Sleepless in New Orleans

Everyone is individual so people have different needs. Some people need more attention than others, some need more carbs, I need more sleep than most people. I’ve known this for years – in high school, I considered myself a marathon sleeper and easily slept until 1 or 2pm on the weekends.

As I got older, things didn’t really change much. I still needed a lot of sleep, I just had more to do and less time to get it done so I ended up sleep deprived a lot of the time. Work, school, work, stress… All of it added up to little sleep and, eventually, BIG binges. When I was in college pulling all-nighters to write research papers, I was also eating TONS of calories and not the good kind either! Large pizzas, Cokes, ice cream, cookies, mostly junky carbs. I was not sleeping and I was not nourishing my body either. Bad combination.

Anyway, what I’m getting at with all of this is that if I had my way, I’d get about 9 hours of sleep a night because between 8 and 9 is where I feel my best. Because of the way my life is, I get closer to 7 hours of sleep a night which is definitely doable and I can make it work. However, there are some nights where things just don’t go your way and Monday night was like that for me.

I went to bed around 12:30 which is late for me (I usually try to get in bed by 11 or 11:30). I went to sleep fairly quickly, however, around 4am I woke up because I had to go to the bathroom. Afterward, I got back in bed and tried to go back to sleep but I just couldn’t do it. After almost an hour of tossing and turning, I just got up and started working on some things I needed to take care of. This sounds like a bad idea but usually it works for me. On days when I can’t seem to fall back asleep, if I get up and do something for 30-45 minutes, I get sleepy again and I can go back to sleep. Unfortunately, I never got to that “sleepy” point.

Around 8, I started getting ready for work, aware that I was going to be very drained by the time I reached the end of my 6pm appointment. I ate breakfast as normal – 2 Paleo egg muffins and some coffee, and then headed out to work. And that was the end of my Paleo compliant day.

I’m not going to get into all the gory details but all told yesterday I ate in excess of 2600 calories. That’s about 1000 calories more than my daily goal. And it included grains, candy, soda, etc. etc. It was NOT good.

When I realized how out of control it was, I was very upset and ashamed. I didn’t want to log my calories on My Fitness Pal because I didn’t want my friends to know what I’d done. But hiding it wasn’t going to make it go away. After some consideration, I decided just to go for it and put everything out there. My friends were wonderfully supportive and all gave me plenty of encouragement to get back on track with things. I just had to get over the mental hump and stop beating myself up about it.

I also need to do something about my sleep hygiene.

Sleep hygiene is basically all the things we do to control our sleeping environments and what has to do with our sleep. As a counselor, I talk a lot with parents about sleep hygiene with their kids, particularly how important it is to get into a good routine with them around bedtime so they start winding down and getting used to bedtime.

You would think I would have thought to do the same for myself but no, not really.

My sleep hygiene is poor. I don’t do a good job of controlling my sleeping environment and I also don’t do a very good job of making sure that I am ready for sleep in the evening. I am notorious for being up late on the computer or watching TV with my husband. Some of this is difficult to give up because I value the time I spend with my husband and because of our different work schedules, it is hard to find time together that is not late in the evenings. I use f.lux – a software that makes your computer display adjust to the time of day (makes it warm light instead of bright) so that it’s not as disruptive. However, I still use my computer and sometimes my phone late in the evening – sometimes right up until bedtime.

As far as sleeping environment, our bedroom has a window and light (from our neighbors spot lights) gets in so it’s not pitch black. My phone is also always on the nightstand (it’s my alarm) and my husband has a clock. Add that to the fact that the bedroom door stays open and the kitchen light shines in and you have far from a pitch black bedroom. The bedroom door stays open for 2 main reasons – my husband and I rarely go to bed at the same time (me around 11pm, him around 4am) and we have three cats that will throw hissy fits if they cannot get into the room (and yes, they can be disruptive too – that’s a whole different story!).

Ideally, I would be sleeping in almost pure darkness. One of the ways I hope to solve this is to get some blackout curtains for our window. I also want to cover all LEDs and my phone so there are no other lights on. I also am thinking it’s time to implement a “technology curfew” so I have time to wind down from using electronics before I go to sleep. As for the bedroom door and the cats, I think I will try shutting the bedroom door. My husband can always open it and the cats will, hopefully, get over it. I’m also planning to turn our thermostat down at night so I will be cooler.

I am hoping that with all of these changes, I will be able to increase the quality of my sleep. Obviously the curtains won’t happen overnight but I do have a sleep mask that I intend to use in the meantime.

Until next time, keep up the good work!

Mental Health

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here. It was never my intention to start this blog and then abandon it. However, it seems lately little has been going according to plan and that’s a big part of why I never post any more.

In my bio/info posts, I’ve talked a bit about my struggles with mental health but I’ve never gone into a lot of detail. With everything that’s going on, I feel like I should do that now.

I have been officially diagnosed (meaning a mental health professional diagnosed me) with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and post traumatic stress disorder. I have also self-diagnosed myself with mild social anxiety as well as a specific phobia (emetophobia). Please note: I do not recommend self-diagnosis… If you feel like you have a mental health problem, go to a mental health professional to get proper care and treatment. Diagnoses only put a name on the problem, they don’t offer any kind of treatment and if you have no experience, you may end up diagnosing yourself with all kinds of things that you don’t really have.

Now that I have that out of the way, let me talk more about each of my mental health issues in more detail. (I’ll try to keep it from getting to clinical in here…)

Major depression was the first to emerge and, after reviewing my history with my psychiatrist, my first depressive episode probably occurred around age 13. I was severely depressed around that time largely because of environmental factors that had to do with middle school, etc. but still. I have experienced at least 3, possibly 4 major depressive episodes in my life and as a result, I’ve been on anti-depressants for many years. It is likely that I will experience many other depressive episodes in my life.

Generalized anxiety disorder wasn’t diagnosed until I was 23, maybe 24. Basically all generalized anxiety means is that I have a lot of anxiety about many, many things – too many to make it more specific. Technically, this means my social phobia kinda fits into this box but I distinguish it because it “feels different” (for lack of a better term). Anyway, GAD is a pain because I spend a lot of time and energy worrying about things. Some of them are big things, others are little stupid things. It’s aggravating. I take an anti-anxiety medication to help deal with this.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (aka PTSD) wasn’t diagnosed until the same time as my GAD, however I have had it since I was about 14 years old. My PTSD arose as a complication of rape. Yes, I am a rape survivor and no, I am not shy about it. I used to feel shame and I did not talk about my experience, however over the years I’ve come to understand that what happened to me was not my fault and that there is no shame in overcoming such a circumstance. My PTSD is mild now, after years of therapy.

My specific phobia is emetophobia which is the fear of vomit and/or vomiting. As I said, I self-diagnosed myself with this but anyone who knows me knows that it is true. Since I was a child I can remember being terrified of throwing up. Most people don’t like vomiting, it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t taste good, but they get it over with and move on. I can’t do that. If there is a stomach virus going around, I’m on constant vigil, making sure not to come into contact with anyone who has it, washing my hands, spraying things down with Lysol… I’m very careful about exposure to food that might be contaminated. And this makes me just about the worst wife/friend when someone is sick to their stomach because I can’t stand to be around them. I’m actually terrified of becoming pregnant because of the possibility of morning sickness. It’s really frustrating to deal with this all the time but most of the people I’ve approached about it agree that exposure therapy is the best way to deal with a phobia and for emetophobes that means giving them ipecac. Uh, no thanks – I’ll just try to deal on my own, thanks.

… That was a lot longer than I meant it to be but anyway, that is a picture of my mental health problems. On good days, I don’t have to deal with much, if any, problems. I have plenty of healthy coping mechanisms that I use to get through the normal times. When the stress ramps up, however, I have to go into a different mode to make sure that I’m really taking care of myself so I don’t start spiraling downward. Unfortunately, at times when things start piling up on top of one another, it almost seems unavoidable for me to fall into some kind of darkness.

I may or may not have mentioned here that my grandmother passed away on July 12th, two days before my 30th birthday. My father-in-law passed away about 6 weeks later and these two deaths have had a huge impact on me. I’ve struggled to grieve and get back on with my life and that, combined with a number of other stressors (Hurricane Isaac, work stress, financial issues, etc.) has brought me to a dark place.

I don’t think I’m fully depressed as I’m able to handle things for the most part, I’m just having trouble functioning to 100%. My diet has fallen by the wayside and I’m very fatigued and tired. When I’m not working, I spend a lot of my time at home either watching TV or sleeping. I haven’t been exercising and health-wise, I’m not taking good care of myself. We took a vacation at the end of October and I had hoped that would help rejuvenate me but as soon as I got back, things went back into the slump.

For now, I’m doing little things for self-care but my plan for January is to do another Whole30 and get my diet cleaned up, then start in on an exercise plan again. I always do better mentally when I’m doing well physically so I think it will really help. It’s just a matter of getting over the hump.

I think that’s all I have to say for now… I seem to run out of steam quickly these days and this post was no exception. Hopefully it will not be long before my next post. At the very least, I plan to document my Whole30 here so I will see you for sure on January 1st!

Why Am I Eating Toast?

I feel absolutely lost lately. Since the storm, I’ve been nothing but AWFUL when it comes to diet and exercise. A big part of my problem is that I’m still sick and cannot seem to get over this awful sinus infection. I’m on cipro now to try and knock it out but as much as I seem to get better, I’m still not well.

Take today for example – I got up, went to supervision, then went bra shopping (ugh, I don’t even want to talk about it), then came home and took a 3 hour nap. When I woke up, my husband had to go to work so I gave him a ride (parking costs in NOLA are ridiculous), then stopped to eat pizza on the way home, and promptly took a 4 hour nap. Not to mention I could go back to sleep right this second and be perfectly happy about it.

Yeah, sleeping that much is not a sign of a happy body. ::sigh::

Then I got up and was hungry so I made breakfast for dinner which was fine…. Until I ended up with a piece of toast covered in red plum jam. It’s so mindless and aggravating! How did I go from such success and compliance with Whole30 to the complete opposite? It’s shameful!

As a result of all this bad behavior, I’ve decided that I have to go back on Whole30 protocol at least until we go on the trip. And even then I plan to stay 90/10 because it’s just not worth it to be sick all the time. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that I will start feeling better soon because this sinus infection is definitely not helping. Oh to be well again!

That’s all for now… Hopefully my next post will be a bit more upbeat and helpful. Time to get back on track!

Next time on “Here We Go, Paleo!” – Mental Health

Getting Back on Track

This will be brief, largely because I just took some medicine and I hope to be back to sleep ASAP.

I mentioned in my last post that I was planning on doing some nutritional off-roading… Well, I went a little beyond that and went completely off the rails. I figured a day or two before getting back on track wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

I was wrong.

Here I am on the computer instead of asleep in bed with my husband. I went to bed at 2 last night (not unusual on weekends – my husband works late and I am his ride most nights) but I didn’t go to sleep until almost 4. Then I woke up at 6:45 feeling like I’d been hit by a train.

I had. The Paleo Train jumped the track and ran my ass over for not staying on board. And, I’ll admit, I deserved it especially after last night.

Because I went to McDonalds.

Yep, I went to the grocery store last night which was packed and had NOTHING I needed and then somehow I decided to go to McDonalds after. The silver lining in this story is that I drank about 3 sips of Coke and almost puked so I poured it out and I ate about 5 fries and couldn’t eat any more because they tasted so greasy and disgusting. However, I did manage to wolf down a double Quarter Pounder with cheese along with 2 bites of a s’mores pie and a whole apple pie.

Forgive me Paleo gods, for I have sinned. I have ingested gluten and sugar and… ingredients I cannot pronounce… And for that I endure the wrath thou has put upon me.

I couldn’t get to sleep last night, I couldn’t stay asleep, and now I can’t get BACK to sleep even though I’m totally exhausted. My stomach hurts, I feel vaguely sick, I have a minor headache, and my TMJ is acting up like whoa.

In a way, I’m glad this happened – it validates all that I’ve done and learned during the Whole30. I’m also pissed at myself because I hate feeling this way but whatever – live and learn.

The plan for the rest of the day is to go back to sleep for a few hours, then to eat a healthy Paleo breakfast of eggs, bacon, and avocado (along with my usual coffee and coconut milk!) and then to go back to the store to get the few things I need to make dinner for the next few days. My husband is supposed to be off today and tomorrow so maybe I can con him into going with me, haha. We shall see…

Next time on “Here We Go, Paleo!”- Weekly Plan for 9/3/12 – 9/9/12