Sport and my mental health

I have suffered from anxiety for years. It’s the kind of anxiety that I can usually keep at

Feeling happy and relaxed after a day out on the bike.

bay. Most people won’t realize I have it because I hide it relatively well. Instead of thinking: Oh, she’s anxious; people probably just think: Huh. She’s a bit of an odd one.

Sport has played a huge role in helping me manage my anxiety. No matter how bad I’m feeling, if I can just get myself out that door and go on a run, for example, I know that my anxiety or stress will almost immediately dissipate.

I have found that the rhythm of sport—of running, of cycling, of hiking, of swimming—puts my mind almost magically at ease. Sport and my daily prayers are my form of meditation. They are how I cut myself off from the daily grind and tear myself away from one screen or the other, if even for a few minutes, to clear my head and start anew.

There’s a “but” coming up.

But, recently, as I’ve felt myself less and less able to manage my stress and anxiety as successfully as I have at times in the past, I’ve been reviewing my lifestyle choices to try to find ways to improve things.

Dealing with self-pity over frozen shoulder

I’ll bet you’ve always wondered how The Nadia would handle self-pity over a post-traumatic frozen shoulder.

That’s why I’m going to tell you how she handles it:

1. She gets told by her physiotherapist that, as a result of a shoulder dislocation two months ago, she now has frozen shoulder. This means that rather than taking six weeks to three months in order to heal, it could take anywhere between one to three years. In the meantime, she will have limited range of motion in her shoulder joint and pain.
2. She goes home, writes herself an excellent pep talk on Facebook, listens to some great music, and feels like she’s on top of the world.
3. She wakes up the next morning feeling like she’d rather not get out of bed. When she does, she can’t get any work done. She sits in front of her laptop for a full two hours getting absolutely nothing done.
4. So she writes a blog post to tell the whole world how sorry she’s feeling for herself.
5. She decides she’s not going to the gym today just because. In fact, she’s not going to do ANYTHING today.
6. She goes to the gym because she knows nothing good has ever come from not going to the gym.
7. She decides since she has gone to the gym, she’s going to get the heaviest weight she knows she can handle for all the non-shoulder-related exercises.
8. She discovers today’s gym class is all about the shoulders and she starts doubting her understanding that nothing good ever comes from not going to the gym.
9. The gym instructor is nice. She gives The Nadia alternative exercises, half of which she still can’t do. The Nadia starts feeling even more frustrated than when she woke up. She starts focusing on creating super biceps and triceps.
10. Everybody else is told to do push-ups. The Nadia decides she’ll try to hold a plank. She can’t because it’s too much pressure on her bad shoulder. So she decides to teach herself how to do a one-handed plank. Maybe by the end of this ordeal she’ll be the only one in that class who can do one.
11. The class ends and The Nadia has hardly broken a sweat. She’s angry. She decides she’s not even going to take a shower.
12. On her way home, The Nadia laments her cycling days. Even though the physiotherapist has told her she can get back on the bike, she’s been reluctant to because she doesn’t want to fall. First, because falling is now even more scary than it used to be. Second, because falling would mean making her bad shoulder even worse, which she could do without.
13. The Nadia gets home, puts her gym bag on the floor, gets her cycling jacket and helmet out, grabs her bike, and starts cycling, thinking FUCK THIS! I’M GOING TO GET ON THIS BIKE AND CYCLE!
14. The Nadia sees every crack in the road as a potential bike trap. But she keeps cycling.
15. The Nadia discovers that, although there is some pressure on the bad shoulder, it’s not as bad as she expected. She does have to relieve the pressure on it every now and then, but a one-hour ride turns out to be doable.
16. She gets home in one piece, wraps herself up in her fleece robe, and writes a blog post to tell the whole world that she might be feeling sorry for herself, but she FUCKING AIN’T GOING TO LET THAT HOLD HER BACK!

And that, my dear friends, is how The Nadia deals with self-pity.

Nadia’s Ten Tips for Healthy Living

Anybody and everybody is writing about healthy living nowadays. Much of what is out there is common sense and you have to

My husband, a friend of ours, and I cycled from London to Paris this year. Having a short-term goal will motivate you to keep exercising.

wonder why someone has written a whole book about it. More of what is out there is just a load of crap. Generally, I think too many people have turned healthy living into something that is way too complicated for someone who wants to start on the road towards a healthier lifestyle.

So, since I am an anybody and I have accumulated some personal experience on this topic over the past few years, I thought I would share my own tips on how to live more healthily.

1.    Your goal should be gradually shifting into a lifestyle change and not finding a quick fix solution. One of the first things you need to do is completely remove the word diet from your vocabulary. YOU ARE NOT STARTING YET ANOTHER DIET. Your goal is not to lose a certain amount of weight in a certain amount of time. Your goal should not even be weight loss. Your goal should be to become healthy. This will inevitably result in some weight loss. But stop focusing on your weight and start focusing on changing the way you live.

2.    Lifestyle changes do not happen overnight.

My love-hate relationship with exercising

Almost every single time I start thinking about beginning my semi-daily exercise routine I feel dread. But I’ve never once regretted

Hiking in the Cinque Terre, Italy

exercising once I’m done.

Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes when I start exercising or when I go to the gym, I feel like giving up in the middle of it all. Sometimes I do the easier exercises rather than the more difficult ones. Sometimes in gym class I’ll be so tired that I do things at half the pace as everyone else. And a couple of times I’ve started an activity and I’ve just completely given up after a few minutes. But that’s only happened when I’ve chosen to do something I’m completely unprepared to do.

My journey with exercise has been just that: a long and arduous journey. It’s taken me years to understand my body, its limitations, how far I can push it, and when I just need to rest. It’s taken me years to get myself into a mindset of exercising as regularly as I can, no matter where I am, and no matter what facilities are available to me. The one thing that has convinced me most to keep pushing forward is that I want to be fit enough to enjoy my life and to do fun and exciting things.