Photo Credits: L.W
I am a pretty average person. I enjoy health and wellness, but not to the point that I restrict myself with everything and am always working out. In general I maintain a healthy lifestyle, I always make healthy breakfasts, lunches, suppers; we have vegetables oh galore at our house. I had maintained my body weight and size for years living off this routine, getting 30 to 60 minutes of exercise a day, taking two days off to relax; eating right and only treating myself every once in a while, I have a lot of experience with wellness, wellness coaching and I had found the right wellness routine for myself. It was working well for me, I was happy and wholesome.
When it comes to the work life I am on a contract by contract basis right now, each year I will get a contract to work, but each year it could be in a different place. With the contract I could be working 100% of the job, or it could be a contract where I am only working 75%. It is not ideal, but it works for me, I enjoy what I do. There was one point in my career that I was questioning whether I wanted to do it anymore. What really started to bother me was the work atmosphere, the environment that I was in.
I thought maybe once things settled, it might be different. As I began to do my job, learn about how my job had to be done, I began to feel unwelcome. At this point I was starting to feel discouraged, eating lunch alone, only spoke when spoken too, that is not the type of environment you want to go to every day, five days a week. I needed to push through in order to really set my feet in my career path, and even though I was questioning, I knew that I couldn’t give up, that there was still hope. Now I know I am not alone with this type of stressful environment, this is something that happens to everyone on the regular. From a woman’s perspective I always feel like it is a competition, and that type of situation just spikes my anxiety, I am not good at handling competition, I become bitter, grumpy and it will impact my work and my life.
After the three months of pure stress, I started to notice that my clothes were fitting differently. My underwear was digging into my skin, my favourite sweater was not comfortable anymore, it didn’t look good, it was tight. I figured I might have put on a few pounds. I was still exercising every morning, four to five days a week; maybe my eating had slacked a bit, but it still was pretty good, so I figured it was just a few pounds. Out of curiosity I stepped on the scale. I stepped off in utter shock and I cried. In the span of three months I had gained 40 pounds. That’s over ten pounds a month, that is no where near healthy. I tried to think back if I had really made a huge change, to gain that much weight I had to have slipped somewhere, maybe I wasn’t working out hard enough, maybe I was eating more than I thought, but it didn’t make sense, the weight gain versus my small slip ups was too much of a difference. Even my clothes sizes, I only went up one size in my clothes, because I still remained active and had a lot of muscle mass, it made the difference, but it still was astonishing.
I made a doctor’s appointment because I was concerned. I didn’t think of what I had been going through at work right away, I thought I might had a health problem. When I talked with her she told that it is one of the worst reactions to stress and anxiety, a lot of people lose weight when they are stressed, a lot of people gain weight, I gained it. I had never had this happen to me before, I felt like I had lost control over my body. That was my body’s reaction to the stress, to not sleeping right, to always feeling anxious during the day. I mustered the energy to workout in the morning, but when I got home from work in the afternoon, I showered, put my pajamas on and curled up. My body couldn’t and still can’t handle that form of stress, but it shouldn’t have to.
I started a new program to help me with planning my meals and I changed my exercise routine up and I am working on getting the weight down. At this point though I am not getting the weight down because I want to be thin, or because society is telling me I need to be thin. I want to be the healthiest that I can be and I know that it was a lot on my body to endure gaining the 40 pounds over a 90 day period, that was my body warning me that something was wrong. I also started this blog for the wellness of my mind, to give me that me time, to have something to look forward to, be excited about, and share my now known knowledge.
My mind was unwell, it was not the healthiest it could be and it had a huge impact on my body. They need to work together, so I am hoping that my journey helps your.