Mental Health
Mental Health Connections with Fitness and Exercise. Is 95% of your workout in your head?
Comfort Eating – Extra Tough Days Return.
Posted February 24, 2012
by Carole
Just as rapidly as I felt on top of the world and really doing well with running a mile a day last week, something unidentifiable changed and now I’m struggling to eek out a half a mile run.
After the half mile, during the tail end of I feel a bit wheezy not that I don’t during a mile-long run anyway – I am an asthmatic after all – it’s just that it seems to come on sooner than that last glorious week of running perfectly.
Possible triggers: 1) Lately, I’ve been allowing two of our pets to sleep in our usually off-limits bedroom during the day hours. I do have a slight allergy to our pets and although I lint-roll the blankets before retiring each evening and we vacuum in there twice a week, it’s possible that fur dander is building up and irritating my lungs, causing me to wheeze a bit in the mornings and earlier in my noontime run.
I should probably end the habit of allowing pets to sleep in our bedroom. They do have their own bedroom.
2) Because I have a dairy-allergy (NOT lactose-oriented) that also can make me wheezy and feel bloated, I avoid most dairy most of the time. I do know my outside envelope on consuming dairy and dairy-laced products and I read labels religiously to know what those might be. Since January 10th of this year, I haven’t consumed one iota of dairy.
I know dairy consumption isn’t the problem with my recent inability to run a mile a day.
3) Overeating: This is more than likely the culprit mixed with more than just a bit of number 4 described next. Portion size continues to plague us. I’ve said it before and here I’m stating it again: I wouldn’t know a correct portion size for me if it slapped me on my backside and called me Betty. Worse still, I doubt I could stick to a Carole-sized portion without giving serious thought to chewing off my own arm before four p.m. every day. That would be even after drinking yet another low calorie protein shake.
I need to seriously work on not overeating. It’s a mental thing more than anything.
Lastly, 4) I’ve been under a huge amount of stress lately with my writing and home life and have been comfort eating in lieu of wanting to work out. I haven’t been eating comfort foods – we refuse to buy those or having any in the house. Comfort eating for me is overeating anything currently being served. I make dinner ninety-nine percent of the time here at home; Steve cooking the other one percent of the time because of his job and his own stress issues, and lately, I have not been able to get back into the habit of dividing cooked meals into two dinners worth of food. My mind and my stomach simply do not care and without much thought, I’ll eat enough for two dinners sized for about three people. Instead of two soft tacos, I’ll consume six. Instead of a salad plate-sized salad, I’ll heap high a large dinner plate’s worth.
Numbers 3 and 4 are so intertwined one seems as much like the other that it’s hard to separate them. Yet I do because I know myself and my mental weaknesses.
I’m not sure that these two items are positively the culprits stealing my ability to run a mile a day but clearly, they are problems I have identified and need to work on. In the meanwhile, I’ll continue to try to discover the problem and will continue to try to get back to running a mile a day.
Clean Eating – On Those Extra Good Days.
Posted February 18, 2012
by Carole
I feel on today for some reason, and not wanting to over analyze how it is I feel on top of the world on rare days and sluggish both mentally and physically other days, I do want to figure out the how’s and why’s of that.
I believe you are what you eat. Overall, I eat well and reasonably clean. We fix all our meals here at home using little processed food – plain black coffee and canned plain black or white beans being the exceptions. We consume two vegetarian meals a week. Since I seem to have issues around eating grains – flour and flour products, whole wheat anything, quinoa, and rice, I personally try to limit my intake of those to just a few times a week.
Fresh, raw vegetables are a big hit around here. We love ‘em, we eat ‘em and we definitely shy away from overcooking them. We don’t eat beef and lean more toward chicken, turkey, and fish with the occasional pork tenderloin thrown in. I suppose all these meats could be considered processed since we didn’t catch or butcher any ourselves.
My dinner last night was a big Portobello mushroom sautéed in Worchester sauce and homemade chicken stock with one quarter of a large acorn squash (microwaved and plain) and two cups of fresh chopped salad w/o dressing, croutons, or nuts. A tall glass of plain water rounded out the meal (we’re not big on desserts). Later, over writing homework, I sipped a tiny glass (about a quarter cup) of port.
Good eating. Reasonably clean (if you removed the Worchester sauce, almost completely clean). Our problem, as I see it in regards to eating, continues to be portion size. We can really pack it away and unfortunately, we do. Always.
I take vitamin D every other day, a Krill oil every other other day, and a Resveratrol daily. Three out of five days last week, I ran one mile straight and walked a third of a mile. And I wrote a lot and talked a lot with Steve about my writing goals.
Rinse and repeat to get the same results tomorrow? I’d really like to rise from bed feeling this good and rested again.
