Exercise and I have never been friends. I have always been the person who just wants to be able to do the thing, not spend years practicing and working on being able to do the thing. Which rings very true for me when it comes to exercise and anything physical of that nature. I don't want to run for miles, I don't want to do jumping jacks or crunches, I don't want to lift weights or or throw some big rope around. I just want to be able to feel better and get my younger body back. Problem is, I squandered my time with my younger body and now in order to get it back, I must do the things that I hate. I have spent so much of my life in pain, in chronic mostly unyielding pain, so the thought of having to work out and cause myself more pain, on purpose, in order to have a chance to get passed the chronic pain, sucks. Why do I have to hurt more in order to someday hurt less? What if that is too big of a task to ask of me? What if that level of pain on purpose is what finally breaks me? My brain is filled with the what ifs of it all, and yet none of them seem to be, what if I do it and actually start to feel better? Or, what if I do it and it makes up for all the pain from the past? I live in a world of what ifs and yet none of them really ever seem to be positive outside of the realm of, what if we won the lotto?
If I can get past the exercise and there's still the diet change that makes life suck. I have issues with high FODMAP foods, which means that my body has apparently lost the ability over the years to break down certain types of short chain carbohydrates. Here I stole this explanation from the internets, "FODMAP stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols, which are short-chain carbohydrates (sugars) that the small intestine absorbs poorly", or in my case, almost not at all. So what happens when I eat these foods? Well, I have most of the symptoms that those who experience periods get. I get bloating, and cold sweats, and diarrhea and/or constipation, and headaches, and fatigue, and usually bad gas as well. All because I want to eat some bread or drink milk or have some flavor in my food. I have learned with time, what I can and can't have, and what things I can only have a little bit of. The issues that I personally run into is that some of the things that have the highest FODMAPS are wheat, dairy, garlic, onions, apples, mangos, cauliflower, beans, peas, high fructose corn syrup, honey, cashews, and white & green teas. So, kind of hard to get a lot of the important nutrients that your body needs when you can't find pretty much any boxed or premade food to eat that doesn't contain any of those things. So everything I eat has to be made from scratch, or I have to go to specialty stores and pay insane prices for foods, that will still have things in them I shouldn't have but just have to deal with.
So now if I can get passed the working out, get passed the dietary change, then I still have to deal with all the medications to help me out. Meds for anxiety, meds for depression, meds for fibromyalgia, multi vitamin, acid reflux meds, allergy meds, fiber meds, probiotic/prebiotic meds, and potassium pills. I also have back up meds for anxiety attacks, and to try to calm my stomach if I eat high FODMAP foods unexpectedly. I am so tired of pills, but they are needed to make myself better. So I have conquered them at least.
Last is learning to like myself, and I have no idea really how to do that at the moment. I keep trying, but I don't know how to. That is going to have to be another post to discuss all of that.
So yeah, why? Why must it keep getting worse before it gets better? Why do I really have to take so many pills, why did I have to screw up my body so much, why didn't I keep myself in shape, and what the hell can I actually do to like myself?
