have splurged on cream cakes, chocolate, jelly babies and a lot of honey and maple syrup – shock and horror!
It’s my birthday weekend, let me live a little. My weight is stable, I am managing to exercise more often and I am feeling happy for it, but I still have a lot of fat to lose and toning up to do.
Since I started a few months ago to do just squats and standing from a seated position several times a day, I have noticed a positive increase in my mental health.
I knew from the past that I loved exercise and being active, but when I got sick, I just lacked all motivation to try again. It is especially hard when you have a lot of people tell you “take it easy, don’t rush things” all the while.
Paul was always stressed out by the idea that I may be rushing back into exercise after poor health and would often moan me into submission about it, so I found it hard to get back into the swing of it all.
I have had some harsh and strong words with Paul about this recently, when he noticed I was doing exercise.
“Well I got news for you” I said defiantly; “I have been doing these things in secret for the past few months to get back into the flow of it and now I am ready for harder tasks”. He almost went white.
I am not satisfied staying fat and lazy, I love exercise, I love doing things – I am not content in sitting on my ass all day whining about how poor we are and what we don’t have… if there is something about me that I can say in a positive and confident light is that I am a go-getter. But like the water dog I am; I flow with the energy that is around me the most and at the moment I am in stagnant waters and I am trying to make some currents.
In my youth my mother encouraged a peacock attitude, but as long as I kept to her lame fashion advice and her fashion advice really was lame! I have always been a lover of fashion and I strongly believe that your clothes can show the world your personality.
Unfortunately that is really hard to do when you are obese and you have virtually no budget to play with!
People do judge you for the clothes you wear as well as your general looks and I am not happy by the kinds of reactions I get when I wear the clothes I do currently, I get very little respect and I am treated like an ignoramus.
I want to be a peacock again, well, you know what I mean right?
I have too much work to do, it’s scary!
I also have to be cautious because in the past I had severe issues with anorexia, bulimia but also another condition where I was addicted to exercise to the point of exhaustion and collapse!
Paul knows this and thinks that any exercise outside of walking everywhere and twenty minute boring aerobics is too much, he is very cautious.
My ideas are very different. The only lengthy work out I like is forty five minutes long and it is Billy Blank’s Tae-Bo workout, gosh I miss that – this is one of the things I am working towards, being fit enough to do the whole workout again. It’s fun!
I am also working out to try and get back the flexibility I used to have when I was a contortionist – yes, that’s right; I used to be a contortionist. Not professionally, just for fun! Don’t sideways glance at me like that, it was fun!
A friend recently suggested I take up yoga and I laughed, because, I wish… But my body needs a lot of work before I can cock my leg up over my head again!
When I am writing in a calm and peaceful environment I have noticed I work better creatively when I am doing stupid things like this; Fifteen to twenty minutes writing, getting up and doing three minutes of HIIT exercises, followed by jumping jacks and jump rope exercises, then getting back to the desk.
Not only am I happy doing this, but my brain works better for it!
I wished I had an office which could also be a gym and library all rolled into one, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon by itself, so I have to work for it!
At the moment I am really trying to develop a positive mind-set and a healthy body and a handful of online friends have DM and told me that they really believe, in their hearts of hearts I should avoid sending my work to an agent in October so I can focus on all this other stuff first.
My friends think I should send it out around February, as the agents will be more prepared as I am sending the work out at the start of the busiest time of the year. I don’t know what to do to be honest, but I am wondering if I am dumb if I ignore their advice?
I believe the high protein diet is really fixing my body. As much as I love fruit and vegetables, I know I could never be a vegan because you can’t get Vitamin B12 as a vegan; with my digestive and bowel disease I already struggle to get enough B vitamins my diet as I don’t absorb them very well; not only this but I have allergies to soy and mustard, which can cause my spleen to swell.
According to google;” Vitamin B12 deficiencies can lead to megaloblastic anaemia, a condition where the bone marrow produces large abnormally shaped red blood cells that do not function properly. Dementia, paranoia, depression, and behavioural changes can result from a vitamin B12 deficiency. Neurological damage sometimes cannot be reversed”.
I have pernicious anaemia and rheumatic arthritis, but I am stabilising that the best I can with supplements and a healthy diet where I have to be mindful about what I eat and can’t get stuck into food ruts. My body really struggles absorbing vitamin B because of those conditions.
My arthritis is the first noticeable change since starting a high protein diet. Since starting this diet, my pain is getting less and I am starting to get some muscle mass back again, because around Easter time I loss a lot of muscle mass where it started to become very scary for Paul, my doctors and I.
I have a protein metabolism and I am an hourglass shape, I know what I am doing with my body because when I was younger I brainwashed myself to try to be the best that I can be, but Paul encouraged me to get lazy about things, because he was scared I was pushing my body too far and I had such a long term illness after pneumonia due to mono, that I flaked out, literally for years.
Slowly gaining back the fifty pounds I had lost after moving out of my mother’s house, but that’s changing now!
I noticed the worse parts of my ill health came back after three days of slipping up with my protein intake; Paul has noticed it too and has said that losing the high protein diet is unnegotiable now!
I forgot the high I get when I exercise and it’s great!
When I am sad or stressed I eat a lot, it’s a compulsive habit. When I am happy I forget to eat, so I have to watch that too! When I was twenty four my mother took a bigger control of my life and took a lot of things away from me that made me happy, I gained thirty pounds a year in depression and would have got fatter if it weren’t for Paul coming into my life and saving me when he did! I have always struggled with body dysmorphia one way or another. The thinner I get the fatter I think I see myself in the mirror and weirdly enough vice versa.
I have been using Mel Robbin’s technique recently whenever I look in the mirror, don’t see me as myself; I see myself as another person who I am deeply in love with and care about and weird enough it is helping my body dysmorphia a lot! I know it can lead to another problem of disassociation, but if it makes me happy in my own skin then I am all for that!
So look in the mirror, see another person in the room, don’t associate it with yourself, and high five that girl or boy you love!
So that’s what’s happening in my life right now.
Thanks for reading!
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