I’ve been battling a rut for a while. Part of it is avoidance of all these big to do things that I have to do, but the rest of it I’m not quite sure about. The biggest problem with this rut is that I have been feeling run down and constantly tired. I would like to blame the weather, but I took care of that part of it and bought another air conditioner for my apartment. I kept telling myself that I should start working out and start eating cleaner, but I just couldn’t really find the energy. The lack of energy has been so bad that driving is scary.
Today, though it seems that the fog is abating a bit and I have some theories as to why I finally feel like I’m climbing out of this rut.
- Cut out the caffeine – I don’t usually have a daily caffeine habit. I do enjoy coffee and tea, but usually it’s a splurge when I go out to a coffee shop to do work. However, when I started a month of shift work with erratic hours, I started up a caffeine habit. Mind you, I set a limit of one cup, but I tend to be sensitive to caffeine and continuing that one cup of coffee a day habit even after the erratic shift work was over was probably a bad idea. Even though a tiny voice in the back of my head was saying that I should stop, I enjoyed the ritual of a morning coffee. Last week, I read somewhere (sorry, I’m so terrible at remembering where I read things and linking up…something to work on) that daily caffeine could in fact prevent weight loss instead of promote it. I would like to ditch a couple of pounds that I gained about six months ago, but I’m not actively trying to lose weight. Reading that article reminded me what I knew all along about fatigue, adrenal function, and so on, so I ditched the coffee. Sad, but necessary. I used the rest of my cold brew as a hair rinse. At least my hair smelled lovely.
- Drink more water – I’ve been lucky that the last couple of days I’ve been able to drink more water, but the reality is that most working days I’m lucky if I can remember to drink a cup or two of water. I’ve gone whole shifts/days of work without drinking water. I know this is really bad, but when you are running around all day, going to the bathroom is not on your list of to dos. Naturally, it follows that you stop drinking water, too. I’ve gotten in the habit of tucking a bottle of water into one of my giant pockets. The trick now is to remember to actually drink that water.
- Sleep consistently well – Sleep has been problematic for me for most of my life. I can hear just about everything in my sleep. I also need about 9 hours of sleep to feel fantastic. I wish I could be one of those people who feels awesome on 7 or 8 hours but frustratingly, I feel the best with 9 hours. When I switched to eating a more paleo/primal diet, I started to sleep better, which was awesome. Problem now is that if I get a couple of nights of good sleep, then the third or fourth night, I end up staying up too late. There is probably a happy medium of being well functioning during the day and being able to sleep consistently well, but I still haven’t found it. Something to work on.
- Get outside – Life has been busy and there is a whole lot of things that I am not doing that I need to be doing. That being said, I’m basically hitting snooze a million times in the morning, dragging myself out of bed, and throwing on a bunch of black and rushing to work. When I get home, some evenings I found myself cuddling with my laptop and sleeping because I was too tired to make dinner or do much of anything else. I realize that no matter what I need to get outside once a day, twice would be preferable, but let’s start small. Getting outside gets me the natural light exposure that I need and a much needed dose of outside air. Being inside all day with not very well circulated air is probably contributing to my exhaustion. Not to mention the lack of natural light is probably not helping my circadian rhythms either.
- Breathe – When things get busy, I have a tendency to get wound up and tense. I start wanting to micromanage and control every detail about what’s going on. I often don’t realize this until I’m well into doing it and I find myself walking around with a clenched jaw and stiff muscles. One of my favorite teachers of all time told me on Friday, “Don’t just do something, stand there.” At first, I was confused, but he was saying that sometimes you have to stop doing and just take a step back and take it all in. “Don’t forget to enjoy this,” he said. After that conversation I realized how much I was working myself up and making things more stressful for myself than they need to be. So one at a time and breathe.
There are probably a million more things that I could change and do differently to feel better, but those are the things that come to mind that seem to have shifted over the last few days. I was really floundering for a while trying to figure out why I was feeling so terrible. Hopefully, things are a lot better from here on out.
How do you get yourself out of a rut?
Forks in the Crossroads 