1066 All Stars

Day 26 - 26th September

Food Log

Breakfast - Weetabix minis

Lunch - Pork curry with rice

Dinner - Chicken drumsticks with salad

Dessert - Ice cream

In Between Meal Snacks

Plum

Apple

3x rice cakes

1x chocolate (it's Friday)

Thoughts & Feelings

* Friday. The end of the working week seems to bring an added desire to snack, to 'treat myself' after a long week. I caved by having a 3rd rice cake, relatively innocent but I retain some guilt. As for the chocolate? I blame peer pressure.

* Declines - sausage roll, cake.

* There is one undeniable fact - my kids are the biggest cause of stress in my life. That may sound harsh but it is true. Let's make something clear though; much as they drive me crazy sometimes, I love my children and would not want to trade the life I have with them for a life without them. Now, with that being said, I had never experienced anger, frustration, anxiety, tiredness and any number of other things to the level I do since having them.

* This manifests mainly at weekends. As terrible as it sounds, in part I dread the weekend because it means two whole days with them with no escape. I have to find things to do and the energy to do them. but I feel so tired, all the time. Would I rather be at work? Of course not. Would I rather be on my own? No, that is just fantasising, I would not wish it in reality.

* I say these things because I feel them but this is not meant as a rant or diatribe. For better and worse, my kids are a part of me, a part I want. If a job becomes too stressful, you always have the option to leave. The kids are here for life. Therefore it is a stress I both want and need to learn to manage.  And so the point of this post is recognising that I don't want to feel this way. I want to change.

* Despite the end of week fatigue, I was really looking forward to my lunchtime walk and gobbled down my food quickly to give me the maximum walking time (45 minutes). Feeling better now. Sweaty, but better.

* I really want to go for a run. It is something that came up in my pre-Priory therapy but I always resisted, some level of embarrassment at the back of my mind putting me off. Therapy has taught me the importance of change, of doing things differently to achieve a different result. I am not going to put a timescale on it but it is a short term target to get out for a jog.

* Therapy showed me the nefarious influence of negative automatic thoughts, those instantaneous reactions that serve to distort our world view. For instance, a compliment paid to another is not, as a by-product, a criticism of me. My self worth is not reliant on the merits or otherwise of another. Apparently I need to remind myself of this occasionally.

* I have become so accustomed to it that the pain caused by my neck is almost just a feature of everyday life. I have fused vertebrae in my neck which causes a daily pain through my neck, across my shoulders, down my back and also brings on headaches. Some days are worse than others but every day brings discomfort at some level or other. It is easy to overlook but I am convinced that this is feeding into my overall health. It is energy sapping being in constant pain. It is exacerbated by tension, the pain masked by adrenalin but I know that the comedown the next day, when the muscles have relaxed and retracted, will bring even greater discomfort, a symptom of my Weekend Blues (Saturdays are the worst, by Sunday my system seems to even itself out a bit, ready for another week of abuse to start on Monday). The doctor says it is just one of those things but a prescription of 'grin-and-bear-it' is wearing thin.