#oneaday Day 825: Bull, Horns, That Sort of Thing

The Black Dog of depression has been rearing its ugly head a bit again recently for various reasons, and I’m sick of it. While there’s not necessarily much I can do about it showing up and being a pain in the arse, I can at least try and work on some things to make me feel a bit better about myself.

For starters, getting upset at one’s own reflection isn’t particularly great news, and it’s something that I can at least attempt to do something about. I have been fitness-ing off and on for some time now, but I figure it’s Time To Get Serious. That means I’m going to hit the gym every morning before I start my working day rather than leaving it until last thing in the evening when it’s easy to go “nah, fuck it”. (Of course, it’s easy to stay in bed and say “nah, fuck it” also, but I’m going to attempt to get out of this habit before it starts.) I won’t necessarily be doing everything every day, but I’m going to attempt to get at least an hour of cardio stuff in per day at the very least. This will likely mostly be done on the exercise bikes, where I can sit back and play Final Fantasy VI on my fancy-pants tablet while I’m sweating. At other times, I’ll use the crosstrainers and whack on a podcast — the Exploding Barrel Podcast from my good buddies Mike and AJ Minotti is always a favourite — or some inspirational music of some description.

As motivation and progress tracking, I’m going to be using Fitocracy, which I’ve posted about before here. I also considered resurrecting my Jedi Health Kick Tumblr from a while back, but given that Fitocracy provides the ability to post lengthy, blog-like status updates and has its own built-in community features, I’m going to stick with that. As well as tracking my workouts, I’m going to write a short post each day detailing how it went, how I’m feeling and what I’m aiming for. I’m also going to use Fitocracy’s excellent Quests feature to take on some challenges that I might not have otherwise thought of — this will help prevent complacency if I’m making a “game” out of it all.

I’d also like to eat better. I think I eat when I get depressed, and I get depressed a fair bit, which doesn’t help matters. I’d rather kick that particular habit in the face if possible — or at the very least change it so I munch on, say, carrot sticks instead of ALL THE BISCUITS, but that’s the sort of thing that will take plenty of teeth-clenching willpower to resolve. I have faith in my own ability to do this, however — if there’s one thing I’m good at it’s clenching my teeth and stubbornly resisting things. Sainsbury’s cream cakes are my most formidable adversary to date, however, so it remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to defeat them using the power of my clenched teeth (and/or buttocks) alone.

So that’s the plan. We’ll see how long I’m able to stick with it. I’m saying this publicly so I have a bit more pressure to follow through on it. If anyone would care to join me and work out alongside me or just offer some words of encouragement, come cheer me on over on Fitocracy — it’s free to sign up and there’s a nifty companion iPhone app too.