As Mr Young used to say ...

... we're cooking with gas! Literally and metaphorically. I should perhaps point out that Mr Young was my high school Physics teacher. He was awesomely uncool and gave precisely zero f*cks about it. He used make us do lots of experiments with lasers so he could 'helpfully' puff on his pipe in class thus creating smoke so we could see the beams more clearly. He had many a naff catchphrase, one of which was: "We're cooking with gas!" He was, in short, rather ace and I was always very fond of him.

This week, I have been doing a whole lot of cooking. I haven't yet got over my fatigue issues. I have also eaten a lot more carbs than usual over the past few months. I know from previous experience that the two are not unrelated so last weekend I managed to smack myself in the head with a clue by four, decided to go back to my paleo-esque type of eating and what do you know, within days I was feeling brighter and more alert. I'm sticking with it from now on. Foccacia is like crack to me - enjoyable but ultimately just not worth it. It's not worth going there. This means I have had to be a bit more organised with my weekly shop but that's no bad thing. I quite like planning out my meals for the week. I enjoy food immensely and I look forward to all my meals so I quite like knowing when I wake up on Wednesday morning that I will be tucking into cashew and walnut crusted chicken later that night.

For me, this type of eating involves a breakfast that is more typically Scandinavian - proteins and salad rather than cereal - a lunch that usually involves an elaborate omelette and a dinner of fish/meat and veg. Sweetness comes in the form of sweet potatoes/yams and fruit (either before or after training). Oh, and protein pancakes! For me this type of eating works because it is mindful in that I have to plan ahead a little but I don't ever obsess about it. I don't have any wild cravings and, importantly for me, I feel I can eat a decent quantity of food. I don't like to feel that I'm going without!

As well as cleaning up my diet, I've been cleaning up my personal life too. I feel better for it and I now have something which has been missing for most of 2012:

Not to get too hippy about it but there's been a lot of hand holding and a sense of moving forward together. There's a kind of special synergy about at the moment and that means a lot to me. I tend to cut myself off when things are rough and, for the first time, I am really not doing that ... and it's okay :)

I've also introduced a new element to my strength training and I am loving it! We're going for the full on Strongest Man approach. More on that next time but for now, all I will say is Farmer's Walk - oof!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I'm easing myself slowly, oh so slowly, back into training and it's amazing the difference that it has made to my outlook. Just getting my body moving is calming my mind. It's like I've been away and am now coming back into myself. It's a huge relief but it has made me aware that I rely far too heavily on my training as a source of confidence and as a coping mechanism.

The fact is that stressful things will happen anyway and I need to have a bit more in my response arsenal than simply running, cycling, swimming and strength training. There are mental reminders that I need and physical things that I can do but most of all I need to remember that there are options!

I think it's easy to get bogged down in the day to day stuff you have to do, sometimes to the point where you forget what the things you actually enjoy are. This means any chill out time you get to yourself is often wasted and the stress mounts. There are lots of things which I enjoy and I'm trying to remind myself of that. During hard times, I withdraw and end up as a hard little ball of unfeelingness, a little stone, a kernel which is part of me but not the full story. It takes work to reawaken the rest, I forget that I am capable of feeling more, of being more. The pathways back to yourself are not always complex, momentum can be sparked by the smallest of things; a book, a film, making something, just being with people. I won't lie, I have had an absolutely foul week but in amongst it all, I have gathered some things to me which will help me in the next few days:

Reading Bath-time reading is The Catcher in the Rye. All other reading has been supplied in digital format by the lovely and generous Taff-man. Thank you sweetie :)

Watching I treated myself to a Hitchcock boxset. I still have some Twin Peaks to watch and there has been some proper anime geekage with the boy. I have to confess also to the watching of cheesy horror flicks! Shamed as I am to admit it, I have also been watching far too many re-runs of America's Next Top Model. It's my guilty secret.

Doing I've been cooking up a storm. We're mildly obsessed with Italian and Spanish food at the moment so there has been paella and a whole lot of tapas, gnocchi, focaccia and pasta as far as the eye can see. Everything features either olives (sorry Neil!), chorizo or both. I have a huge appetite at the moment but only for savoury things and generally, the hotter the better. We had Mexican food for dinner tonight at Pancho Villas and I scoffed all the stuffed jalapenos. They were lovely. Mind you, our very non-trad Easter meal will be chickpea curry - love it! I've also been getting stuck back into some more crafty/artistic endeavours.

The head stuff I guess this is where I often get stuck. I have a tendency to blame myself when things go wrong but this week has opened my eyes a bit. There has been a difficult situation going on for a while now and the longer it went on, the more worthless I felt. This week, I brought it to a close completely. I was tolerating things which made me feel horrendous simply because I was too conscious of not wanting to give offence, of wanting to remain civil, of trying to make things easier for everyone. In the end, it wasn't worth the effort and in all these months spent feeling progressively worse about myself what it comes down to is that at worst, I am guilty of poor judgement and naivety. The older I get, the more straightforwardly I present myself - this is me, some bits are kind of crappy and I have my faults but overall, I'm a decent person. It simply didn't occur to me that someone could get to my age and have such a lack of insight about themselves and their behaviour. Surely the rest of us gave up blaming the world for our own faults by the time we left our teens? Ultimately though, freeing myself from this situation has left me feeling better than I have in months.

It's also given me the conviction that I need to stay single (and celibate) for the near future. I want to get my fitness back on track, focus on getting my nutrition qualification and a million other things. This means complicated relationship nonsense has to go on the back burner for a while. Priorities!