Getting Back to Reality: Severe Depression

Some of you will have noticed, that I have been a bit absent from writing my blog. In fact I haven't written on here since July 2015. This is for a mixture of different reasons, however the main one is that in 2015 I suffered with Severe Depression. I didn't realise that it had taken hold of me, until I was too late, but I would say I was suffering since March 2015 at the earliest.


Many people have asked me the reasons for my depression, but this time there was no ONE trigger. It was a mixture of different factors:


- Stress at work
- Stress outside work
- Working two jobs
- Fitness targets not going to plan, because of above stress
- Etc
- Etc


During my depression, I did do a bit of writing, just brief bits, but I want to be clear and honest about how I felt and this is the best way to do it:


'Life is meant to come easy! Life is meant to be yours, I don't feel in control'


'Binging on food and wine is what I do, making excuses for myself, telling myself 'It's Normal', everyone enjoys a glass or two at night......every night....??? To relax.....??? To stop you thinking.....??? To stop you hating yourself.....???'


'My heart is beating so fast, as I speed toward London Liverpool Street, it almost feels like my heart is going to jump out of my chest. I feel sick, headachy and as if at any minute I could cry.


2 months off work, with Severe Depression. Little to no sleep. Anxiety levels through the roof. It is no wonder I'm feeling like the above. It's not the unprofessional perception I want to portray, but it is how I feel.


I feel like a tiny little animal, scared, frightened and not sure what to do. I want to run back home and dive under the covers in bed, stay there for the next month.


Now I'm shaking, I can barely write this. This doesn't feel like me, I'm confident, strong and happy.... I feel like they have abandoned me. I'm on my own and lonely without them.


People with depression often feel alone and lonely. They can feel like this with close family and friends all around them and supporting them. It isn't an alone/lonely lack of human companionship for me. For me it is my strength, confidence and happiness that are gone... And I can't find it - I don't know how to find it.'


'The over eating has got to stop. Now and since it started there hasn't been an excuse. I've been depressed and I have been sabotaging a lot of my hard work to lose 5 stone! It breaks my heart, that all that determination and strength I worked so hard to obtain and sustain has fallen by the wayside to this disease!'


This was where my brain was, now I'm in a much better place. I took the time off work needed to recover and get myself in a better place. I took the medication that the doctors told me to take. I went to counselling sessions and did everything they told me to do.


Now I'm positive, I've drawn a line under last year and started a fresh this year.


I am DETERMINED
I am STRONG
I do DESERVE THIS


More blogs to come, got lots to write about :)


Thank for reading
Holly

Happy New Year

I feel it is a little cliche to say this, but at this time of year, I do tend to reflect on the year I have had and what I want for myself in 2015. 2014 was suffice to say 'epic' for me. In more ways than one, I have completely changed the way I look, the way I act, my confidence levels, my work ethic and my general attitude towards work and who I am. I'll split out the different aspects so I can pin point exactly what I mean.

Work:

So this year I managed to readjust my work/life balance, this term is banded about all the time, but I really mean it. I used to put my job/career at the top of my priority list, it went something like this;

Work -> Family -> Friends -> Me

This is not a healthy balance in any way, shape or form. I used to think that this was the only way that I was able to make enough money, and support my family and friends. I didn't realise at the time, that actually I was making myself ill. By putting myself at the bottom of the list, means I didn't actually do anything for me, ever (especially look after myself). I thought I was (looking after myself) because work, family and friends were my life, so putting them before me made sense. Even when that made my extremely ill, working myself into the ground at points - not being able to get out of bed from exhaustion is awful...

Now I know that making myself healthier, means I'm less ill all the time, meaning I have more time to spend with family and friends. Being healthier, means that I am more focused at work, I'm more productive and make better business decisions.

In the past the above diagram has meant that I became increasingly ill with depression, I have mentioned this before in my blog - but it is the truth and often people don't like talking about depression. I have felt low throughout this year, but focusing on my health and fitness, has realigned what I think is important and what I really should let go and forget about.

Over the year, I have very slowly taken my life back, I didn't do it all in one go, that would be impossible and a very daunting task. Gradually I started to say 'no' to working on my days off, or adjusting my work flexibly, so that if I worked at the weekend and were quiet during the week, I would take some of my time back. Having an understanding manager is crucial for this and a career that means you can do this also. I'm not saying that others can't do this, there are other ways of getting that balance - we all have 24 hours in a day, what we choose to do with that time is up to us. We all have families, distractions and things that we put in front of looking after ourselves, but these are things that can be realigned, thought of in a different way or time looked at differently.

Work is still very important to me, in the end it does sometimes I have to come first - above everything else, but 80% of the time it comes alongside my other important things in my life and occasionally doesn't even register as important. These days this is more the way it looks for me;

Me -> Family -> Friends -> Work

The Way I Look

For anyone who has seen me over the last year, the first thing that they would say about me, is the incredible transformation, that I have made in the way I look. I have lost 77lbs (around 5 stone) of body fat, put on 8lbs of muscle - I can also squat, deadlift and chest press over 135kg more (collectively) that when I first started.

I can safely say, that I never (EVER) thought that I would be able to achieve this and thank god that someone did believe in me - Tom (my PT) has a lot to answer for in terms of my weight lose and transformation. I have learnt so much in the past year about health, nutrition and training. I would have never pictured myself as a gym person, but here I am and I love it!!

Looking at the above picture creates three reactions from me, 1) OMG was I ever that big, I never felt that big 2) Wow look at me now, incredible what I have achieved 3) Crikey I have a way to go to get to my goal (spurring me on and keeping me focused.

Weight training and careful eating is how I got here, taking it slow and not trying to do everything at the same time. Sometimes I concentrated more on getting my diet right, other times on my training at the gym. Now, I'm lucky in that I can focus on both at the same time, but this took time and effort to realign the way I think about food and going to the gym.

This year, has been a year of discovering more about than myself, than in the past 30 years - I think turning 30 in itself makes you reflect on who you are and who you want to be...! I turned 30 a few weeks ago and I can honestly say, I have never felt as good as I do now. I'm usually full of energy, I don't care as much about what other people think of me, I laugh more and want to make others laugh, but most of all I have my confidence back - this to me is more powerful than anything else I have achieved this year.

Confidence is one of the keys to be happy I think, it  makes you care more about what you do, who you influence and why you want to impact them. It makes you love yourself, or try to love yourself - I say try, as I don't think I'm quite there in completely loving who I am, but I'm certainly getting there.

Reflection

On reflection I am a better person  now, than I was this time last year, I'm more positive, I want to help other people more and I want to be kind to myself.

I'm happy, I love laughing and I want to make a difference to people. I attribute this to my hard work, I would not be the person I am now, if it wasn't for who I was a year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago - I have worked incredibly hard, it hasn't been easy and I have struggled. But I am where I am today and I'm proud for what I have achieved.

I sound like I'm finished, like I'm where I want to be and that I have no more goals to reach. Some of my friends and family would look at me now and ask 'why don't you just stay where you are, you  have achieved so much?'. But why stop now, I'm not at my goal, I have a goal that I plan to reach in May 2015, this is probably going to be harder than anything I have done so far, but I want to achieve my goal and I won't stop until I'm there.

I will probably get to May and tell you I have another goal to reach for, but where would we be if we didn't have goals, personal and work wise?

A huge thing I have learnt is my appetite for successful, fuelling my determination to achieve.

Some of my goals for 2015 are not tangible as such, not a product you can see, touch or hear, internal goals, which overall will make 2015 more of a success than a tick list of achievements - I want to smile more, I want to be happier and I want those who are important in my life to be happy.

Happy New Year Everyone!! BE HAPPY, HEALTHY AND SMILE

Learning Continues Every Day

It's corney I know, the expression, you learn something new every day. But for me at the moment, it is the case. 

I attended a course to up skill myself in, up to date first aid in an emergency, everything was pretty standard, building on common sense. Two things from the day stuck out for me; 

1. There are 75,000 suspected heart attacks in the UK every year!

2. I had no idea how hard it was to preform CPR

I was somehow shocked by the number of heart attacks, but really should I be shocked...? As a country our obesity levels are getting higher and higher, putting more and more strain on our hearts. I'm hearing about people doing more and more drastic things ego their bodies or in terms of dieting. Extreme/fad diets are exactly what they say on the tin, they see short term measures and actually do more harm than good. Resulting in similar pressures on your heart and body.

I can only take my personal experiences of extreme/fad diets into account here. I don't want to offend anyone on these diets, but just to be clear I'm not going to lie and I have tried them all (pretty much). They are short term! Lasting weight loss takes more.

Anyway, going back to the subject in hand. 

Heart attacks; there are some that will think that they go hand in hand, with the rise in obesity levels. Now I don't know the facts and figures, or research that has been done on this, so this is my personal opinion. The differences in our diets from many years ago, when heart attacks levels were lower, seems like one hell of a big coincidence to me, and I do think they are linked.

It's scary, heart attacks are serious, you've got to hope that there is someone trained and confident around you when one happens, to look after you and get you to hospital before your heart stops. Performing CPR is hard, it looks easy and rewarding in the movies, but it is really hard. Granted I only practiced on a dummy, but I did it for over 2 mins and thought to myself 'wow sometimes you'd have to perform this for so much longer, until the ambulance arrived'. You would be extremely lucky to have 2 first aiders around to help you.

I hope that I never have to preform CPR on anyone, however I'm glad I do know and have that knowledge if it came to it.

Life seems so fragile to me, I've not taken care of my body/mind before and it nearly broke me. I didn't listen to myself, who knows how long I could have carried on like that. My number could have been up a long time ago. I'm just glad I saw my way out, my way to happiness and confidence and if I can help others do the same, I would be honoured.  You only live once, why not try and see the best you and live your life?

I can't wait to take on clients and start helping them to see results. If only you could measure confidence levels - mmmm I might look into that!

Thanks for reading

New Approach

This year, so far, hasn't been the year for me, my weight loss has halted, as my previous posts have suggested. I have been under a lot of stress with my job, and my body cannot cope with stress. I'm learning more about my body day after day. It's no wonder I was over weight for a lot of my life, being in a stressful job and not listening to what my body was trying to tell me. 

After a couple of months of trying different things with my macro-nutrients, my PT has decided to put me on a Ketogenic Diet. Wikipedia describes this as; a high fat, adequate protein and low carbohydrate diet. The diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. 

Now before you run out and decide you are not going to eat carbs again, please DON'T!!! I can't stress that enough. You have to make sure that your calorie intake is still sufficient to be able to cope with your daily activities. I am taking my advise from Tom, who will be keeping an eye on me and I won't be on low carb all the time, having a higher carb day once a week to sustain my metabolic rate.

I started this on Thursday last week. It is Sunday now. We are gradually bringing my carbs down, rather than all of a sudden bringing them down, this is to prevent my body from going into melt down. However, I have been away this week to see a friend and go to see Derren Brown (FYI he will blow your mind live!!,). I found staying low carb extremely difficult and did mess up on one day. But I'm back on it today and feeling very strong, I really want to kick my body into start losing weight again.

I'm having flash backs to previous posts, saying this before.... You have to keep going, I haven't had a good time this year, but that doesn't mean I will give up and just stay where I am, or go back to where I was! I'm pushing forward, trying new things and striving to achieve what I want.

On this diet you may be thinking that I'm gong to run out of energy, without carbs. Actually I don't think that this will be the case, the fats in my diet have been brought up, therefore I will have an energy source being put into my body. 

FATS, sounds like a dirty word for most dieters, I learnt a long time ago what a lack of fats will do to you. For me, I felt like my brain stopped working!! I'm not exaggerating, I literally felt like it wasn't functioning. Your body needs fats, 'good' fats are essential for your body and brain to function. Low fat foods are all well and good, but not if you don't have a sustainable 'good' fats source!!!!!

I've said it before and I'll say it again,  the best fat source in my eyes is..........  COCONUT OIL 

Cook with it, eat it off the spoon, or my personal favourite, put it in your first black coffee of the day (please do not put it in coffee with milk - yuck! Good thing is, it also works wonders as moisturiser, hair conditioner, etc, Google coconut oil uses. You can buy it from most supermarkets, around £7.99 a pot, mine lasts month or so.

I will keep you posted on what the results of this diet is and how I feel, everyone fingers crossed, I really want this to work 

H x

I haven't got a fitness picture for you today, so here is my gorgeous dog Betsy 

Bodypower Expo

A week or so ago I went to Bodypower Expo at the Birmingham NEC, not many people in the Non fitness world know about this expo, but basically it is a massive room full of fitness/health experts, fitness enthusiast, bodybuilders, fitness models, etc. This is the second year I have attended the event and it didn't fail to get me motivated.

I find with most things you need to find the thing that motivates you, I'm lucky in that I have several in my endeavour to push my body to its optimal performance. My personal trainer Tom, never fails to motivate me when I need it. I follow people on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, that when I'm feeling particularly low pick me up or make me think. Bodypower instils within me a sense of wanting to achieve, it makes me want to train and inspires me.

You need to feed your brain with new information, keeping your brain healthy, not just your body. You never know, what you read, learn next from someone, might be the one thing, the key for you, that spurs you on, that makes you turn to healthy food. Makes you look at going to the gym, or simply feeds your curiosity. 

I've learnt a lot in the almost two years I've been training at the gym, but that doesn't mean I won't stop learning. Yes I could help you lose weight and get into training/healthy options to eat. But I'm not going to stop learning and reading up on new things, everyone is different and need different things.

The older I get the more I realise that no one is the expert, you can always do better, you can always learn new things. An expert is only the expert and remains the expert, if they continue to learn and develop, otherwise someone else will become the expert. I'm in no way saying I'm an expert, I'm not at all, but just wanted to explain the need to continue to learn new things. 

Anyway back to Bodypower, I came away from Bodypower with lots of freebies, mainly whey protein pre-workout samples. 

Pre-workout: is a powder which you make into a drink, to take obviously before you train at the gym. It aids in giving you extra energy to push yourself, to achieve better results in the gym. It is not for everyone, the results are different for different people and I would only suggest using it, if you train at the gym more than 5 times a week and are lacking in energy. If you lacking in energy I would suggest making sure your intake of food is enough, for what you are doing before resorting for pre-workout.

I've never tried it before, didn't think I needed it, I tried it last Sat and was amazed by my results. I was sceptical, I'm one of these people that coffee doesn't really effect me, I drink a fair amount and don't feel the buzz that others get. If you do get that buzz from coffee, just use that as your pre-workout if you need one.

I could almost feel the caffeine surging through my body and giving it a push, I felt a real sudden urge to train, to lift and lift heavy!! I couldn't keep still, talking lots and hands were shaking a tad. I had a good session, hit some personal bests, but before I'd finished my session, I did start to feel the affects wear off, which was a very odd feeling indeed.

I don't want to rely on pre-workout, I feel like although I did achieve amazing results after having it, I would rather achieve those results without the pre-workout. The problem is that I don't know how much of it was the me or the pre-workout. How am I to know if I would have got those results without the pre-workout??? I don't........

However, I think I will be purchasing some, so that when I'm low on energy or drive, I can take some. I've learnt that results are mine, regardless of whether pre-workout helped or not. Whey protein helps me in the same way, it helps my body to rebuild my muscle after I have torn them at the gym (that sounds awful, but that is the process of what you do at the gym, tear the muscle and then repair it, making the muscle leaner for women (bigger for men)).

One thing I am learning, is I tend to write these blogs posts when I'm on the train, clearly my best thinking is when I'm on the train, how odd ha ha! Sorry I haven't written one in a while, lack of subject I think, but I have ideas for my next three or four, so keep an eye out for them coming out in the next week or two.

Thanks for reading, please comment, like and share with family and friends.

H x

Taking Time for ME

I was told this week that I needed to lose weight from my GP, needless to say my opinion on GPs at the moment is on the floor. I went to the doctor for fear that my PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) was getting worse and my symptoms (including struggling to lose weight), were pointing towards this. 

He proceeded to tell me that he was not going to help me with my weight loss and that a magic pill did not exist. I actually don't know what I did to offend this doctor to get this response. But I proceeded to tell him that I have managed to loss over 5 stone in the last 2 years and needed help understanding why this had halted. Despite my increasing/adjusting training and adjusting my macros.

After discussing my training programme and how I control my eating, he told me that there wasn't any way that my training would invoke weight loss - that's is bizarre and when I asked him HOW was I able to loss 5 stone in the last two years doing this. His response was that it isn't working now and I needed to address it, as it would help my condition if I lost weight (suggesting I try prolonged cardio to achieve the appropriate fat burning stage). That my BMI was in obese and I needed to address this...

I think it is safe to say I was horrified at being spoken to in the way I was and how grossly incompetent my doctor was. I understand that everyone has their opinions on what works to lose weight, but when I'm sat there 5 stone lighter than I was 2 years ago, surely something worked!!

I left the doctors feeling downtrodden, as if despite how hard you try, you will be knocked down by others. I'm trying to be healthy, make myself fitter and in turn, saving the NHS money, however my treatment has now left me thinking, maybe I need to just go privately from now on?!

Luckily after my doctors appointment, I went to see my kinesiologist who was wonderful! Now, I'm still not sure how it works or why, but when I was depressed for the second time in my like, Kim was able to help me and made me feel better. I saw her on Friday to help me feel balanced. I have been feeling unbalanced since the beginning of the year. I came away feeling positive, like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, as if actually I could do what I want, but have to give myself time to be me and not the Holly who constantly strives for things. I need to give myself a rest.

Now this is something my PT Tom has been telling me for ages, but for some reason didn't sink in. Apparently I need time to 'play' like I was a kid, stop constantly being serious and live my life. Not everything is about your goals 100% of the time.

In OTHER news I have passed my Personal Training assessment - yay!! Very chuffed with myself and looking forward to taking on clients. Just have a couple more things to do and then I can take on some clients at the gym, however I am writing programmes for people and really looking forward to seeing their results!

Thanks for reading, get in touch if you are looking for a programme, interesting in personal training or have a question.

Favourite Healthy Foods

Hello Everyone,

Sorry I didn't post anything last weekend, it was a busy time with Easter, working and beer festival fun. Difficult to stick to things at the weekend, due to the food and enjoying time with my family and friends. But we all need to find that balance between healthy and living life.

I think it is about time for me to talk things I like to do, to make healthy food palatable all the time, to make it doable on a longer term basis. I'm not going to pretend that I eat whatever I want as long as it fits in my macro's, that is not the case! I work on a 95% good basis.

How to pimp your vegetables, so I'm a huge fan of bags of veg (pre-prepped for you, lazy I know, but it's what I do). Pop them in a microwave to cook (as per the packet), when done pop 50g of light Dairylea, stir in with salt and pepper, pop back in microwave for 30 seconds. Lovely, creamy cheesy vegetables.

Being a vegetarian trying to get my protein intake is tricky. Not many people try to train like I do and eat a vegetarian diet. It requires a high level of protein and from a purest source possible. I do struggle with this, I do boost my protein with protein shake after training, but rarely at other times of the day (I try to only have one shake a day). My main diet consists mostly of Quorn Bacon, Quorn Sausages and Linda McCartney sausages (original and rosemary & red Onion).

Do NOT under-estimate the protein and fibre that can be found in vegetables. I have a steady stream of vegetables in my diet, from 1 to 2 bags of broccoli and cauliflower (300g a bag from Tesco). This is to push my fibre up and always to my surprise (despite how many times I look at the figures), my protein, you wouldn't have thought it, but it is true!

Sweet potato is the best carb you can have. It is slow release, meaning it slowly releases energy to your body. It can be used in so many ways, my favourite is just chop it up and roast as wedges for 15-20 mins in fry light. Put on salt & pepper or garlic salt and they are delicious.

I prefer to cook using full fat butter if I can, Yeo Valley is really good. However, sometimes the fat levels we set for me, are low and I can't afford to spend these on cooking aids. Therefore fry light is my saviour. Down side to vegetarian products, they are laden with carbs and fats (not always, but they can be).

Coconut oil, is one of the best things out there, it improves your skin, your hair, your energy levels, etc, etc. Google it there will be lists and lists of the benefits, but also the uses of Coconut Oil. I never fail to have this every morning in my coffee. Yes I know that sounds bizarre and at first it was, I am now used to it and wouldn't be without it. First thing in the morning to start my day off, I have one mug of coffee with a teaspoon of coconut oil. Along with as much water as I can stomach and I'm set up for the day :)

My Typical Food Day

Breakfast: Coffee with teaspoon of coconut oil. Yeo Valley Green yogurt, with blueberries.
Lunch: One bag of vegetables, with light Dairylea and Quorn bacon slices
Dinner: One bag of vegetables, with 4-6 Linda McCartney original sausages
Snacks: 1 protein shake post training session

The quantities are varied from day to day, depending on the macro nutrients I am set (which are worked out each week, with my Personal Trainer) and what I fancy. Some days I can't stomach two bags of veg, sometimes I add in a Tilda bag of brown rice. Actually Tilda Brown Pilau rice is a must try!!

With protein shake, I think that this should only be used if you are training hard at the gym and frequently. It is not supplement for meals, as I really do not agree with those sorts of diets, despite doing them in the past myself, that is why actually I don't agree with them.

Trying to be good when eating with family and friends, is when I struggle the most. I always feel like I'm missing out, the truth is I don't have to miss out, I don't have to stay at home and let them have dinner without me. Just stick to my measuring out, work out how much vegetables I can have, how much protein and carbs - fitting it all in to my macros so that I don't miss out. Sounds like a lot of work, but I would rather that and be included, than miss out and become a recluse. I would rather measure out all my food all the time, not miss out on family and friend occasions and still get results.

The last 4 months have been tricky for me and haven't been getting the results I want, however I can only do what my body can do and sometimes you have set backs. I'm hoping to be back on track very sooner and can share my results.

Thank you for reading

Holly x