Thanks again for all the comments on my last blog. Depression can be a hard thing to explain, and people who suffer from chronic depression don't always get empathy or understanding. It really isn't a problem with being lazy or something you can just shove down deep inside you and slap a smile on your face. It's almost like a poison...if you let it sit inside you, it will eventually make you even sicker, but if you can let it out, you'll have a better chance at recovering.

Mentally I am in a better place than I have been the last few weeks. Maybe not necessarily positive, but more of a neutral state where I don't let much get me down, but I'm not happy-go-lucky either. I'm just OK. Which is certainly better than where I was, so for now, we'll go with it and hope the upward trend continues.

I do have a lot of fatigue still hanging around though. I don't think it's necessarily sleep-related. I slept a solid 7 1/2 - 8 hours last night and was pretty awake this morning. It's more of a body fatigue and a mental fog. I'm pushing through it to get my exercise in, but it's taking a herculean effort to even get household chores done at this point. I suspect it's part of the depression, but if it's still around in a month or two of my good exercise/diet routine, I'm making a doctor's appointment. I want to make sure I can walk in there with no excuses and say look, here's evidence I'm eating well and exercising. We need to figure out what is causing this.

So I managed 2 days on the bike this week for about 30 minutes at a time. My right thigh is grumbling a bit, but that may be more due to the strength exercises. I am also doing strength training two days a week for each area. It's actually easier to do it with the weight machines at the Y and give my arms a good workout. I'm doing those after my bike, since I'm already there. I focus on abs and lower body on the off days I'm not at the Y.

I'm going to try to work in some Zumba on the Wii on Saturday while B is at work (no class tonight, dinner with my parents). That'll give me 3 days of cardio this week. Next week, we're going up to four - Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. After that, I'll try for five, but I don't know how consistent I can be.

I'm definitely doing things differently this time. I'm not going full-force with calorie cutting and a 2000 weekly calorie burn right at the start. I think that was probably part of the issue last time with my injuries and burning out so quickly. This time I'm trying to gradually increase exercise minutes and lower calories. The scale is not moving much at this point, but I'm trying not to stress about it. I really want to do this long term and not fall completely off track again.

In non-health news, I've decide to give WoW a chance. I downloaded it last night and am trying out the trial version. I usually go with Runescape because it's cheaper, but I have to admit, WoW has some beautiful graphics.

Have a good day!