Running is my happy place.
Running is where I push myself.
Running is where I fill myself up with ocean sights, sounds & smells.
Running is where I smile deeply as I soak in the sunshine on my skin.
Running is where I feel accomplished & proud of myself.
So, when my Natural Health Practitioner pointed out that running was actually hurting my health, I was crushed!
I was not an obsessive runner or even a compulsive tracker, I simply felt better when I started my day with a morning run in the sun.
The news that running was having negative effects on my health was actually double-crushing. It crushed my sense of efficiency too. As a mum, ‘efficiency’ is on the top of my things to-do list.
Let me elaborate …
Running for me meant that our dog had a good run too, which meant that come evening time, I was free to cook dinner and be with the kids, without having to worry about the dog too.
So just how could running be bad for me?
It wasn’t causing physical injury, I was getting my daily dose of vitamin D, time in nature and even some social time along the way, efficiency was front & centre again!
CRUSH, CRUSH, CRUSHED!!!
It is no secret that health is complicated. I mean that is why so many practitioners dedicate their entire working lives to trying to understand just a tiny fraction of it. This is not a blog about making running ‘bad’, nor is this a blog about making running ‘good’. This singular, overly simplistic thinking is what, I believe, has created so much of the health confusion we currently find ourselves in.
This is a blog about when doing what we love can actually work against us, not always, not forever, but for a time, typically in a time of stress. This is a blog about when doing something I loved, running, turned out to be creating more stress on my body, in a time of already high stress, which made my health worse. It’s a blog about processing that, and making changes, so that I could get back to doing that thing I loved, running.
This is what it means to work with nutrition, with holistic health. It means getting to the bottom of your symptoms, finding the WHY identifying triggers, making a plan, doing the work, healing, recovering & getting back to living your best life. Who doesn’t want to get back to living their best life!
Times of stress happen to us all. We all feel stressed for a thousand different reasons, yet our body often interprets them much the same, and then just for fun, it spits them back out at us in a thousand different ways.
What causes you stress, may not feel like stress to me. Likewise, what I feel as stress may not feel like stress at all to you. Yet our bodies receive ‘stress’ signals in the same way. When I am in a state of stress, my body spits it back out at me in the form of poor sleep, anxiety and depression, when you are in a state of stress, your body may spit it back out at you as a flair in autoimmune symptoms, a worsening in your pain, your skin could break out or you may suddenly find yourself unable to tolerate most food groups.
When we put multiple stresses on top of each other they create a rather heavy burden, and it shows up in our health.
Our symptoms tend to get louder and louder, they cascade into more and more symptoms until we finally stop and listen to them. Until we finally ask for help to get back on track.
Have you ever felt stressed at work, then your sleep suffered, then your mood suffered, then your diet suffered, then just for fun it spilled over into your relationships, & then you woke up one morning and wondered why your body was full of pain, or you hadn’t done a solid poo in months?
Well you might say, we can ‘treat’ the pain with painkillers, we can take Metamucil to get things moving properly. We can even go back and ‘treat’ the mood with mood meds, the sleep with sleep pills & we have ourselves one delicious cocktail.
Taahhh-Daahh !!!
Yet I think we can all agree, at least on some level that there is no magic pill, or cocktail right?
& I most certainly am not going to endorse the use of cocktails on a daily basis!
There is another side of this, a non-pill side, and that is the side I found myself on.
When I feel myself stressed out, not sleeping & this spills over into my moods, I have a tendency to run more, I run harder & I run further. Suddenly my lap time is down by whole minutes, I’ve pushed to 6kms instead of my usual 4.5 and I do it daily. I’m also harder on myself, hating every cramp, every muscle, every ounce of fatigue, every shallow breath.
In addition to that, I also tend not to eat much, I find it hard to digest food when I’m upset, so I skip meals. I turn to more and more coffee and I find myself (not surprisingly) unable to relax, constantly in a ‘state of clench’ & the only way I could actually wind down is when I managed to push myself into a state of utter exhaustion, physically, emotionally & mentally.
SO HOW DID IT FEEL???
Oddly it felt not so bad, I had been there so many times before. My body and my mind were masters at masking it for me. It was a state of health that was very familiar to me, comfortable even. Those states are harder for us to recognise as imbalances because of that familiarity.
However, there was this little voice inside that was trying its best to shout out
“ASK FOR HELP ALREADY, YOU KNOW BETTER!”
Did I listen, of course NOT!
I waited until my periods disappeared, my hair started to fall out & I was so wrapped up in anxiety & depression that I only had a handful of good days out of the entire month.
Then I waited a little a bit longer.
Then I did it!! I took a big deep breath, I put my big girl pants on & I booked an appointment with my Natural Health Practitioner. I stopped & I asked for help.
I booked in with my Natural Health Practitioner, who delivered the news I didn’t want to hear. I booked in with my Osteopath, for some extra whole-body system support. I booked in for a Magnesium swim with my girlfriend & this time I didn’t try to be a hero and outlast everyone in the Ice Pool. I even booked in for a facial I had been meaning to get for months.
Then I continued to do the work, to support my health more holistically, to take more notice of my body’s signals. I traded out the guilt for fresh air & quickly things turned around for me.
I took a short course of herbs, a handful of supplements for a little longer, and I took more notice and care about what I ate (not just what the kids ate), when I ate & how I ate.
I did my best to relax.
I did my best to reach out & reconnect with friends.
I did my best to prioritise family time, over work time.
I walked where I used to run.
I rested where I used to push.
I unclenched!
Despite the gazillion of articles telling us that running is great for our health, that it reduces anxiety & depression that it boosts mood and helps us to sleep better, it wasn’t working for me at this time.
WHY?
Well, because I hadn’t addressed what was underlying all this ‘health noise’. Which turned out to be my adrenals, my Hormones. Running felt good because it should. However, it was putting additional pressure on my already flat-lining adrenals, and my already haywire hormones.
Running wasn’t bad for me, running wasn’t the cause of my issues. It was simply putting additional pressure on my health when actually what it needed was a little more TLC.
People often come into my clinic telling me that this or that worked for everyone else they know, & they want to know why it is not working for them. Often, it is because there is something else going on underneath, there is simply, something bigger at play & it needs addressing first.
Running towards Anxiety is what I was doing. Running was hurting my health, despite making me feel good at the same time. Recognising this inconsistency, acknowledging it early, doing the work, allowed me to recover quickly and get back to running .. this time without it impacting my health.
When we look at modes of exercise such as running, or foods, our western culture has a very limiting habit of classifying them as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. This ‘good’ or ‘bad’ categorising can change with the latest influencer, a media frenzy over poorly interpreted research findings or even the day of the week.
When we talk about holistic health, we the tendency to categorise our food or our exercise as good or bad simply disappears. we view things more in flow with our seasons, our health, our life-stage, our stresses and most importantly our own intuition.
Our own intuition, I believe, is vastly undervalued and if we are not careful, at risk of being completely dismissed when it comes to our health in particular.
Take for example ….
You drink a cup of coffee after lunch, you tell yourself you needed it, despite that little voice in your head saying you really shouldn’t have had one so late in the afternoon, you can almost feel that it will impact your sleep tonight. so you quickly push it aside, remind yourself that you deserve it, you have been ‘good’ with other things so it can’t possible be ‘that bad’.
Then you skim read a few words of an article that seems to say that a coffee in the afternoon is now linked to greater heart health. You pat yourself on the back. You say to your self “see I knew it wasn’t so bad to have that coffee, I’m actually doing something good for myself, they said so”
That night you have a pretty average sleep.
You repeat this pattern for the next few weeks, months or even years.
Your sleep slowly deteriorates, other little symptoms pop up like mild anxiety, but you brush them aside too, definitely not related.
You now will justify that afternoon coffee with whatever you can throw at it, you cannot possible imagine giving it up.
This is the path so many of us find ourselves on, the path of health confusion. of health miss-information, the path of ignoring our own body’s signals, cries for help, a path of shutting off our own intuition.
When it comes to health, when it comes to healing. We must, I believe reawaken our own intuition, our ability to listen to our own bodies, and hear those cries for help.
Instead of letting instagram or tick tock tell us if that afternoon coffee is good for us on Tuesdays or bad for us on Wednesdays, we need to be able to tune in to our selves. we need to be able to recognise that perhaps that afternoon coffee is fine when we are relaxing on holidays with our friends and family by the beach, but actually not so great for us when we have several deadlines looming at work and the kids are really stressing you out.
We need to stop listening to the media and start listening to ourselves.
Running toward anxiety for me, this time, was about understanding and reprogramming the way I thought about running and the way I approached running in my life. Running isn’t bad, Anxiety isn’t fixed. We are malleable. We have this incredible ability to heal.
When it came to running for me, it was less about ‘giving it up’ and much more about ‘finding a better way’ to incorporate it into my life. As it so often is.
“It was less about ‘giving it up’ and much more about ‘finding a better way’ to incorporate it into my life. As it so often is.”
So, what was my plan, to reverse the cascade of health symptoms I found myself surrounded by, the ‘diss-ease’ my body was feeling because I was out of balance, out of tune and out of touch.
As I said before it was about reconfiguring ‘running’ and a few other factors, in my life, to better support me so I could get back to feeling good in all the other areas of my life as well.
I decided, reluctantly to go back to walking three days a week, & I did this in the evening. I am a morning exercise person, the morning is when I feel the most motivated to move so in order to help me stick to my plan I opted for evening walks, I feel less motivated to run in the dark so this helped slow me down.
We have to find ways to set ourselves up for success not failure. Walking along the beach in the morning sun, is hard for me to stay walking.
I still allowed myself to run three days a week. I did my best to take the foot off the ‘push’ accelerator.
I made more of an effort with my food, and I made less of an effort with coffee.
And after just a few short months …
My adrenals got the attention they very rightly deserved.
My hormones levelled out a little more & my hair grew back.
My sleep started to restore me again.
& those depressed & anxious thoughts came knocking a little less often.
Then i set out for a walk one morning and my body gave me the ok to run again, so I listened. I ran, gently, without pushing, without guilt.
Then running felt good again, not just momentarily but whole-health-heartedly.
Running was back to doing what it should be, boosting endorphins, building strength & invigorating my mind.
Staying in tune was now my mission, and continues to be my mission, my body lets me know when to push and when to slow down.
This is what it is like to work holistically with your health.
This is what healing looks like.
This is what making health fun again, really is.
My advice to you and your family, is to listen more to your own intuition, tune the media out instead.
To seek health advice in the right place, from the right practitioners.
Be the master of your own health, & let’s teach the next generation to do that too!
