The Destress Plan

Hello Friends,

Sorry again for the long silence streak.

I was well......stressing out......pretty much all day, every day, for the last week.

This isn't all that new for me, I tend to be a little tightly wound these days, but I do really struggle with exercise and eating right when I'm stressed. My go-to stress method has always been and still is,

1. Eat everything in sight.
2. Sleep.
3. Sit on the couch and worry.
4. Repeat.

Healthy? No. Honest truth of what I actually do? Yes. Is this a problem and habit I'd like to fix? Yes.

But since this has been my method of destressing for a long time....like 6 years or so......it's hard to break out of that habit. The one habit I did break was for along time, Shopping was on that list which just lead to different stress about how I was going to pay off credit card bills. So I'm happy I got out of that cycle. But the eating, sleeping, and worrying is still as alive as ever.

So I decided to do a few things to help myself out this week. I kept myself busy. Really busy.
I cooked healthy stews, pastas, and casseroles, I typically don't eat while I'm cooking because I'm concentrating too hard on not burning it. ;0). I made fruit Popsicles. I downloaded new music and created a new playlists. I searched for a new computer, I need a new one bad, and I even went out and got a haircut to keep myself out of the house and the realm of snacking...aka the kitchen.

It seemed to work but I have to say that there is nothing like actually keeping busy by exercising. My father always told me that when I'm stressed nothing keeps your cooler than going for a run. He is of course completely right, how annoying is that, but I still to this day have a hard time going for a run when I'm stressed out. And to make things even worse, by not running I'm stressing out because my race is in 3 weeks. Yup, you heard me 3 WEEKS!!! And I'm only up to about 2.25 miles with hills. I'm TERRIFIED. My only saving grace is the first race is in a town I don't know so I won't know anyone there and if I only make it 1 mile and duck out no one there knows me so it won't matter. I guess that's an upside? The downside though is I have a feeling the race will be small and I really don't want to finish last. I would be mortified if I finished last but that being said I'm excited for it and I'm staying focused with my goal which was just to finish. I don't care if I'm last I'm just determined to keep a good solid pace and run the entire thing. If I'm last I'm last.

So with that in mind I'm going to try really hard to focus the rest of my week on different exercises to destress. Keep checking in for my destressing tricks updates! More later!

Anyone have some good destress exercise suggestions?