Ch-ch-changes

The winds of change are in the air! Today I am going to join a gym. This is not something I was willing to even consider until now. What has changed? Well, quite simply, I am desperate. I can't stand the way I look or feel. I have never felt so fat, which is logical since I've never been so fat either. I am trying to wean myself off of my anti-anxiety medication. Now don't freak everyone, I am under my doctor's supervision. My psychiatrist said that if I wanted to try it, the summer after my first year teaching would be the first time she would be OK with it. Here's the thing... the medication changes my brain chemistry in order to allow serotonin and endorphins to be absorbed. That's why it works. When I take less of it, my levels of serotonin and endorphins go down and I feel yucky. Other ways to raise those levels include eating sugar and exercising. Guess which one I have been doing? Yup. Inhaling Krispy Kremes like they're going out of style. I simply cannot seem to motivate myself to exercise. The winds of change (this time around) have come in the form of a book called Potatoes Not Prozac. I can identify with a great many of the things this author says, and she has backed up her statements with research. Her numbers get a little fuzzy when it comes to the percentage of her clients who have sustained long term recovery, but at this point even some short term recovery would do me a world of good, I think. She places a lot of focus on keeping a mentality of "one choice at a time," saying that even one day at a time is much too long term for this kind of problem. I really hope that if I work out, I will be able to resist eating sugar. If I don't start to do better, I will have to give up the idea of going off the medication. And I really don't want to give that idea up just yet.