winter blues

I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’s the season or work or life or my ego or my diet or my exercise regime or my supplements, or my decrease in caffeine, but for some reason I’ve been feeling rather “meh” lately. I will have days where I feel happy and motivated, but lately I have more days where I feel lost and don’t know where to begin. I have things that I *think* I want to do, such as read one of the books on my mammoth book list, practice meditation, go to yoga class, research vacation options, color in an adult coloring book, start the Great American Novel, paint a picture of Lucent, figure out a great material with which to make the BEST YOGA TANKS EVER, plan a retreat at Kripalu, input all my yoga income and expenses, move to Boulder, start a yoga book/video club, etc. However, when I have a free hour or two, instead I find myself sitting on the couch in my pajamas and watching Seinfeld or Community.

I don’t understand why it is so difficult to do the things that I think I want to do! Maybe I am just getting overwhelmed with options – too many things to do in too little time means I just resign myself to doing nothing. Or maybe work is stressing me out, and so in my downtime, I elect to just vegetate. Or maybe I’m just lazy and scared and don’t want to attempt to create anything because it means I cannot fail.

What is really odd is that this period of despondency is punctuated with periods of lucidity. For a few days, I was waking up at 4:30 AM, drinking some warm lemon water, and then meditating with this for 20 minutes. I was starting to notice that I was becoming more aware of the present moment, which was very interesting, and I liked it. But then I would be attacked by another bad mood where I really didn’t want to go into work. I hated everyone and just wanted to lay in bed and watch Gilmore Girls all day. Why can’t I sustain the good stuff?

I also have been eating gluten with almost abandon. I don’t know what it is. I know it’s not good for me, and that it makes me emotional and weird, but I keep eating it. I just feel a little off kilter. Maybe it’s just the change in seasons. Maybe it’s a stressful fall with lots of changes. Maybe it’s just a natural ebb in the waves of life. I feel as if I know what I need to do to make myself feel better, I just need to figure out how to make myself do it!!

On a positive note, I leveraged my emotional wobbliness into a really good yoga class! Since I’ve been feeling moody lately, I did a little research and found a Yoga to Balance Your Mood sequence in one of my YTT books. I used it during my Gentle Hatha class on Saturday, and everyone loved it. I heard at least 1 audible sigh of relaxation at the end of the class. I wove in some of my own stuff too. I began the class with a seated meditation and asked the students to note how they felt in the meditation. Then I told them that we would do another meditation at the end of the class and asked them to compare the two. I told them that the whole purpose of yoga is to calm the body enough that it can sit quietly in meditation, so I wanted to test out that theory. Everyone said that their meditation was easier at the end, and they felt more focused. I just absolutely love it when people are happy, relaxed, and excited when they leave my class.

So now I need to take some of my own medicine and do the sequence. I just have a really hard time finding a good quite, solitary place to practice at home. I guess it means we need to buy a new house. Maybe that would make me happy. 😉

Wow. It’s been like 3 weeks since I’ve posted. It’s been a busy time. I went to Florida and Des Moines for work, then I went to NYC for play (visit the bros), and now I’m finally back home for a few solid weeks. I have another trip to Des Moines in early December (Business Analyst Boot Camp) and then no more trips on the horizon. Which makes me both happy and sad. I’ve found that I’m rarely ever in exactly one mood or feel one way about anything. I’m happy tinged with sadness or looking forward to an event and looking forward to it being over, so I can be at home in bed. You get the idea. Anyway, I digress.

Due to the traveling and getting used to the new season/lack of light, I’ve gained about 3-5 lbs over the past few weeks. I’ve been eating out more, drinking more delicious beer, and not exercising as much. It’s a dangerous combination. I’m pretty sure that if I reign in the cheats (alcohol, chocolate, donuts at work, etc.), I’ll normalize pretty quickly. At least, I’m hoping so. This will be my first winter fully paleo. In reading the paleo blogs and posts, I was looking forward to pure bliss over these short days – no winter blues for Hlo this year! HA! The winter blues have hit me harder than I ever remember. I blame it on a confluence of events. 1. I was outside A LOT this summer – more than any other year. My body got used to copious amounts of sunshine, and when that sunshine went away, so did my good spirits. 2. For a variety of reasons, it’s been a stressful month, which is hard on the disposition 3. I’ve not been following the paleo diet strictly. I’ve been eating more dairy than usual and drinking more beer (gluten!) than usual. That exacerbates my allergies and throws me out of whack.

But now that I’ve identified what I think to be the culprits, I can go about fixing them. Right now I am sitting in front of my Light Therapy light, which really does seem to help. I just planned out a week’s worth of 100% paleo meals, and today we biked and raked, so I got some vitamin D and some exercise. We’ll see what a difference this makes.

I haven’t been all bad, though. I have made a couple of tasty recipes lately.

I made Garlic Pulled Pork again. This time I put the garlic rub on the meat the night before and then stuck the roast in the Nesco Roaster on about 200 for about 5 hours. I also didn’t put the fresh garlic INTO the meat. It turned out FANTASTIC. We ate it last night with cauliflower and spinach sauteed in coconut oil. We also ate some for breakfast. I sauteed it with coconut oil, fried some eggs, and covered it all with avocado. Amazing.

I also made 5 Ingredient Breakfast Stuffed Acorn Squash. This turned out good, but next time I would NOT crack the egg in the squash and bake it in the oven. I left it in the oven FOREVER, and the egg still did not bake. I had to scoop the mess out and fry it on the stove top. I don’t think it’s necessary to stuff everything back into the acorn squash skin and bake it, unless you are into presentation, which I’m not. I just am into tasty food. This was tasty, but next time I’ll make it the easy way.

I also made Cream Chicken Casserole. As you can see, I’m a big fan of paleomg.com! She has great recipes. This recipe made a TON of food. We ate it for supper, breakfast, lunch, supper, and still had some leftover. Tim even liked it, even though the base is made from coconut milk. I did notice that my stomach was a little upset after eating it – maybe due to the coconut milk and hot spices? Tim noticed it as well, so the next time we ate it, he had toast with it. That seemed to help.

And that’s it for tasty recipes as of late. I’m attempting to cook a duck tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Tag: winter blues

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