Getting Back on the Healthy

I haven't been healthy at all recently, not in any way, shape or form. "Carb-loading" was a vague excuse for packing in the food pre-Wimbleball and then "recovery week" was another excuse for just piling enormous amounts of rubbish foodstuffs into my belly. The recovery week quickly became "recovery fortnight" and to be honest, it hasn't event ended. No matter how much I eat, eating bad food is - unsurprisingly - not speeding up my recovery.. and the recovery doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.


I have learnt a few lessons about what being healthy really is (and isn't) though. What it isn't is obsessing over how many pounds you've gained or lost that week, or if you've dropped a couple of minutes from your 5k time. You simply can't stay "peaked" all the time or you would go insane. In the grand kingdom of healthiness, those types of things are merely a speck in the aether.

What I've learned is really important for your health, far more important than calories and fitness, is mental and emotional well-being. These are things I've never really considered much before but it hasn't been until recently, when my own have been distinctly sub-standard, that I've had to stop and think about it. It pains me to admit it, because I was one of the vastly misinformed majority that believed it was a pile of nonsense, but I have been suffering with depression for a good few months now and the effect it can have on your life is absolutely astonishing. I am in the extremely fortunate position of having close friends and relatives around me who recognised that I wasn't myself and felt comfortable enough to tell me to get some help, and I am very grateful they did because I was a bit worried that I was just becoming a crazy, hormonal woman.

Without going into detail, dealing with all the normal life stuff has been a bit of a struggle and "going healthy" has been shoved out the window. The idea of cooking a healthy meal has been replaced with eating anything that's instant and convenient, although bizarrely the effort of baking a huge batch of muffins to eat entirely myself has never seemed too much.

I decided to take myself on holiday to North Devon; a good dose of sea air in the lungs would do well to cleanse the soul and I intended to have a good break with plenty of hiking, biking and decent food. It all started very well with a couple of days of fantastic, long coastal walks and rides, but a serious downturn in the weather combined with am epic tent malfunction left me with what can only be described a catastrophic sense of humour failure, and in less than 48 hours I was back home, wondering what on earth I would do.

Then today, I was inspired. A health detox was what I needed, a fresh start; in exactly the same way as "Egg Goes Healthy" began. But this wouldn't just be about trying to get fit, run faster, lose weight or trying to eat less cake, I've done all that already. This would be about filling the body with nutrients, filling the mind with happiness and getting myself back on track. So I will be on my very own self-created "health camp" this week, with many a cleansing activity planned and fingers crossed, I may just find in it myself to write some amusing daily anecdotes too.

Stay tuned!