Horrible Xmas - but getting better now!
I never really enjoy Xmas - probably not since I was a kid, and certainly not since my Mum died. But this one was more than usually grim, mainly because I caught a nasty dose of the flu in mid December, which hung around for weeks. I was still feeling pretty grotty when we went to my Dad's, and not just physically. The worst of it was that I lost my appetite for a long period of time, and found myself going mentally downhill very fast as a result. I actually went into depression - not the most severe I've ever had, but pretty horrible all the same. I couldn't enjoy anything or concentrate on anything, and I found the whole Xmas ritual a ghastly and almost unbearable travesty. Everything I saw or did set off negative reactions in me - excruciating nostalgia and regret for things that were no more, bleak hopelessness about the future. Just horrific. I haven't had anything as bad as that for over four years, since I changed my diet.
It was lack of protein that was bringing me down, mainly. I just couldn't face it at all. I have come to realise that protein is terribly important for my mental health. (Probably for a lot of other people's too - but it's hard to generalize.) Most of the time that's not too difficult a thing - as long as I eat at least 60g of protein a day (and, of course, avoid all gluten), I am fine. But illness plays havoc with that.
Well, I am just about over the thing now, and my appetite is almost back to normal. Getting protein intake back up has had the expected result, and my mood is much more buoyant already. I suppose it did help a little, while I was in the depression, that I had this explanation for why I was feeling bad. But not as much as all that. Because lacking hope that things will ever improve is just in the nature of depression. No matter how many times I told myself that I was simply deficient in protein and would get back to normal once I could face eating it again, I didn't really believe it. What I really believed was that my life actually was complete and utter shit, that all the good times had gone forever and that I would just be a sort of tortured walking corpse for the rest of my days. Yes, all that good old depressive stuff.
It still shocks me how physically based my kind of depression is. Oh, I'm not saying that actual life events can't get me down, and I'm not saying there aren't some psychological screw-ups in me either. There are, indeed. But my experience of not eating right and being thoroughly depressed, and my experience of eating right and feeling okay (by which I mean finding pleasure, satisfaction and interest in experiences and activities, feeling reconciled with the past and facing the future in a relatively strong and optimistic way) are so divergent, so utterly distinct. I find it quite amazing. It's as if some kind of switch has been thrown in my brain, meaning that experiences and perceptions ring good bells instead of bad ones. As if it's all been re-routed somehow.
Hard to describe.
But I'm so glad to be out of it again.
Wondering if it might be worth me getting hold of some kind of protein powder, in case this should happen again - maybe I could make shakes with it, which would probably be easier to get down me than fish and eggs and cheese, when in a delicate state of health.
It was lack of protein that was bringing me down, mainly. I just couldn't face it at all. I have come to realise that protein is terribly important for my mental health. (Probably for a lot of other people's too - but it's hard to generalize.) Most of the time that's not too difficult a thing - as long as I eat at least 60g of protein a day (and, of course, avoid all gluten), I am fine. But illness plays havoc with that.
Well, I am just about over the thing now, and my appetite is almost back to normal. Getting protein intake back up has had the expected result, and my mood is much more buoyant already. I suppose it did help a little, while I was in the depression, that I had this explanation for why I was feeling bad. But not as much as all that. Because lacking hope that things will ever improve is just in the nature of depression. No matter how many times I told myself that I was simply deficient in protein and would get back to normal once I could face eating it again, I didn't really believe it. What I really believed was that my life actually was complete and utter shit, that all the good times had gone forever and that I would just be a sort of tortured walking corpse for the rest of my days. Yes, all that good old depressive stuff.
It still shocks me how physically based my kind of depression is. Oh, I'm not saying that actual life events can't get me down, and I'm not saying there aren't some psychological screw-ups in me either. There are, indeed. But my experience of not eating right and being thoroughly depressed, and my experience of eating right and feeling okay (by which I mean finding pleasure, satisfaction and interest in experiences and activities, feeling reconciled with the past and facing the future in a relatively strong and optimistic way) are so divergent, so utterly distinct. I find it quite amazing. It's as if some kind of switch has been thrown in my brain, meaning that experiences and perceptions ring good bells instead of bad ones. As if it's all been re-routed somehow.
Hard to describe.
But I'm so glad to be out of it again.
Wondering if it might be worth me getting hold of some kind of protein powder, in case this should happen again - maybe I could make shakes with it, which would probably be easier to get down me than fish and eggs and cheese, when in a delicate state of health.