I worry. A lot. In the past, I’ve been told it’s anxiety, but plenty of things that are supposed to freak out anxious people don’t bug me – public speaking for example. I’m great in front of a room of strangers.

And since I started treating my sleep apnea, I’m certain I never had any true anxiety disorder, just a tendency to worry a lot. I think I’ve been conditioned to worry through my upbringing and experiences.

Certainly, cognitive therapy is something I should explore. I’ve done meds and I don’t believe they are a long-term solution. In the meantime, Psychology Today suggests you make an appointment with your worries:

“What if you decided that you would put off the worry until later? Set aside a time of the day-say, 4 pm-when you will sit down and methodically review your worries.

If a worry shows up before or after your WORRY TIME, you jot it down, put it in your pocket and get around to it later.”

A wise Klingon once said, “Worrying just wastes energy and creates its own enemy.”

I have a lot of worries these days, but I’m going to give this a shot.

Make An Appointment with Your Worries

February was rather a craptastic month for me. I felt so down, so depressed, worse than I’d ever felt in years, even though life really is pretty good.

The older I get, I’ve concluded, the more sensitive I am to seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Two weekends ago I was absolutely wretched. And despite being aware of SAD, I found myself unable to get a handle on my moods. At the beginning of last week I constantly had to battle mood swings and emotional outbursts.

By the end of the week I was feeling a little more in control. I had ordered an SAD lamp to be delivered this week and I started reading Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project (another post in itself). This week, thanks to some of Gretchen’s ideas, the improved weather and having my SAD lamp on at my desk, I feel fantastic.

My doctor scoffs at the concept of SAD, so I think I shall get a new doctor because there’s something very Occam’s Razor about SAD and I think many people are misdiagnosed with depression and prescribed medication when all they need is a little more daylight.

Here’s a few articles on SAD:

The SAD Artist
It’s Time to Be SAD

A couple of weeks ago I took my first vacation in years. I’ve taken time off before, but usually stayed at home here in Toronto or visited the folks for Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. near Ottawa.

This time I made a point of getting out of the city and going somewhere, albeit still visiting family, with a trip to my aunt and uncle’s cottage near Bancroft.

Getting out of town always provides a different perspective on my life and problems, and escaping the big city for cottage country is a great way to get perspective. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a city person, but I love the cottage life too (I just can’t stand anything in between, e.g. suburbia).

There is a lot less noise. Not just literally, but in terms of voices, distractions and demands. At the cottage, there are only two TV stations available via rabbit ears, and in the four days I was there, they were never watched. If the radio was on, it was tuned to CBC Radio. And while I got decent connectivity via my Blackberry, there was no Internet attached to a computer.

Stress and anxiety were suddenly fiction. The day-to-day challenges that worried me at home no longer seemed important and / or insurmountable. I found myself wondering how I could maintain this sense of perspective when I got back to the city and returned to my regular life of work, the TTC and the noise of people who have opinions on things they know nothing about.

As soon as I hit Toronto traffic on the return trip I could feel that sense of perspective evaporating and within 10 minutes of walking through my door I was already online on my computer getting inundated by noise. Holding on to the serenity of a cottage vacation is a job of work when it comes down to it. It doesn’t help that despite its decent square footage, my one-bedroom apartment feels claustrophobic because of where the windows are and how it’s laid out. Even though I was coming back on a Saturday afternoon and had more than half the weekend remaining, I was already wired, feeling as though I should be productive rather than relaxing (is that a Toronto thing?).

Still, I have managed to leverage my short vacation in some ways. For example, rather than surfing the television aimlessly I’ve begun listening to CBC Radio and very much enjoying programs such as As It Happens. I’m also trying to simplify my life a little by trying to focus on fewer hobbies and purging the apartment of unused items. When you go a few days without these things, it’s easier to part with them.

It takes concerted effort to keep perspective, but I hope that with some effort it will become second nature.

This past long weekend was not a great one for my diet. Now that summer is unofficially over and it’s back to business / school I am renewing my efforts to control calorie intake with vigour.

I am making two commitments this week: Eating up what’s in my freezer and cupboards and not eating anything after dinner.

The first commitment includes frozen dinners and canned soup. By doing this, food does not go to waste, even the food I would prefer to avoid (e.g. processed and packaged meals), and I save some money.  The second commitment came as a suggestion from an old friend of mine I saw on the weekend. He said he lost weight in part by just refusing to give in to the cravings for something after dinner, which he found difficult at first, but he realized there was no reason he should be hungry after a proper meal at dinner time.

This second commitment will be a challenge for me as I am night owl and the later I stay up the more likely I will want to snack. So I suppose a third commitment will be going to bed earlier. Not snacking at night will be a major achievement I think. The recent success with the CPAP should help me with proper bedtimes I hope.

I’ve grappled with anxiety and depression over the years, and with the revelation that I have a sleep disorder I realize how much my lack of sleep has influenced both my mental health as well as my physical health. In fact I’m almost certain all of these issues could have been avoided had I been diagnosed with the sleep apnea a decade ago.

In the past, insomnia and other sleep disorders have often been pegged as symptom of mental illness. Now there’s a growing body for research that suggests mild anxiety and depression are actually symptoms of poor sleep. However, the knee-jerk reaction of most GPs is to treat the symptom with medication instead of asking a patient how well they are sleeping – at least that’s been my personal experience.

Psychology Today has a round-up of articles on managing depression that make for interesting reading that can help contribute to a strategy that works for you:

Depressed? Jolt Your Brain

How Food Can Improve Your Mood: Delicious Ways to Prevent Depression

10 Little Known Facts About Depression

Eliminate Depression—Naturally!

I did my weekly weigh-in with my trainer – it had actually been two weeks since I got on a scale – and I’ve regained all of the weight I lost from that nasty chest cold.

This means I’ve only lost 7 lbs. in roughly seven months of Weight Watchers and working out intensely three days a week. To say that I’m frustrated doesn’t begin to cover it. I’ve made a lot of sacrifices financially to pay for training which I know is good for me and I’ve given up things I enjoy in the process of developing a healthier lifestyle.

I am finally booked at a sleep clinic Friday night and I hope something is wrong because right now I don’t know why I can’t lose weight and why I have no energy – my annual physical found no anomalies.

Mondays suck as it is, but I’m starting off the week in a bad place, which I hate doing. I’m thinking of cancelling Weight Watchers and just tracking what I eat for a while and upping the exercise quotient. Otherwise, I’m at a loss of what to do.

Regardless of what diet or fitness program you pursue, there’s one ingredient that’s essential to your ultimate success: Discipline.

And I suck at it.

My lack of discipline is a character flaw that has had an a profound negative impact on my weight loss efforts over the years as well as on the adoption of a more active lifestyle. I’m very good at understanding the problem and coming up with plans to solve the problem. What I struggle with is maintaining the discipline to adhere to those plans.

Although, even as I write this, I might be confusing discipline with patience. Patience is just as critical because in anything worth doing, it’s important to be patient because you will not likely see the results of your efforts right away.

Supposedly you can cultivate discipline. It takes effort. Perhaps it even takes discipline! One thing I know for sure is my lack of discipline and patience affects my efforts to reach a variety personal goals:

- I need discipline to maintain this blog regularly
- I need discipline to complete the novel I feel I have in me
- I need discipline to achieve my goals at work
- I need discipline to spend less time watching TV and reading more

Discipline on the diet front since Friday has been sorely lacking. I ended up at the pub Friday night for a few hours that included several pints of Guinness and a couple of slices of pizza on the way home. Saturday included Tim Hortons for breakfast, pub fare and a pint for lunch and pizza for dinner. Sunday was not much better and Monday afternoon found me at the pub after work – I will spare you the gory details.

The only reason I was at the gym this morning was I had an appointment – I had not made it there on my own since Friday for my last appointment.

Discipline, where art thou?

“There are a million things in this universe you can have and a million things you can’t have. It’s no fun facing that, but that’s the way things are.”

Say what you will about William Shatner’s acting style, Captain Kirk has a great point in the episode “Charlie X.” In yesterday’s rant, er post, I alluded to the sacrifices I’ve made as part of my fitness and diet regime. I’ve had to give things up and some days I resent it, but that’s life.

The fact is, if you really want to change your life, you often have to give things up. This is especially true with dieting. Plenty of diet plans advertised on TV insist you can eat anything you want and you won’t have to give up your favorite foods, but it’s a load of crap. You will not lose weight by having a pint or two at the pub after work several days a week. You won’t lose weight if you inhale a medium pizza and wings on a Friday night and wash it down with a 2L bottle of Coke. And you won’t lose weight if you eat a Tim Horton’s muffin for breakfast every morning.

Some things are just not good for you and some things can’t even be eaten in moderation. An occasional treat, yes, but pizza and chicken wings will blow your calorie count out of the water even in small portions – it’s just their nature. Guinness, while great for keeping your iron up, is unfortunately empty calories.

For many years, I enjoyed beer after work, pizza and wings on Friday nights and sitting on the couch as much as possible – when I wasn’t sitting on a bar stool. I really enjoyed the ride, but now it’s time to pay the piper. If you start making exceptions to the rules of the diet or fitness regime you’ve chosen, you’re not going to reach your goals. And if you’re not ready to make sacrifices for something you really want, you’re going to fail.

How bad do you want it?

For years friends, family and news media have told me how much better I would feel if exercised regularly and lost weight. I’m still waiting to feel better.

I’ve been working out regularly with a personal trainer for six months now and I’m still waiting for all of the energy and feeling of well being I was expecting, both from the regular workouts and the changes to my lifestyle. Today, I’m tired, grumpy and feeling as though I’ve been misled.

I went to bed before 11 p.m. last night, which, as a night owl, is something I have to work at. I didn’t have trouble falling asleep at all but when my alarm went off at 7 a.m., I felt like I hadn’t slept at all. My plan had been to go to the gym on my own for a half hour or so of cardio, but instead I set the alarm for another hour. Then I hit snooze several times until it was 5 minutes from 9. It was only then that I forced myself out of bed, showered and changed within 10 minutes and still made it to work by 9:30. Since then, I’ve accomplished little except eat lunch – a reasonably healthy lunch to boot.

Simply put, I feel like crap and not only does that make me unhappy but I’m further disheartened that between the exercise regime and the diet changes (including the sacrifice of several guilty pleasures), I don’t really feel better. I’m not full of energy. In fact, I woke up with a splitting headache I can’t get rid of.

I mentioned last week to my trainer that I was disappointed that I didn’t feel better overall. Physically, I have lost weight, toned some parts of my body (the gut is still a challenge) and developed muscle (I actually have them now!). My trainer echoed my concerns that I felt run down most of the time. He also feels I should have lost more weight than I have, especially given how hard he works me and the changes to my diet.

I have an appointment with my doctor at the end of the week, so hopefully she can help me start to uncover the cause of this malaise. In the meantime, there could be a whole host of reasons that could be causing me to feel worn out:

- Food allergy
- Sleep apnea
- Mental illness, albeit mild
- Poor digestion
- Auto immune disorder
- Nutritional deficiency
- Thyroid problems

I felt better when I was going the pub regularly and eating whatever I wanted. I know realistically that is not a healthy lifestyle, but why isn’t living healthier making me feel healthy?

If you see me in a gym, then I’m probably lost.

For years this was my favorite one-liner, usually said while seated in a pub with a pint of Guinness in front of me. Being active had simply never been a part of my lifestyle, unless you counted walking to the pub and walking home from the pub.

By sixth grade, I had given up on making any of the school sports teams or being picked to play baseball or soccer at recess. For whatever reason I’d never really got the hang of any of the traditional sports that young boys played, even though my Dad had encouraged both myself and younger brother, and we were never lacking the right equipment.

At this young age, I was already a little heavy and I’d much rather read a book than try to get involved in a group activity where I was clearly not wanted. By high school I dreaded the one semester of gym I had to endure, not only because I couldn’t hope to compete, but also because I was deeply embarrassed when I ended up on the skins team and was taunted to no end. I lost track of how many days I faked sick just to avoid gym class.

The only upside of being overweight as a teenager is the weight is much easier to lose. When I was sixteen, I was able to drop almost 30 lbs by walking after school and staying away from snacks (my mother could hear the fridge door open even when she was upstairs, I swear). The weight loss order came from the family doctor and was facilitated both by vigilant mother and the owner of the small general store where I worked after school – a heavy man who shared his healthy dinners when I arrived to start my shift.

Nearly twenty years later, losing just a couple of pounds seems like a monumental achievement, and some days, even impossible. And it took that long for me to get lost in a gym on purpose – I walked into the GoodLife Fitness across from my apartment and signed up on the spot, all the while worrying I would catch fire like a heathen in a church.

This is my big shift.