Aches, Pains and Muscle Strains

I saw this amazing quote that said "Sometimes the weight you need to lose isn't on your body." I tense up often when I'm anxious and stressed. I grind my teeth. I feel bloated and heavy, no matter what the scale says. I usually avoid the scale though.

I think I had felt this the most yesterday. I wasn't weighed down by impending social time I was just more, okay we can do this because it works for today, but it doesn't have to always work. I've had to slow myself down and work diligently on accepting things as they come. I'm an over-planner, over-thinker and feel I am at my best when I'm insanely busy, but I've forced myself to slow down and I like it a little better.

If I'm being brutally honest with myself, I'm a work in progress and there is too much room to improve with things. I could be more productive and schedule better and more. I could coupon, find ways to save online, shop more here and less there, and so on and so forth. I could thrift more!

But guess what? I'm tired. I really just am tired a lot and I'm done berating myself about it. This is life. You gotta roll with the punches sometimes.

I've had this shoulder issue for the past 6 years. It's not an always thing, sometimes I swear it's like quarterly at best. It flares up, I need to ice and heat, turning my neck is uncomfortable. Sometimes I need to nurse it more gently than other times. 

This weekend was spent icing it. Friday was when I seriously irritated it. I cleaned as much as I could to get it over with so I could rest more, and then finally admitted I was in some pain. More often I go for the heating pad, but it seemed to make it worse. Icing it, if nothing else, numbed that sucker. 

With age comes aches, strains and muscle pains I've found. I noticed this first, shortly after childbirth. Weird things were hurting. Now I have knee aches, I have shoulder aches, neck aches. I can strain something by looking at it wrong. I've heard this only gets worse and I know my husband is worse because he's on his feet all day, but this part of adulthood is not my favorite.

My dad admitted to me that his knees have given him issues and he believes to have bestowed that upon me. Thanks dad! Everything else, I relate to stress because stress is easy to blame.

Saturday I started taking some new supplements in an effort to help my wonderfully failing thyroid. I feel a little better today, more energy I think, but we will see any long term effects. It was yesterday though, that someone said that I looked great and I realized that maybe my pants size and thighs weren't telling me that exactly, but I was probably carrying less.

One of  my greatest struggles is self care. I put myself lastly last always. I've had to stop doing that. While sometimes compromise is necessary, it is not always so. 

Sure my daughter comes first, but sometimes I can adequately explain to her that mommy just needs a little time to do this, that or the next thing. Taking the time, to take some of the weight off, makes all the difference. There are still days that are an epic fail but more often I can nurse the physical and metaphorical aches, pains and muscle strains that come with adulting.

Life can be a pain in every sense. Sometimes basic interactions can give you aches of all kinds. You can strain yourself just as easily mentally as you can physically. A little self care can go a long way. I find that life is often heavier than we are expecting. In our minds we think "oh I can handle that," and then we go to lift and hear something pop in some way or another.

I couldn't think of something to write about today. Okay, correction, I had three different ideas for what and how to write about but I got distracted and couldn't make a point. This had a point! You have to take care of all parts of yourself, and listen to really lose that extra weight of life. As far as diets, different stuff works for different people and I have no business telling people how to work out and what to eat. As far as the aches, pains and muscle strains of stress, anxiety and life, my advice is to give yourself a break. I think your body will thank you in more ways than one!