It would be nice if life had checkpoints

[ThisRoughBeast]

Instead we have to respawn right at the beginning. Or, in my case, further back than I was before. Losechester. I gained 20lbs instead of losing any, didn't get any healthier, and probably dug myself deeper. So, here I am again. Trying to fix whatever in me it is that's so broken.

 

I've been making some lifestyle changes which so far involve

 

a. buying a blender and drinking a lot more smoothies.

b. cutting way back on eating bread - one or two pieces a week now as opposed to every day.

c. drinking way less than I was. I was spending Thurs-Sun drinking beer and now...I'm not.

d. Pilates several times a week. I started with one day a week, then two, then three - this week I'm doing four.

 

I genuinely like Pilates, and it's helping my back. My back is a total disaster area. Since I have zero fitness or strength that's not helping, and having muscle knots that push into my arteries and make bloodflow a sometimes thing, it's actually been pretty good for me. I'm enjoying it, which I was not expecting.

 

Doing those four things helped me lose 10 of those 20lbs in a week, but then it just...stopped again. So I'm stalled out worse off than I was before and I'm putting off weighing myself again as long as humanly possible because I'm only going to get angry and discouraged.

 

I tried doing the zombies, run! app and that...didn't go so well. I get asthma when I run and for some reason i thought going for a run in the cold would be a smart thing to do. I wheezed for two hours afterwards and I'm pretty sure that anything that causes wheezing like that is, in the long run (and in the short run) not very good for me. I'll have to find some other way to get my cardio in because I'm not playing the "can you breathe now" game.

 

I also stopped taking my anti-depressants, which is probably a bonehead move but I'm full of those. I'm now less apathetic, but I'm also more likely to spend an afternoon lying in bed crying, or having little fits of self-directed rage the likes I haven't seen since highschool. I guess you win some and you lose some. Eventually I'll go talk to my doctor, but frankly, I think she's kind of stupid and I'm not fond of her.

 

I don't know. I'm so sick of myself. I've hated my body all my life. It's never done what I want it to, it's broken in half a dozen ways, and I deeply resent not being able to trade out. Thinking about it like a substandard vehicle instead of part of me isn't helpful, I know, but I've never been connected to it, or fond of it.

 

Not sure what I should be focusing on since I don't have any goals. I just want things to be better and that sort of half-assed goal-making never got anyone anywhere.

[Salivanth]

Remember, you don't only make progress in a video game by reaching the next checkpoint. In hard games,  progress is made by dying to whatever obstacles lie between checkpoints, and learning how to get around them. And fitness is a pretty hard game. So you died to an enemy. Well, now you've learnt something you can use to get further next time. 

To continue the video game analogy, it looks like you've selected Hard difficulty, or skipped to a harder area, and you're just not ready for that yet. Instead of changing four things, why not just change one or two things? You like Pilates, so that should be the easiest one to continue. Focus on that and JUST that for a while, and then try adding something else in. Doing the pilates will also help motivate you, because you'll be doing SOMETHING. 

Unless you're over 70, you've probably got 20+ years left to turn into the awesome version of you that lives inside your head. Fitness isn't a sprint, it's a marathon, and you'd be surprised how quickly one tiny, seemingly insignificant change becomes two, then three, then four, then all of a sudden you wake up a year later, and you're an entirely different person, and you barely even realised it was happening. You've probably heard it before, but that's because it's true.

 

[orcwarrior]

Hey, what Savilanth said!  And he said it well.

 

You talk about your lifestyle changes as things you've already done - if so, you're doing great so far.  Small change, maintain....small change, maintain.... over and over.  That leads to success.  Good luck!