#oneaday Day 1081: Other things

Right, I said yesterday there were other things I was going to be making an effort with from the beginning of the new week, so I guess I have to talk about those now. Or at least one of them.

One of the things I've already mentioned to a certain degree when talking about "scheduling" is trying to get myself feeling a bit healthier again. This will come about as a combination of following the Weight Watchers diet Andie and I started a while back, and getting back into doing some exercise. I've struggled with both for the last little while, so I need a hard reset on both.

The exercise thing has been troublesome and perhaps slightly worrying. Since I sprained my ankle a few months back, I feel like I haven't quite "recovered". I don't mean that my ankle still hurts — though it did the other day — but rather I feel like my entire body is aching a lot more than it used to. I suspect this is probably the result of inactivity on top of an already sedentary lifestyle, but it's been causing me a not insignificant amount of physical pain of late.

I'm hoping that actually getting those muscles moving again will help to alleviate this by simply "loosening" everything up, but I don't know if it quite works like that. At the very least, I'm going to give it a go, though. And I think what I might probably do is rather than trying to cram everything into a single session, I'm going to take one session to do some more "cardio" stuff (though probably taking it relatively easy to begin with) and the next to do strength training. It's easy to feel like you have to do as much as possible while you're at the gym, but really there's no need; I can go as many times as I want or need in the week.

The food thing is… a challenge. I like food, and food brings me comfort. I often need comfort, because I have numerous mental health struggles. Unfortunately, overconsumption of food makes me unhealthily overweight, and that causes me anxiety and depression, so I… you get the picture.

The thing I liked about Weight Watchers when we started doing it before Christmas was that it didn't feel overly restrictive. Since I'm in a position where I need a reasonable amount of energy just to exist per day, I have a lot of flexibility in what I can eat per day and still be able to lose weight. That will drop off over time — and I suspect that's where things will become challenging — but to begin with at least, I have the option to eat actually quite a bit each day, so long as it's the "right" stuff.

It's the getting it right bit that is challenging — but now that the Christmas and new year period is over and I'm pretty sure we've eliminated all the "treats" from the house, it will be easier to get back on track. And once I start seeing some results, that will motivate me again.

So that's that. From tomorrow, I'm going to attempt to get up early and get some gym time in in the morning. I'm not going to overdo it, but I am going to attempt to establish some habits. And on top of that, I'll be tracking my food and drink intake very carefully, unlike what I've been doing lately.

It's going to be hard to get back on track, but I've done it before, I can do it again. Good luck to anyone else who is trying to do something similar.