Over the last few years my mornings have been getting worse and worse.
I would drag myself out of bed and just be in the worst mood. Like not a grumpy mood, an absolutely awful, horrible, I don't want to exist in this world any more kind of mood.
It didn't matter all that much if it was a non work day, my mood would be frighteningly (really) bad even on days off or holidays.
My mood would improve by mid day and that felt like such a relief but it was really concerning how awful I was feeling and thinking in the mornings. I didn't know what to do about it.
Nothing I was trying was helping and I was starting to really worry about myself and if I could keep going spending hours each morning in this awful of a space.
About half a year ago or so (I don't remember exactly and I don't feel like getting off my couch right now to check my date book) I went to a naturopath. As part of that conversation about how to improve my health and well being, she suggested I increase my protein intake. Something I have heard repeatedly from food expert type people over the years (dieticians, nutritionists, etc.) So I looked into and found a Canadian made protein powder and started adding that into my days.
During this time of thinking through how to add more protein to my days, I started to think about how and when I eat in general.
Years ago someone recommended I do 'intermittent fasting' and so for years, I've been stopping eating at 7:30pm and not eating again until the morning, and sometimes the mid morning.
Well I thought more and more about this.
Most days I have my dinner around 6pm, give or take. And then at 7:30, I take my night time medications with a piece of bread or cracker or something (I can't swallow pills without food.) But at that 7:30pm time I wasn't ever having anything of substance, which meant my last meal and my last protein intake would have been in the late afternoon. I was eating dinner on the early side and then not having any more protein til like mid day at the earliest? Hang on a second..... was my attempts to "intermittently fast" actually crashing me out emotionally and making me literally want to die? Hmmm... this is an experiment that was worth testing.
So I started making sure that when I had my last "food" of the day, it had protein in it. So if I was having a slice of bread to take my pills with, I'd also have something that gave me a good chunk of protein (this is where the greek yogurt came in, it was perfect for this, if not perfect for my stomach....)
And you guys? Within not that long of a time, mornings started not sucking. I'm not kidding.
My mornings now are fine. Sometimes I'm tired of course, or maybe I'm grumpy about having to go to work or do something but I'm no longer in that scary state where I just wanted to not *be*.
I have no doubt that adding protein to my evening has saved my sanity if not my life. I was not going to make it through with mornings being that low. I don't have the science or medicine knowledge to know if it was blood sugar dropping or if I was starving myself or what was technically going on, I'm just incredibly grateful that I thought things through and not only increased the overall amount of protein I'm having every day but specifically giving my body protein in the evening to last my system (and apparently my mind!) overnight and into the mornings.
I can not over emphasize enough what a difference this has made for my well being.
So maybe just keep in mind that health trends and suggestions that may be working well for a whole lot of people may not work for your body and system, or you might be interpreting it slightly incorrectly or missing an aspect of it you can adjust.
I am so grateful that I figured this out, gave it a try, and feel so so so so SO much better.
So grateful.
No comments:
Post a Comment