ratmagic

So I had the bright idea, rather on a whim, of doing National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Which nearly torpedoed my exercise plan since it's quite mentally draining, but I managed a workout today rather than yesterday so I'm not sunk yet. Keeping up with my daily wordcount so far too, which is pretty cool. Haven't got as far as daily cardio yet. Small steps - using my bicycle to get into town when I need to, things like that, will all help in the long run; it has to be a habit, a lifestyle, not something I'm just doing for a month for some specific reason. I'm consciously trying to avoid overfacing myself too; I often tend to do that, not just in terms of physical exercise, and it invariably causes me to crash and burn. The pullup bar and band arrived. I'm on bodyweight level 3 at the moment which includes assisted pullups in one of the variants, and they're hard on my dodgy shoulder (I have a long-standing rotator cuff problem that started its life as RSI back when I worked in IT). It's a piece of luck that my long-awaited physiotherapy appointment finally came through last week. I came away with a therapy band (another resistance band basically) and a program of exercises to do with it which should hopefully help to beef my shoulder up a bit and make me more even between my two sides. My mental health at the moment is awful. Starting NaNo has reminded me (a) that writing is a career I'd love to do full time, but therefore (b) of the horrible reality of the benefits trap, which offers no stepping-stone for people who can do some work but not full time work (or who don't yet make enough money off their writing to actually live on, which is most authors), and just how much of a mess I'm in with ever hoping to get back into any sort of full time work after so long not working due to illness. I think a lot of the time I live in a nice little bubble of sci-fi TV where all the problems get solved and fascinating new worlds get to be explored and things, and lovely LGBT-positive fan fiction where the gay guys always find love, and doing that really seems to help insulate me from the worse aspects of my own life. I do have a proper psychiatrist, who I'm seeing later this week, so I'm not without support, but she hasn't had any luck getting me access to counselling yet so for now all we've got is the sticking-plaster medication. So that's happening. I am, thank heavens, slowly losing weight. Down 6lbs so far, which is an entirely healthy rate of weight loss. My sleep cycle has stayed surprisingly close to normal daylight hours as well. I seem to have learnt some helpful habits from my brief experience of being on mirtazapine, and the antidepressant I'm taking actually keeps me awake during the day as well so I can't wreck myself with naps like I usually do.

@Guzzi your rats are gorgeous! I miss having fuzzbabies <3 stupid animal-hating landlady. @Socksy - I agree 100% that keeping your mind active is a good thing. Something I hear about from time to time is "control and mastery" - having something in your life that you really feel like you're good at and in charge of, is supposed to be a huge booster for mental wellbeing, and it's not necessarily anything physical either. It's fiction writing that does that for me. But I know I've seen other NFers talking about how they got a sense of that from changing the relationship they have with their body, too. Hoping I might achieve a little of the same with time. As far as games go I don't know if anyone else is into puzzle or adventure type gaming? I'm a lifelong fan of them, everything from old-fashioned text adventures to the more puzzle-oriented of the hidden object type games. Forcing yourself to think through the puzzles rather than rely on hints is a great challenge.

Checking in Gay, transgender and demisexual too (I get all the luck).

Splendid, how many gold to join the Guild please? I'm a would-be speculative fiction writer, currently re-learning my writing process after some huge life changes altered the way I approach creativity completely. Practising on long-form fan fiction while I get the hang of the "sit down and write" method, then planning to level up to working on a real, publishable novel. Incidentally if anyone is interested in beta-reading either BBC Musketeers or Captain America fanfic, please PM me!

Thankyou for the mental image of Sam doing yoga

For my money the problem with this idea is that what counts as "well" in mental health terms is so wildly variable from person to person. For example, for Guzzi above being "well" means taking painkillers as a fact of life, whereas someone who has a painkiller addiction might well think of being "well" as not taking any! Plus there's the fact that a lot of mental health disorders are with you for life and it's a question of managing them, rather than curing them, so thinking about being "well" isn't necessarily productive as a mindset. I don't tend to use websites and so on as I find they're below the level I've already had to get to just to keep going from day to day (I have recurrent depression, anxiety and some other attendant things). It's one of those hard to define personal wisdom things, for my money; there are almost certainly markers most of us can track for our own personal wellbeing but what they'll be we have to find out for ourselves. Everyone's mind is different. Also, I don't know about anyone else but I have to be *very* careful of the "dieter mentality" - it's very easy to slip into thinking you've done something wrong or you're somehow inadequate if your mental health isn't great today/this week/this year/this lifetime. So a lot of the way I structure my approach to improving my mental health is specifically designed to exclude any kind of competitive spirit; I have an illness that needs taking care of, not a failing that needs to be erased from my personality. (Learning that particular bit of wisdom was slow work, I can tell you).

Yesterday's meeting with the psychiatrist resulted in me being put back on SSRIs, plus a sleep aid on top to combat my chronic insomnia and tendency to wander away from daylight hours. SSRIs don't really do enough in my case, but all of the more effective antidepressants I could take are sedative types, which are known for putting weight on you. I'm already as far overweight as I can get without (a) losing my marbles over how awful I look and (b) getting physically ill because of it, so it's a holding pattern until I can shift some of the flab. Thankfully, since I came off the previous medication I was on the insane sugar cravings have vanished and it's much easier to eat normally now - I'm dropping weight without really trying at the moment. Getting moving a bit more should hopefully extend the period in which I can lose weight without having to think too hard about my diet - I also suffer from IBS and have to eat low fibre, so the usual "more veg!" healthy eating mantra is something I have to approach with a great deal of caution. Today's inspiration to exercise was a community circus show my housemate was performing in. I sat in the audience realising that I'd never be able to try all those cool things the people on stage were doing if all I ever manage is a few pushups once a week - so I went home and did Bodyweight 3C at 9pm on a Saturday night. Which leads me to my second point for today: Advantages of home workouts No restriction on time of day or day of week. If I want to work out at 9pm on Saturday night, I can. No travel time, traffic etcetera. A workout takes as long as the actual exercise takes. I can't get there and realise I've forgotten my clean pants/shower gel/towel/workout clothes. Nobody cares if my Winter Soldier workout top is a bit tight as yet and rides up exposing my impressive love handles Likewise, nobody laughs at the overweight hobbit in the extremely optimistic Winter Soldier workout top. I can fall out of the post-workout shower straight into my pyjamas, and thus don't end up going through two pairs of pants (underpants, for Americans) in one day. Since I only own a fortnight's worth of underwear this is a bigger issue than you might think for me. I can use all sorts of bizarre dance moves as my warmup without getting put up on Youtube. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is way better as warmup music than f***ing Beyonce. Ideas I want to try: Dance practise as my recommended daily cardio. Twenty minutes a day will make me a lot better at the footwork! Investments I have made in my future: Dug into my savings to buy a pullup bar and a medium-strength resistance band so that I can vary my workouts and keep things fun.

A long while ago I had a thread on this forum which looks to have gone the way of the dodo. I didn't use it as a daily log but as an occasional journal in which to navelgaze about assorted things that have to do with my self-awareness and self-improvement journey. I have to balance a lot of different factors like allergies, IBS and mental health problems against my desire to get fitter and lose weight, so over time it's become more a kind of whole-life renovation project that means learning who I am and how I work, and then using that knowledge to improve how things are for me day to day. Things I'm exploring at the moment: The role of exercise in my personal mental health What makes me happy Mindfulness meditation Swing dance

Wow, this place has changed a bit. Hi everyone, I was active for a while on NF in about 2012, but took a long, partly enforced break with mental health and general life stuff. While I wouldn't say I'm back and champing at the bit to become a bodybuilder, since that's kind of not how I work, I'm definitely taking an interest in the fitness aspect of self-care again and I'm back to see what I can learn about myself this time. Looking forward to sharing the journey