the fifo wife

I have anxiety. I have spoken about it before along with the fact that depression and I have danced more than once since having babies.

Mine is a social anxiety I have come to understand, and when left unchecked it flows on into my life weaving its tight grip into every crevis until I can do nothing but stand still frozen in one spot. I’m there; I’m just not moving because I’m too scared to make the wrong move in case I break something. Too frightened I will disappoint myself and others which is why I’m a lousy chess player. Now despite being frozen on the inside my head and in my heart, it all becomes one big ball of calm the farm scenario. We all know left in that cold spot too long, and too many “d” words are muttered, and people mill around whispering, not ideal for one’s social anxiety.

Sound familiar to anyone?

Anyway my anxiety she has been in check now for a few months, and personally, I am back to thriving despite the tricky months we have had and it been thanks to a couple of things I have learnt when embracing and understanding myself. So being the oversharer that I am, I thought I would share them here, and in honesty, the autistic kids I work with taught me a trick or two because anxiety is their speciality also.

Anxiety, and I am guessing social anxiety they now think is parts of the brain not being able to read a social situation right. Which for me makes sense I am so sleep deprived most days that I think its not only natural some part of my brain will falter. So if I’m worried that I have said or done something wrong especially at work, I will run it past my workmates. Given their level of sarcasm will tell me if I have anything to ‘worry’ about. This level of honesty and understanding of myself has seen my anxiety turn into something so much more manageable.

I have come to understand that anxiety gives you an extra double dose of the superpowers of empathy, perspective, understanding and compassion. It’s not all bad.

I refocus. If I start to get anxious about something I will refocus my attention on to something else. This other thing should be something different than the social media on your phone. Not only does the blue light aggravates your brain, disrupt your melatonin levels but social media feeds your anxiety, and so I have gone back to reading books. This is especially so at night time. At night I will often be jolted awake by my subconscious, the tightness in my chest and the uneasiness in my muscles and it will keep me from sleep for hours.  So I now grab a book; Needless to say, I haven’t read this many books in a long time.

I turn off extra noise when I can. On the way home from work I drive in silence, on my morning walk, it’s just my footsteps and the birds. I’m guessing it is the same theory I use at work when the some of my kids go into meltdown. They need silence and to refocus. For them, we go to the sensory room a purpose-built quiet room, and we do puzzles. Neurotypicals when in a state of anxiety are no different.

Understand what your triggers are. For me, there are just a few I know what they are now and I avoid them, but of late they’ve include Instagram, so I have stopped using it. It makes feel like Im, not enough or not doing enough for my industry. Although I have recently come to understand that I am a hand holder, I take the greatest pleasure in seeing another thrive, and so I will never be a “social influencer” anywhere. I will be a hand holder, and the world needs more of those.

I have gone back to moving more and watching what I eat. I have always been fit, but with working, I found tricky to find the time. Now I make the time not only for my head but my heart. I give myself 40 minutes to do some form of exercise every day. I walk the dog, go to the gym or swim but I have an appointment with one of those once a day without fail.

I suspect my anxiety will never entirely disappear. I’m okay with that- now, so managing it from here on in and embracing it as part of who I am is important. For some, its deeply rooted in part of who they are and I understand this might make it seem flippant and easy to manage. It isn’t but if you can just see for a moment a light you will see that having anxiety does give you superpowers, and right now I think the world needs more of us especially to make it through this big thing called life.

Do you have any tricks or tips to managing your anxiety?

xx

Deb

Image with thanks to Siegfried Lauterwasser, 1960, in Venice.

Two months ago I got sick, and as a result, my eating habits changed. I won’t go into details, but my already paired back diet got paired back more to the point I was eating just meat and veg.

I was watching my carbohydrate intake. Almost all refined and processed sugar was reduced except my morning sugars in my two cups of coffee. It’s a weak excuse those two sugars, but I can’t give up my coffee with its two sugars. It’s liquid gold. It’s love in a cup. It’s routine, and I can’t go without it.

Anyway, last week was a tricky week, and I ate more sugar and drank more processed food and drink than I had in a year to compensate how I felt. I slipped back into my emotional eating and drinking faster than the devil going down to Georgia.

As a result, come Thursday I was suffering night sweats by Friday I was angry, but I didn’t know why; by Saturday morning I was apologizing to my husband for something I couldn’t explain. I felt pent up, on edge and very, very snappy.

Do you think it could be all the sugar messing with me I asked him? I don’t know he replied. Have you eaten much he said questioning me?

Well yes in comparison to the previous weeks I said- Minties, jelly beans and fantails from work. Pre mixed Vodka drinks of an afternoon, baked biscuits from a family friend, packets of chips, and lots of rice. The sugar numbers add up quickly I said turning away surprising myself on my new found knowledge.

We aren’t ‘diet’ people we have always eaten in moderation, and processed food is not a big part of our lifestyle, but this was a wake-up call because I was wondering how others fair especially my children.

I don’t need to go into how bad too much sugar can be, its everywhere on the news. It rots our teeth, plays havoc with our hormones {me as a case in point and men, it reduces testosterone and increase estrogen not great for fertility} and can confuse our immune system causing inflammation in our cells.

Yet sugar both good and bad is almost impossible to eliminate from your diet because it’s in everything and I don’t believe in taking out everything. Vegetables, for example, have a portion of carbohydrates that convert to sugar and so you have sugar without actually having sugar. Do you go without vegetables? – no, I don’t think so.

So what if we considered reducing our glycemic load as an opposed to cutting out all sugar? Wouldn’t that be easier? Regardless of three ways, I have found to reduce your sugar intake so you not such a hot mess of a parent.

1. Read the labels on food packaging. It might drag out the already laborious job of shopping but pretty soon you will know whats in what. Avoiding sugar completely is not necessary, but try to avoid larger amounts of added sugars. If sugar content per 100g is more than 15g, check that sugar (or alternative names for added sugar) is not listed high on the ingredient list. Alternate names for sugar is Dextrose, fructose, glucose, golden syrup, honey, maple syrup, sucrose, malt, maltose, lactose, brown sugar, caster sugar, maple syrup, raw sugar, sucrose.
2. Swap out sugar for alternatives such as honey, agave, maple syrup, or barley malt; all are great white sugar substitutes. I started with using honey and agave syrup is my fav- goes nicely in Margarites 😉
3. Reducing foods with known sugars. It’s no-brainer soft drinks, lollies, chocolates, sweets and processed foods. If you don’t know- learn, you are accountable for your own health playing ignorant is no longer an option. Did you know Macdonalds Frozen Coke has 16 teaspoons of sugar in it? 16!!

Now it has been a couple of days since my revelation, and my renewed accountability and I feel good. My head feels good my body feels good.

So I urge any pent up and ratty parent to try at least reducing their “glycemic load” to become a better version of themselves.

Please seek advice fromhealthcareh care professional before taking any advice from someone who clearly is not a medical professional but a red hot mess of a parent.

xx Deb

If you don’t know what a Buddha Bowl is I’m assuming you are without Instagram or Pinterest.

Buddha bowls are the food thing of 2017 and don’t seem to be losing any steam as 2018 fast approaches. All the cool kids are making, Instagramming and eating them but here is something they probably have no idea about it has nothing to do with Buddha.

Writers of “Buddas diet” Cottrell and Zigmond a book on mindfulness and eating researched Buddha and his eating habits and certainly didn’t find any Instagram worthy Buddha Bowls instead something else something much simpler. “Buddha woke up before dawn every morning and carried his bowl through the roads or paths wherever he was staying. Local people would place food in the bowl as a donation, and at the end, he would eat whatever he had been given,” explains Zigmond. “So that was the original Buddha Bowl: a big bowl of whatever food villagers had available and could afford to share. It was probably pretty healthy since Buddha lived before the age of cheap processed food, but it was also probably pretty simple, maybe rice and a simple curry.”

As for the modern day aka 2017 food craze, Buddha Bowl here is a simple how to.

Now there is the contentious issue of do you add a protein or not personally it doesn’t matter, but I have added it in because I like a little protein.

1. It starts with a grain. The most basic and most straightforward is rice. Just use whatever you have on hand which is the premises of the whole dish. You could, however, use farro, millet, buckwheat or quinoa. Cook it according to the packet.
2. Add some vegetables, whatever you want, and however, you want them. Salad, Root, roasted, steamed, blanched whatever takes your fancy.
3. Throw in some protein now given that the idea of this dish is vegetarian the protein is meant to be a bean, lentil nuts, seeds or legume. There is, however, no hard and fast rules on it thrown in some chicken or tuna.
4. The only hard work is the dressing, and it can be whatever you like. I love a tahini dressing when using a salad based vegetables.

When I turned forty this year, I had a slight panic attack that I was ‘half way’ through my life. I don’t exactly know where the last forty went, but it went quicker than it should of; perhaps aliens abducted me, or the motherhood fog took the last 12 years.

I don’t know, but it feels like just yesterday that I stood on the doorstep of my Darwin home at eleven years old looking out towards the road wishing with all my might I was old enough to drive. I recall thinking I couldn’t wait for the next five years to whiz past.

Now I sit here watching my boys playing wishing with all my might that time could go slower and along with that I wish for myself more time. I want to live as long and as healthy as I can for them and obviously for me. I think the same thing every night as I take my geriatric dog to the toilet. I look across to my yard to see if my neighbours light is on and with out fail it is.

My neighbour is Bill a man deep into his 90’s although without a word of a lie has the stance and body of a man at least 30 years younger. Bill sits writing his journal every night before taking to the streets for a walk at 1 am. His routine hasn’t altered much since he gave up work at 75 years old where he hand sawed logs from the rainforest. Bill lives on his own still mows his lawn despite protests from his neighbours that we can help. He has many a visitor and should you take the opportunity to visit leave ample room in your day and ensure your dinner is already ready for Bill loves a chat. Guaranteed that you will leave Bills place happier than when you arrived for he is such a happy fellow.

So it was very coincidental that I found the book The Longevity Project last week. The book is from data analysed and collated from a researcher, Lewis Terman, who began his studies way back in 1921. Terman gathered together 1500 primary school students and followed them for the next 35 years. He asked them and those around them everything from their salaries to their sex lives until he passed away in 1956. It was then other Researchers picked up his work, and in 1990 Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin started analysing the data and a The Longevity Project was created.

The following are some of their results follow them, and you too could be still mowing your lawn and walking the streets at 1 am when your deep into your nineties.

1. Get busy in bed and start telling the ahem truth. Women were asked how often they orgasmed, how long they had sex for and how satisfied they felt. The sexually satisfied had happier relationships and lived longer. The key? How often they reported having an orgasm.
2. Exercise but not too much. Say no more.  While cardio is king to losing the kilojoules, it was the low impact activities that have been linked to longevity. Swimming, walking the dog, and leisurely bike rides that will keep you going over the years.
3. Don’t stress less. There is one for the books and one I can easily accomplish. Finalising goals, no matter the hours or how long it takes to do will help you live longer. Striving to accomplish your goals, setting new aims when milestones are reached and staying engaged and productive is exactly what saw study participants live longer.