This is going to be a short post, and it’s more of me writing to get some thoughts out of my head. I use writing to help my mental health, so this post is in a way vocalising what’s been stressing me out recently. My count down is officially on for my holidays, it’s like 5 & a half months now until I leave for a month long trip around Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Iceland and Germany. I’m beyond excited for this trip, but the thing that’s annoying me at present is I had this amazing plan in my head to lose a whole bunch of weight before that trip but it kind of hasn’t worked out. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve lost 8 kilograms in the last 3 months, which is better than nothing, but I wanted to lose more.

My weight is tied to my mental health. I’ve never been a skinny teeny tiny person, I’ve always been on the curvier end of things, but it was a healthy curvy. Luckily I’m the kind of person who likes to eat healthy food. I’m a good cook, and an adventurous cook, so I love to research different food and recipes, and work out healthy substitutes for things. I also like being outside, I love hiking and swimming and adventurous stuff. All of that combined should lead to a healthy lifestyle, which in a perfect world would mean I was back at my healthy weight and maintaining that weight.

But the thing that kills my goals is my own mind. I fight with my own mind so often, because it just likes to go dark. I still to this day have days where I don’t want to get out of bed. Whole weekends go by where I will not leave my house and I eat takeaway till I make myself sick. All because my head is telling me to stay in and feed my face, and not to face the world. And because days or weekends like that are frequent, it undoes a lot of my efforts to be healthier. Let’s add in the fact that I was so depressed and anxious for a full year after my dad died that I sat on my lounge and ate bad food pretty much every day, that contributed to what is now a scary weight level for myself.

Booking my trip for next year, it was meant to encourage me to get healthier. Iceland in particular, I have 3 fairly big hikes booked and I’m going snorkelling. I’m going glacier climbing and caving and kayaking. All things that I have always wanted to do. I thought, going into this trip planning, that I could get myself to the point that I’d be trip ready all on my own, but I’ve now made the decision that I’m going to see a dietician and an exercise psychologist. The good thing about the Australian health care system is that due to my history with poor mental health, I get quite a few visits to them for free. So now is the time for me to get serious!

Time to pull my head into gear, time to focus. I refuse to let my own head ruin my trip for me. Starting this blog, I had the intention of keeping it solely related to my travels, but I’ve kind of made the decision that I may start to share a few more personal things like this, because then it gets my state of mind out in to the universe, and hopefully that will force me to continue on with my positive changes. In a way, this could also be my way of helping to de-stigmatise mental health and get people talking about it. Like I said, I lost 8 kilograms in the last 3 months, I’m now setting myself the goal to lose 20 more in the next 5 months. That’s 4 kilos a month roughly. 1 kilo a week. In my mind, that’s achievable. Closer to my holiday, I’ll provide an update on this 🙂
Photos courtesy of mwa and PixaBay