Tag: restart

Little Concentrated Efforts for Positive Lifestyle Changes.

I haven’t been good for a while. Lots of work stress, eating all the crap, minimal exercise and poor mental health. Which has all resulted in a quite crap physical and mental me.

So it begins again. Yes, we’re back here.

I’m considering tomorrow “D-day”. Lets see what I can do to be better. But the thing is, I’m still exhausted, the flat is a mess and I have very little in to eat. And I cannot be bothered to go out and do a shop.

So whilst I “start” tomorrow. It’s not like suddenly everything is just going to just CHANGE tomorrow. Whilst I might be a bit motivated now – I want to be thinner, I want to feel better about myself, I want, I want, I want… I know that even within the hour that will change. And tomorrow I will likely still wake up and want chocolate, and wish I didn’t have to go to work, and I’ll still likely hit the snooze button a million times.

But I want to start to change. And that probably even starts a bit now. Right now, I am tired and grumpy, but my head is FULL of SO MANY things I need to do to “just start”. And the reality is they all won’t happen.

So what I need to do – what is my plan: Little Concentrated Efforts of Positive Lifestyle Changes. I am thinking of the future. I’m not happy now – but sitting on the sofa eating excessive amounts of junk food won’t produce a good tomorrow. And I am not going to be in able to run a marathon tomorrow, nor eat just salad all day.

So change the little things. What can I do in each moment that will be better for tomorrow. I will still have junk food today – I’m craving it, I have it in. But I’ll have less than yesterday. I will recognise and prioritise 2 things that need to be done today. Each time, each moment – what’s best for looking after me? What if you weren’t alone and were with a group, what would be happening? (I look after myself much better when in front of people – I’ll stick to schedules in respect for them, keep things tidier, eat less junk so they don’t judge me).

Like tomorrow. I will set the alarms in anticipation that I will snooze – why would I think that would change overnight? And expecting myself to just “Get up” and meet an earlier timetable – that just sets me up to fail, and produce a negative backlash on myself. Why do that to myself?

Get up as normal. But instead of listening to the craving of chocolate, just go have my breakfast. The somewhat healthier breakfast I can make with the stuff I have in – it’s better than chocolate biscuits for breakfast.

And the day shall go on. Each moment hopefully just thinking how I can avoid the lazy, stuffing my face with sugar option – and do something a little bit better. And overall I hope that will produce results.

In the future, I hope to my journal setup. I want to have planned meals and an exercise routine. I will have work revision built into my week, so it is not something continually hanging over me.

But for now: focus on making me a better version of the right now me. Make each day better. Then hope the week was better – and not the BEST. Just better. There will still be the occasional chocolate bar. And I can’t be productive 24/7 – I need to have some evenings just relaxing, that’s important too. And maybe I’ll miss a run sometimes. But that’s OK. Just, aim for it to be better.

I’m giving myself a kind of 12-week check point. The changes and results won’t be immediate and obvious. If I can keep it up, hopefully I’ll see things change a bit in 8/12 weeks. The end of the month is always a good time to stop and reflect and see how things have gone, or what can change to make things  a bit better the next month. What are typical obstacles, how can I overcome them?

I’m really hoping for some change. Nothing magical. Just a bit lighter, a bit fitter, a bit happier. And then I can start looking at the proper information behind nutrition and health, etc, that I really want to get into for this blog. But I can’t do the extra stuff, if I’m just not looking after myself. That has to come first.

The PMA Way: Positive Mental Attitude. Little Concentrated Efforts for Positive Lifestyle Changes. Each day, choosing the slightly better option when I can. Hopefully, overall, those little things will add up. Lets find out.

Wish I wasn’t doing another “starting again” title

I can’t believe it’s been 2 months. Time has flowwwwn. It’s been incredibly busy – but then again, who isn’t busy these days?

September and October, and somehow half of November.

I was busy, I was stressed, and I wasn’t looking after myself (yes, yes, despite saying I would on previous posts… this is the theme of my life). I wasn’t drinking alcohol – so my go to chill in the evening after a stressful day was eating junk food. And I ate a lot of it. It would not be unusual to have a large bag of popcorn (Sweet Butterkist is sooo good…) and a full tub of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food (my favourite). And probably more.

And then I would have guilt for that. So I would stress more. And the vicious cycle would continue.

I’ve always thought I’ve been told that it’s been shown that sugar has been proven to be addictive. I truly believe in emotional eating as an addictive behaviour. However, somebody told me recently that it’s not – there’s not any proven biochemical proof of addiction. So this will definitely be an area I am going to look into someday (one day the link will be  – here – )

I did run an 8k in the Amsterdam TCS marathon festival. Amsterdam is such a great place. Had a fantastic time. And I ran it in 49mins, which I was truly surprised at – my training was very suboptimal (if we can even call it training..). But I am overjoyed at it, and motivated to keep running and keep my fitness.  Although my friend did the half-marathon and she also was “undertrained”.. and then ran it in 1h 50… I can only dream to one day achieve that with all the preparation in the world!!

And then I got injured. The week after – survived basketball training fine. Two days later, warming up, went to do a sprint from standing and strained my calf muscle. Tried to a lay-up and it wasn’t having it. I was devastated. Such shit timing. Didn’t get to play at all, and then basically didn’t exercise for a while (which was not the right way to handle it… but see below…). So that really interfered with any training ideas I had been motivated to do.

Then, I fell off the sober wagon. I had achieved 3 months sober, I was so proud of me. But I hadn’t quite achieved any state of mental nirvana.. and with a stressful week, a sick patient experience which didn’t go very well, then a Halloween party (which I hosted) was too much to resist. To be fair, it did all start because I accidentally opened an actual alcoholic beer instead of the non-alcoholic beer of the same brand I had in the fridge. I was half way through before I realised. And then fun chaos with costumes and ripping things and mayhem… and shots were mentioned… and taken. It was a brilliant night… until I was up still up at 5am buzzing.

Thought I’d learnt my lesson (not a fun hangover), but a trip home, some family stresses, and attending a wedding with brilliant friends I only get to see when home, and the ex-partner in situ and the free wine at the reception ended up in my hands… Fast forward through many shots and excess alcohol, and yup, Pauline is still awake at 5am and more chaos ensued.

I am just tired of it. One drink opens me to a world of chaos. I need to look after me, to make sure the worlds stresses don’t lead to me giving into that one drink. And that will take a lot of work. And I really want to document that journey –  regularly, truthfully, – in this blog.

And that will involve me trying to get fitter and healthier. That is a crucial part to me feeling better about myself. Not only does exercise make me feel much better mentally and physically, I will feel an overall better of myself if I am healthier and happier.

But that will not be easy, and I am not naïve to think it will be. I need a system and a method that I can stick with to make my world better. I can’t feel overwhelmed with trying to stick to rabbit foods or truly restrictive diets. Nor will I exercise 2 hours every day. This is unrealistic and unattainable. And goddam I need chocolate in my life.

So how to do it? What is the right way to make long term realistic manageable weight loss and stay sane? Even with my medical training, I’m still not entirely sure. But I have some ideas. And I really want to get into the research and see what really is out there. And I will share that with you all, hopefully in a way we can all understand. Hopefully, that will be the PMA Way. And I’m excited to truly get it going.