Health Update!

I've had a rough couple of months, health wise. Luckily it appears that it has been nothing really serious.

Starting in July I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that I was choking and dying. My thoughts spiraled out of control and I couldn't get back to sleep because I was convinced that I was dying. At first I thought that I couldn't breath possibly because I am overweight, but then I began to wonder if I was having panic attacks. Over the months I think it's safe to say that I have been having periodic panic attacks, and I have no idea why the panic attacks just suddenly started.

A couple of months ago, I went to the get a massage and afterward I felt dizzy. I was dizzy for almost a month, primarily when I laid down. It wasn't just the dizziness that was worrisome though. Every time that I laid down my heart would beat hard and flutter periodically. During the day and night, my arms would tremble and I was convinced that something might have been seriously wrong.

I went to the doctor and he confirmed that I had vertigo, and claimed that the shakiness and heavy heartbeat was due to anxiety. He gave me some temporary anti-anxiety medicine and after about a week of using it, I stopped shaking, my heart wasn't beating so hard, and my vertigo eventually disappeared. I can't figure out if I felt better due to the anti-anxiety meds or if it is due to exercise and eating better.

After about four days of taking the medicine, I suddenly felt that my body felt absolutely great. It was then that I realized that stress is going to kill me if I don't get it under control.

Starting in January, I feel off the wagon for about a month and started eating crappy food. And then I suddenly started feeling dizzy and had the shakiness again. I went back to the doctor and he eventually checked my heart by giving me an ekg, and gave me the anti-anxiety meds again. They also cleaned out my ears, and I apparently had a blockage in my right ear, which I am hoping caused the vertigo. The meds didn't work so quickly this time but the vertigo is gone and I am feeling a little better. I am trying to cut back to taking the meds every other day, and I'm doing pretty well with walking and doing yoga.

Wish me luck that when I go off the meds again in about a week that I can try to manage the stress with my exercise, sleep and healthy eating!

I can't wait to tell you about some health books that I have been reading. I'm just about to go on a "21 day plan" for getting more energy. I will blog about that soon!

How Many Times Can You Get Back on the Wagon??

I've been neglecting this blog and I haven't been on in a while. I would think that it is safe to say that I have also been neglecting myself for a while now.

I just signed on and I saw many of the lovely comments that people have been leaving, and I really am going to commit this year to trying to be more consistent with my blogging. And my healthy habits.

I've been meaning to move this blog over to my own hosted domain but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I will soon though! I'm just trying to figure out if I want the blog name to remain the same or if I want to have a general title about my goals for just being healthy in general, and not necessarily about walking. I am working on a couple of other web projects, so meanwhile I will just keep writing here until I can get the other blog up and ready to go. My goal is to have the blog up ready to go by the end of February.

I've been doing a little better lately, trying to be more consistent with walking. I started yoga and I've been trying to eat better. I have been having a few health issues, but that is something that I will update you on in another post!

In my next post I am going to tell you what was happening with me health wise, and then I want to tell you about some of the feelings that I started to recently have when started taking yoga classes again this month. See you soon!

Oh, by the way, I will be also be spending some time over on facebook and also linking there when I update her! Join the Walking Queen Facebook page!!

Getting Stuff in Order: Part Two

Initially I wanted to start walking again and training for some sort of marathon, and I hoped to write about it on my blog. But lately I have realized that my issues are much more complex than just writing about walking and losing weight. My whole life is sort of out of control, and has been out of control for quite a bit of time now. And there is just no way that I can lose weight and be healthy if I don't start trying to address some of these issues first.

As I mentioned in my last post, my house is out of control. It's surprising that my finances are not out of control, but only because of the easiness that online banking affords. I've been known to pay many bills late and my finances would also be out of control if I weren't able to log into online banking and pay all my bills in less than two minutes.

I have been neglecting everything about myself for quite a bit of time now.

To illustrate this point, I bought a car over a year ago and I still have failed to put the license plates on the car. A couple of months ago, I moved the license plates inside of my car and they are probably under the back seat somewhere. And I have just realized that I have never paid my car registration for this year, which expired at the beginning of May, and now I probably have to pay a fine for being late. Well, so goes my life story.

Another example is that I have lived in my house for over ten years and I have hardly done any upkeep on the maintenance of it. About two years ago, the dish soap rack fell off the shower wall and I have never even replaced it. Around that same time, I also took some of the grout off of the shower and vowed to replace it. Which I haven't. Every single time that I take a shower, I imagine that the water is probably seeping down under the bathtub and probably rotting the floor.

I have lived in this house for over a decade now, and I have not bought one major thing for the house other than a coffee table and a side table. Everything else was bought for me by my mother or given to me from my father. I want to pull my hair out because I think that it's about damn time that I take time out to make this house my own! Can I please just have my own couch and paintings on the walls??

Clearly I must be depressed, because that's the only explanation I can think of.

I rarely clean the house (except yesterday--I cleaned for five hours, trying to get my life back in order!). I rarely buy any new clothes or shoes for myself, and I literally wear something until it is no longer wearable anymore. I haven't gone on vacation in years-and I used to love to travel. Instead of vacation, I work, work and work. In fact, I work so much that my life has become out of balance because I would rather work a fourteen hour day than take time out for myself in order to have a vacation or relax.

So I am taking a break from trying to lose weight and I am going to just focus on cleaning up and fixing my environment. In the meantime I am going to try to eat better, sleep better, and exercise. But at this point I am so overwhelmed that I just can't do all of it, and I've got to focus first on my immediate environment because I just can't live like this anymore.

Getting Stuff in Order

My house is a complete disaster! Trust me!! I am absolutely embarrassed about how disgustingly messy and ridiculous that I have let it get. That just goes to show that I must really be depressed or something, because I can't think of a non-depressed person who would actually tolerate the way that I have been living.

They always say that our environment affects our mood, and that if the house is completely messy then it will affect the way that we feel. Well, the house certainly only makes me feel worse. And for six months now I have been promising to clean it up and I just haven't.

Back in December I bought verizon fios television and they were supposed to install it, but I keep calling and canceling because the house is such a mess. Finally they are coming today. And here I am, scrambling to try to clean up, waking up very early so that I can have about four hours to clean before they get here.

Yesterday they told me that I need to let them get into the garage to install a battery and I almost canceled because well, quite frankly my garage is an embarrassment. I somehow suspect that these people might have just seen it all and probably could care less about what my house looks like though.

I took pics that I want to post, but I am really embarrassed to put them on the blog. Once I get enough courage, I will do so.

I know that I need to clean, because I know that feeling horrible about my living environment certainly doesn't help me feel better about myself in order to get better with my health.

Wish me luck at cleaning today!!

I'm Back (Sort of)

As you may have noticed, I have been missing in action. I've had a couple of personal issues that I have had to deal with over the past couple of months, which have to do with family. So I haven't had the urge to blog at all.

I am in the process of moving this blog over to my own domain, and this time I plan on taking my blogging seriously. I am just in the process of brainstorming a domain name, because although I enjoy the walking queen title, I don't think that it encompasses everything that I truly want to blog about.

So please be patient while I think of a name that suits me.

In my next blogging experiment I am going to finally take it serious and try to get my ass in gear. My health, weight and life has somewhat gotten out of control and I want it back.

I will keep you updated!!

Being Sick SUCKS!

I'm frustrated.

I've been slightly sick for about a week, and I am feeling frustrated because I don't know if I should go outside walking or not. Last Saturday I woke up feeling a little sick, which turned into a fever on Sunday and I felt very ill on Monday. All week I have been congested and a little tired, and I can feel that the cold is starting to slightly settle in my chest-but only a little.

I'm not coughing up phlegm or anything, and other than slightly tired for the past couple of days I am not feeling overly ill. I'm just worried because I was recently around a friend and her cousin and the cousin was recently diagnosed with pneumonia. She said that she didn't really seem to have any symptoms, but then suddenly she has been seeming to get worse and is now hospitalized.

So I don't know if I am being a hypochondriac or what because all I keep wondering is if pneumonia is contagious. I read online that it can be.

For the past two days I am starting to feel a slight wheezing in my chest and I have a dry cough. I'm really congested. I don't have a fever or anything.

Tuesday I went out walking slowly for about thirty minutes and I wanted to go out walking yesterday but it got dark too soon. Today I really want to go out walking, but I am not sure if I am supposed to be out walking when I am starting to feel that slight wheezing in the chest.

The good news is that I have felt anxious all week long because I am sick and I really want to get out and walk for an hour or so, but I am afraid to do it because I am afraid that I will wear myself out and make myself more sick. But I'm not having exhaustion or anything.

What to do? What to do?

I will wait until tomorrow to walk.

When Does Fat Acceptance Become a Form of Enabling??

Today I have been reading online about Kevin Smith (some Hollywood director-but I am too lazy to figure out who he is) and how he was asked by Southwest Airlines to get off of a flight over his weight. The story sounds strange to me, because the article states that Southwest has a policy that some obese passengers have to buy two seats. So I am not too sure if he refused to buy two seats, or why he was asked off the plane.

You can read the article here.

The article stated that the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance has called for a boycott of Southwest Airlines.

Honestly I feel very irritated with this entire episode.

I myself am over one hundred pounds overweight and I have started this blog as a way to try to come to terms with this issue and try to lose the weight. There is honestly very few reasons as to why people can't lose weight-even some of us with health issues have a variety of options that we can take to lose weight.

Over the past couple of years it has become increasingly hard for me to fit into a seat on an airplane. I can fit, but it is just uncomfortable. The day that they tell me that I am going to have to buy two seats instead of one would be so very humiliating-so much in fact that maybe it would wake me up and cause me to take control of my weight issues.

I know that overweight people are discriminated against because I have noticed over the past ten years that people treat me differently as I have gained weight. But I am no longer going to sit and cry about it, nor am I going to call in the National Association for Fat Acceptance to force other people to accept what is a serious health dilemma that is going to either kill me or sooner or later hurt my standard of life.

Maybe I am being intolerant, but perhaps it is because I am sick of making excuses for myself and listening to excuses by other people.

What do you think?

Update: Southwest makes a statement that he was asked off the flight because he did not buy two tickets due to flying on standby. You can read the article here.