and Happy

Friday:

I continued to feel tired and depressed this morning. Tim was feeling unwell enough to consider staying home, although he didn't in the end, which made me wonder if I am just feeling down while I get over the flu -- but I have been feeling very sad on and off for months or longer so I don't think so.

I was cowardly and didn't go my WW meeting, although I enjoyed it so much last week I couldn't face a semi-public gain. Pathetic of me. I did the grocery shopping and put several bad things in the trolley. And then, worse, I bought KFC for lunch. At 11 am! And it was just as greasy and horrible as you would expect. I ate one and a bit pieces, and some not-very-good chips. And felt like I had been dumped in a bucket of lard. KFC has the worst fried chicken ever.

But.

About half an hour later I started to feel really happy. All the sad feelings lifted, and instead of feeling extra bad from a big helping of guilt; I just feel good. Food makes me feel good. Often bad food makes me feel very good. Definitely my drug of choice.

Ten years ago I spent a few weeks on a low carb diet and was grumpy and tired and irritable the whole time. Could my current emotional struggles be at least partly to do with restricting my diet?

It doesn't really seem likely, considering how much cheating I am doing. I just don't know. If I was sticking to the WW plan I would be eating moderate levels of carbohydrate -- a lot less that I am used to -- and much less processed food. Dramatically reduced white sugar, msg, preservatives and artificial additives. It could certainly be argued that my body could react to that. But I haven't been sticking to that very well, so maybe I can rule that out. Unless it's from suddenly reintroducing too much junk after a break? Arg! I don't know.

I have been badly depressed once in my life; the ten months after giving birth to my first child. I had severe PND that I tried to hide and didn't talk about until it was getting better. This "depression" is not like that. I am not in any danger of ending my life or anything like that. I just feel sad a lot, like there is nothing I really want to be doing and I don't know where my life is going. It's more like when I had my chonic pain and I wasn't sure if it would ever end and how it would affect my life. That was an external thing, stemming from something that was happening to me, completely understandable I think. The PND was -- I believe -- hormonal and not triggered by anything in my life other than my body going crazy. As soon as my periods returned my emotions started getting back to normal. I have no idea what is causing the current problem, which is why I am writing pages about it.

I am happily married with lovely children, no financial problems, nice house etc. Very little stress. I do feel a bit isolated and lonely, as I was saying yesterday. I feel at a bit of a loose end. I have my freelance work and volunteer work. I spend a lot of time wasting time, doing very little. I am a very slack housekeeper. I would love to write a book and learn the guitar but never spend any time on either. I used to love gardening, now I pay someone to do it and I rarely step into the yard.

I'm not going anywhere with this ramble. I'm just looking for answers.

I am not going to start eating junk food every day to keep my mood up. Apart from being very unhealthy, being overweight also makes me very unhappy. Maybe I can learn to get a high from exercise. Never have yet, but I can keep hoping.