I’ve talked a lot lately about the physical benefits of exercise, but I haven’t talked much about the mental benefits.  I’ve been having some difficulty lately adjusting to this whole afib thing.  It’s just so random.  One minute I’m fine and the next I’m in the hospital because my heart isn’t working right.  It is easy to get a bit crazy and spend a lot of time worrying.  Every time my heart rate or blood pressure takes a spike, I think I’m down for the count again.  I could easily become obsessed.

One thing that does seem to help is exercise.  First of all, it brings down my blood pressure and calms down my heart rate.  It also helps me relieve stress, which definitely impacts both blood pressure and heart rate.  It also makes me feel healthy.  If I can breathe hard and sweat and than recover with no ill effects, than I can’t be too sick, right?  It may not be the most logical argument in the world, but in my head it works.

Ever since this whole afib thing began, one thing I’ve promised myself was that I wouldn’t let it take over my life.  From what I’ve read, my case is pretty mild.  I’ve had a few hospitalizations, but I’m not passing out, I’m not having strokes and my heart is getting better.  Exercise seems to help with that.  At my last hospitalization, the doctor said he had seen a great improvement in my heart function.  A lot of that can be attributed to getting fitter and losing weight.

So, in the end, I know exercise has a lot of benefits.  I still hate sweating and hate exercising, but I know that, in the long run, doing both those things will be good for me, and will help keep the bad things at bay.

You really can’t argue with that.

This morning, when I weighed myself, I realized I’d lost 24 pounds.  That’s 24 actual pounds that I lost through sweat and exercise and eating right.  That shouldn’t be confused with the weight I lost after my first episode of afib.  That was water weight.   This is weight I’ve worked to lose one pound at a time.

I know that, for some people, 24 pounds might not sound like a lot.  For me, however, it is quite an achievement.  It is not only an achievement that I lost the weight, but I’ve kept it off too.  I still have a long way to go until I weigh what I want to weigh, but I’m glad to have made it this far.

This morning I did a typical girl thing.  I’ve kept a pair of pants that I bought a couple years ago and have never fit into.  Don’t ask me why I held on to them, but I’m sure almost every overweight woman has some article of clothing like this.  Anyway, this morning I decided to put those pants on.  When I did try them on, they fit.  It was an awesome feeling.

As I said, I know I have a long way to go.   Still, sitting here right this minute, I feel like I have a real shot at getting where I want to be in regards to weight and health.

That, in case you’re wondering, feels very nice.

I’m proud to announce that I am back on the exercise wagon. I finally made up my mind that I had to do something, and exercise does make me feel better and healthier. I’ve been stressing myself out a lot lately, obsessing about whether or not my heart rate was too fast or just generally obsessing. Exercise helps me relax, and has the added benefit of dropping my blood pressure and heart rate. Given that, I’m stupid if I don’t exercise every day.

I think I stopped exercising regularly because I was having a bit of a temper tantrum. I was told one way to help keep afib at bay was to eat right and exercise. I did those things, lost about 20 pounds, and the afib still came back. I guess I was looking at exercising as some kind of magic bargain. I’d sweat and my heart would work right. Apparently it isn’t that simple.

Still, I know exercise does a lot of good. I sleep better. I feel better. My blood pressure and heart rate are better. Each pound I lose only makes me healthier, and that’s good. As for the rest, my body and heart will do what they will. At least, if I way less and have better stamina, my body will be able to handle whatever comes a little more easily.

I’d say that’s worth a good daily sweat.

I’ve never much loved my body. Ever since I was a kid it has had problems. My heart didn’t work right. My skin broke out. My spine was slightly curved. I got migraines. I burned almost every time I went out into the sun. My body weighed too much and didn’t always want to sleep and just plain seemed like a lot of trouble. I generally felt liked I’d been put together by blind factor workers who got their parts out of the reject bin.

Lately, however, I’m starting to realize how miraculous my body really is. Despite all the handicaps it started with, and despite the somewhat less than benign neglect I’ve visited upon it, my good old body has kept on chugging along. Given that, I thought today would be a nice time to list the things I love about my body. It has after all not done so badly by me.

The first thing I love is my skin. I have the very fair, clear skin of a redhead. I’ve been complimented on my complexion many times. I do freckle some, but not an excessive amount, and I almost never get pimples and have never had acne. I know a lot of people who spend a lot of money to get the complexion I have naturally. I’m grateful for that.

I also love my legs. I have great calves and should probably wear a skirt more often than I do. When I do where I skirt I often get complimented on my legs. As I get more and more fit, my legs should get even better. I can’t wait for that.

I love my hair, I can safely say there aren’t many people who have hair like it. I was born a redhead, copper red to be exact, but as I’ve gotten older my hair has faded out to a unique color. There’s some red and some gray and some blonde. It’s been characterized as platinum blonde or strawberry blonde. I’m really not sure what color it is, but it curls with abandon and people seem to like to color so I suppose it really doesn’t matter.

I love my eyes. I have hazel eyes and they change color depending on what I wear. People have told me they’re penetrating eyes. Mostly, I just think the color is pretty.

It’s funny, but spending time thinking about what I like about my body really does help me feel more positive about my health and my fitness. I may not be perfect, and probably never well be perfect, but there’s more raw material there to work with than I usually allow myself to acknowledge. That’s very comforting.

It’s really frustrating to see yourself going into the same old pattern and not feeling the motivation to pull yourself out.  I thought if I started working out and could see I was losing weight that would be enough to keep me going.  Now, on the other side of a week when I vowed to get back to exercising and really didn’t,  I’m wondering what will keep me motivated.

Part of the lapse I can blame on the new meds.  They’re kicking my ass and making me tired.  Part of it I suppose can be attributed to fear.  After all the whole point of the meds is to keep my heart from beating too fast and too hard.  What if I exercise and my heart gets stuck in high gear?  Even though I know that’s a pretty irrational fear, it’s still a fear I have.

Another contributing factor is equal parts laziness and anger.  I had a bargain with my body.  I would do what was necessary to get it fit, and it would behave itself.  My body isn’t consistent in keeping up its end of the bargain.  So, even though I know that losing additional weight and getting in better shape could possibly help keep episodes of afib to a minimum, part of me is being stubborn.   I often get that way when my bargains based on magical thinking don’t work.  It’s rather annoying.

I suppose the positive side to all this is that I can get back on the wagon as easily as I feel off.  The other positive side is that, even though my exercise schedule may have suffered a bit, my eating has stayed largely on track.  I’d say that’s progress.  Instead of letting both disciplines lapse, I only let one side down.  It’s still not perfect, but it is infinitely better than it was before.

This morning I had an EKG which showed my heart is, with the help of medication, maintaining a perfect sinus rhythm.  I’d been waiting for the EKG before attempting exercise again, mostly because I wanted to give my heart a few days to settle into the new rhythm.  Given that everything looked find, I decided I’d give exercising a try tonight.

Having afib, particularly when we don’t know exactly what causes it, can be a bit nerve wracking.  Every time you try something new there is the worry that it will send your heart back into an irregular rhythm.  Even if that something is, like exercise, something you’ve been doing almost every day for the last few months, there’s still that concern.  What if it’s too much stress?  What if your heart speeds up and can’t slow down again?  What if?

Still, I know I need to lose weight and I can’t do that if I don’t exercise, that’s just a fact of life.  I’m also smart enough to know I shouldn’t start off with my hardest aerobics tape, so I started off a little easy.  I’ve lost some ground physically, seeing as how I spent the last week plus mostly sitting on my behind, but I did all right.  My heart rate also snapped back to normal, so overall I’d say the experiment was a success.

I will say this, one thing that afib has taught me is the joy of movement.  Being confined to a bed, or being unable to breathe well limits your world.  Exercise makes me feel healthy and powerful, two things I need to feel if I’m going to successfully manage and conquer this problem. 

So, today I worked up a sweat and conquered a fear all in one 40 minute exercise session.  I’d say that’s a pretty good first day.

If you’ve read any of the other posts on this blog, you probably know that a lot of my weight loss has been prompted by being diagnosed with Afib.  The doctors, and common sense, tell me that if I weigh less my heart will have to work less hard.  If my heart works less hard, there’s a chance my Afib might stop on its own.  That would mean less meds, and would certainly be better for me.

So, given what I know, exercise is a good idea.  When I had my first Afib episode in March I started exercising and eating better almost immediately after I was released from the hospital.  I thought that episode was going to be the only episode and that I was now cured and all that remained was to lose weight.  I now know I wasn’t cured.  The fact that I sent last week in the hospital with not one but two episodes of Afib proves that.

What I face now is an irrational fear that I haven’t been able to shake.  My heart rate and blood pressure are now good.  Other than being a little tired from the new meds I feel fine.  Still, even though I know there’s no rational basis for being worried, I’m a little scared to start excercising again.  What if I push my heart too hard?  What if it goes out of rhythm again? 

In my rational mind I know that exercise didn’t cause my Afib, and that it might well solve it.  In the irrational part of my mind, I think everything could send me into another episode.  Since no one can really tell me what started all this in the first place, anything, a chicken sandwich, a 2 mile walk or a new kind of dish soap, could be the culprit. 

I guess the only thing I can do is rely on past evidence.  Exercising did make my heart stronger.  Losing weight did help my blood pressure and my heart rate.  The doctors, who are supposed to be the experts, tell me that exercising is a good thing to do.  Given all that, I know what I should do.

Tomorrow I start exercising again.

In my last post I wrote about how much I hate being right when it comes to being in poor health.  When I wrote that post I didn’t know the half of it.  The next morning I woke up and was in afib again.  I was subsequently back in the hospital for three days.  I’m on new meds which appear to be working.  I’m also mad as hell.

I want to lose weight.  I want to be healthy.  I had hoped, and probably talked myself into, the idea that this afib thing was a one time deal.  Now I’ve had two episodes in a single week.  

My body and I have always been at odds.  It breaks out in rashes and my eyes are bad and my spine has a slight curve and the list goes on and on.  In and of themselves none of these things is life threatening or even much more than a minor annoyance.  Add them all up, however, and I often feel like I was put together with factory seconds by someone who didn’t read the manual.

I’ve read that one of the important things you need to do to lose weight is to learn to love your body, even when it doesn’t look like you want it to look.  My problem is that my body not only doesn’t look like I want it to look, it also doesn’t work like I want it to work.  I find myself getting angry that yet again I’m dealing witha health issue.  I also, sometimes at least, find myself wondering what the heck all the sweating and eating right and trying to get healthy is for. 

Right now, that’s where we are.  The new drugs are working.  My heart rate and blood pressure are good. 

So, I guess, tonight I love my body.  I hope I feel the same way tomorrow.

There was something wrong with me.  I was in afib.  About 7:30 last night I took my blood pressure and the heart monitor was blinking off the hook.  My heart was beating at 153 beats per minute.  For those who may not know, that isn’t good.

Knowing that, I packed a small bag and took myself of to the Emergency Room.  Sure enough I was in afib and they eventually admitted me.  I spent a fun filled night giving blood and being woken for no good reason.  This morning they cardioverted me and now we’re back to square one.

We’ll tinker with the meds.  I’ve been told to keep on the path I’ve been following when it comes to diet and exercise.  No one can, however, tell me what triggers the afib, or when and how it can be stopped.  You can imagine how happy I am about all of that.

I want to be healthy.  That’s become one of the main goals in my life.  I’m just not sure that, even if I do everything right, that’s a goal I can achieve.  I feel like my body keeps trying to get in the way. 

Anyway, I’m home.  This episode is over.  It may, God willing, be the last one.  I guess all I can do is try to do the things I know are good for my body and hope.

I feel weird today.  I think I’ve picked up a 24 hour bug or something.  I ate lunch a bit ago and that made me feel better.  Still, I’m concerned, as I always am now.  Since my hospitalization in March anything that feels a bit off scares me.  I suppose that’s not really a surprise.

The central fact that gives me problems is this:  I didn’t know I was in afib.  I knew I felt bad.  I knew something was probably wrong.  I could not, however, tell that my heart wasn’t beating properly.  Every doctor I’ve told that expresses surprise that I didn’t know, but I really didn’t.  My heart has always had a funny beating pattern.  Over the years, I guess I’ve just learned not to notice it.

That isn’t to say that I’m not without tools to tell if something is wrong.  If my weight goes up by several pounds quickly, that’s a reliable sign.  This morning I was actually down two pounds.   If my blood pressure and heart rate monitor shows high blood pressure or a really fast heart rate, that’s a reliable sign.  Both times I’ve taken my pressure today it’s been dead nuts normal and the heart rate has been perfect.   So, odds are I’ve simply picked up a flu virus that is making me fell a little under the weather and otherwise I’m perfectly fine.  Tomorrow I’ll most likely wake up an feel entirely normal. 

If there’s anything I hate about all this it is the uncertainty.  I wish there was an entirely reliable sign that would tell me without a doubt that things were o.k. or something was wrong.  There isn’t though, and I have to walk the line between ignoring signals of what could be a problem and running to the Emergency Room every time I feel the least bit off.  Leaving aside everything else, I don’t have the money to do that. 

I suppose this is perhaps another lesson in trust for me.  I have to trust that, if I do the right things, I’ll stay healthy. 

My problem is I’ve always had a rough time with trust.