Trying to cope with it.

HardcoreP0rk wrote: »

Honestly, I think the mental health is the top priority for someone like you. I struggled with depression for years and came out of it with a combination of medication, lots of learning, and lifestyle / behavioral changes. One thing that helps me stay healthy is finding comfort in ritual and routine. You could conceivably combine your fitness goals with your mental health goals by developing routines that work for you.

Particularly if you struggle with focus and consistency, you might want to really get on this whole ritual thing. I have a minor ritual for morning and evening. Each month, I create a little grid for am and pm habits and I fill in the boxes for those habits each morning and evening. It's simple for me... little things like medications, skin care, etc... but I find it really relaxing and productive. I keep this journal by my bed, with the habit tracker and I store my to-dos in there. At work, I'll build my to-do list at the end of the work day before I leave (planning for the next day). At night before bed, I review my calendar and update this list, since things are always changing.

The ritual of planning and the routine of executing and tracking my habits is a comfort that keeps me focused. Maybe it can help you?

HardcoreP0rk wrote: »

I'm not really sure. A psychiatrist will help with medication. A therapist will provide talk therapy or other assistance. Maybe a combination of the two will help for you? I find talk therapy counterproductive for me, since it allows me to relive past trauma.

But at this point you should definitely see someone, keeping in mind that it could take several someone's before the find what works. Or it could take several false starts with your treatment team before you nail the formula.

It sounds like you're in good shape mostly but you get really derailed by a bad day or minor setbacks. Definitely mention that and they can help you work on resilience training. I can tell you that a bad day isn't the end of the world, but without someone actually working with you to help you bounce back... it's just well meaning words.

faramelee wrote: »

Would you normally be an 'all or nothing' type of diet/exerciser? If this is the case it will seem daunting looking forward. Incorporate small changes bit by bit and they will, over time, become habit. You said in your previous post that 'as soon as you have a couple of bad days you just lose hope'. I think everyone on MFP has their own ways and will think differently from each other but I've learnt to try to avoid assigning good/bad thinking around food. If you do have a day whereby you haven't done any activity and are over your calories it's OK, you're human, please don't see it as a failure and quit, get back up, brush yourself off and tomorrow is a new day. You'll find that you'll put yourself under less pressure this way.

I really hope that you can find some equilibrium both mentally and physically. Depression is an absolute b*tch. Best of luck to you.

boothekm1 wrote: »

A combination of walking, meds, and HIIT training has helped with my depression (abusive relationship and my daddy passed). Also, get some sunshine, sunshine, sunshine!! We are here for you!

Spliner1969 wrote: »

night_watcher wrote: »

@Spliner1969 hey thanks alot for your reply, can you please guide how did you set your calorie goal? Did you go with custom one of MFP or some other method?

Originally I set my goal with MFP's wizard. I stayed with it for probably the first three or four months of my journey. But I found it to be too restrictive, and way too low on protein macros. Someone suggested IIFYM.com so I used their site to re-adjust. I paid for a year of MFP so I could set my macros by the gram (it made things easier, but you can still do this with the free edition you just have to use percentages), and used their calculator to figure my daily calories and set my macros. Catch is, I did not enter exercise on their calculators at all. The entire first year I set myself ad sedentary without calculating exercise levels into the iifym calculator. I set my protein at 1g/lb of my target body weight (which meant I left it set at default on theirs at .8g/lb because I was overweight then). Since my target weight was 190, I made sure my protein macro was set at 190g/day. Unless you have kidney disease of some sort never be afraid of too much protein. It'll help you lean out faster and retain (and even build) muscle in my humble opinion.

So basically I went to iifym.com, used their iifym calculator, entered my age, height, current weight, set myself at sedentary, left the exercise level at 0 times per week, 0 minutes per day, and set myself at a -20% loss rate. Then I'd calculate my macros. IIFYM gave me 1800ish calories a day, where MFP was giving me 1600. So at -20% with IIFYM it was probably setting me around 1.5lb/wk loss. That was fine with me and at my size/height the extra 200 calories a day was very welcome.

Then I purchased a HRM to pair to my phone and purchased Endomondo tracking app. I would wear the HRM, start up Endomondo, set it to walking, and walk every day up to 4 miles as fast as I could manage. I suggest 5-6 days a week of that, no more. I did 7 days a week at first and managed to hurt myself doing it, but I'm 47 and have previous injuries so you'll have to make that decision. I also cannot lift because of previous injuries to my back and knees so walking was best for me. Endomondo with the HRM would estimate somewhere around a 1000 calorie burn most days, sometimes 800 sometimes 1100. Because of what I'd heard on the boards I only trusted 50% of those calories. So I would allow Endomondo to add calories into MFP every time I walked, and then I would purposely finish the day with half of those exercise calories to spare. So if it was 1000 calories of exercise I'd finish the day with 500 left. I probably averaged close to 2lb/wk loss for that entire year, like I said, it ended up being 110 lbs total loss in that year and I got to eat up to 2300ish calories a day.

People will argue that you can't trust an HRM. I certainly don't trust trackers like Fitbit/etc. I figured IIFYM was calculating my daily calories just fine so I only used the HRM strap and my app when I was walking for exercise. I allowed MFP to add in calories for steps, but it seems to do a good job of not adding steps on days I enter a ton of exercise from walking (it did a good job of not double dipping the calories). So it worked for me.

I did purchase a Bowflex M5 for Winter use. It's a combination of a stair stepper and an elliptical. In the Winter in Missouri it gets cold/wet/nasty and I hate cold/wet/nasty so you won't see me out walking in it. Instead in the Winter I use my machine for 30 minutes, then transition for another 60 minutes into body weight circuit training. I do a routine that I made myself which takes into account my injuries. Works great for me. In the warmer weather I go back to walking (and can even jog now) and I mix in the circuit training while I'm walking (I'll stop and do push ups or pull ups on equipment in the park then continue on my walk).

All of this was very successful for me, but I contribute it to IIFYM and exercise equally. Had I not had those extra 500 calories a day of exercise calories to eat I'd have been miserable and might have failed.

Now that I'm in maintenance I did not stop my exercise routine. I still go for 90 minutes a day 5 days a week, I simply eat at or slightly above maintenance (I'm in a very slight bulk phase right now) and do the same amount of work. In the spring I'll probably cut down a couple hundred calories a day to do a slight cut for a while until I hit 10% body fat or so, then bump back up to maintenance until winter again and repeat. My ultimate goal is to look in the mirror the day I turn 50 and see someone who's in the best shape of their life.