My Motto For 2016

My Motto for Year 2016:

~Take it Easy, Go Slow & Be Lazy~

Now’s the time to post my pledges of great accomplishments and feats of wonder for Year 2016, right? Maybe I’ll climb Mount Everest. Or at least take the cable car to the top of Rukatunturi. Finish my PhD I haven’t even started yet. Compete in Finnish Figure Nationals. Bench my weight. Lose 10 kilos of that annoying extra cortisone fat around my belly and then bench my weight. Read self-development books, hundreds of publications about cortisol and exercise and nail that 2016 Reading Challenge already at the end of January. Or…not.

Rukatunturi, Kuusamo – image source

As I did recap of last year in my mind, I was amazed of all the things I accomplished even when I was at times horribly ill. I found a new job I could do, all on my own, when most employers would have rejected me. I fought against terrible doctors and negative disability benefit verdicts. I participated in and survived the annual krav maga Utti Summer Camp mayhem. I started to train powerlifting. I travelled around Finland and abroad. Got the spark to begin my career as an exercise scientist. Started volunteering in Addison patient organization. And so much more. Now I get dizzy just thinking about it all. No wonder I felt exhausted many times and probably ate more hydrocortisone than a dozen other AI patients put together (at least if you’re talking to my old endo. 10+5 mg is the way to goooo…)

I’ve always – always – been a goal-oriented person. A real go-getter. I looove setting goals, making schedules and planning my strategies in achieving them. If I’m not competing with others, at least I want to compete with myself. Harder, faster, better, more. I’ve never been able to be wholly satisfied with what I’ve accomplished and get anxious if I try to just be and rest. It’s something I’m working on with my therapist as my perfectionism is one of the biggest obstacles in my pursuit of wellbeing and coping with my illnesses.

So, maybe I should once in my life be sensible and take heed of advice I often seem to get – take it easy, stupid!

I won’t post any damn motivational quote of busy worker bees and working out efficiently. At least for two weeks. Promise. Instead, I will…

• Postpone anything and everything I plan to do today that can be done tomorrow into day after tomorrow

• Sleep whenever the heck I feel like it (if my puppy allows it)

• Do always one rep less in the gym

• Stare more at my facebook feed with saucer eyes, drooling slightly whenever I think I should be doing something important

• Read twice as many entertaining sci-fi and fantasy books than strength theory and medical handbooks

• Skip as many parties as possible, instead lounging on the sofa in pajamas drinking cheap light cider and green tea (not at the same time though)

• Abstain from setting lifting goals

• Quit dieting for a while and eat a heck of a lot of protein – Lord save my poor kidneys…

• Coax, bribe and threaten my friends to entertain my puppy from hell so I can sleep

More this…

(Image source)

…and this 😉

(Image source)

Have a wonderfully slow and lazy week,

xoxo,

Veera

When Your Body Is A Traitor

This post is not about alien abduction or mind-controlling slugs out to conquer the Earth (Sorry, you X-files peeps). Still, this seriously scary stuff for me as a control freak who’s never been good at sitting still for over 5 minutes…

Imagine the worst hangover ever. The world spins around you and everything blurs into kaleidoscope-like shapes. An army of dwarves jump around inside your skull, pounding your brain with their hammers, laughing at your pitiful state. Waves of nausea run through you. You even want to vomit, just in the hope that it will make you feel better. No, it won’t. You simply suffer. A flying carpet is familiar to most people, but have you ever heard of a flying sofa? That’s the thing you’re sprawled on, holding your head with your eyes closed.

Sounds awful, right? Luckily hangovers don’t usually last more than a day. Only, that rule doesn’t apply if you’re living in AI-land. Here, this can be a normal state of being, lasting anywhere from only a couple of anguished hours to days, weeks, months or even years of pure hell. And there’s not much you can do about it.

When hung over, people don’t usually go to the gym. Or maybe they do, if they happen to belong to some weirdo religious cult that’s into self-mutilation and torture. If they can, they also skip work (ever called you boss you’ve got the “bug”?). What do you do when more than half your days resemble hangover-hell? Pray for a miracle and whip yourself a bit more today while you’re at it?

When I studied medicine, the textbooks said (and still, sadly, do) that once you get diagnosed with adrenal insufficiency and start your corticosteroid replacement therapy, your symptoms will disappear and you can and will live a normal, happy life as a contributing member of society. Yeah, right. And pigs fly. If you give them a good kick. Let me tell you a little insider secret: that’s bullshit. You can try to mimic your body’s intricate endocrine system, a product of millions of years’ evolution, but that’s about it. Try. Cortisol secretion is highly regulated by various hormonal and neural feedback loops, the circadian rhythm, overall hormonal balance and combination of physical and psychological stressors. Thinking that swallowing a pill 2-5 times a day will be as efficient is kind of arrogant, isn’t it? And who said we doctors don’t have a God complex?

I try to treat my body with respect. Sleep enough. Eat healthily – but not too healthily- this girl has got a serious sweet tooth with need of regular sacrifices! Restrict the amount of work I do. Relax and de-stress – well, I’m still working on that one. Still, there are days I simply cannot estimate my body’s needs for cortisone. I take too little, or too much. Or maybe I’m taking just the right amount but there’s something else going on that makes me feel so damn horrible. Maybe it’s all in my head (victory point for the shrink!).

Every day is a new learning experience. As I really am not mentally advanced enough to transcend into a higher level of being consisting of pure energy anytime soon, I guess I’ll have to try and cope with this weird and often uncooperative body of mine and make peace with it. Today I’m trying the well-tested method of eating some ice cream and reading more scifi.

Happy Saturday for you all 🙂 ! How will YOU make peace with your body this weekend?

xoxo,

Veera