Ultimate Blog Party 2013/ Getting Fit Friday

Okay, this week I'm combining my Fit Friday post with an intro post for the Ultimate Blog Party!

Hi, I'm Pamela. This is Meaningful Activity, which is my fitness blog. This is actually my second blog, because I found that when I would be active I liked to blog about it... but it didn't really fit with the niche of my main blog (the Songs on the Way) so I started a second one just as a health and fitness blog.

Here I blog about my different health and fitness goal stuff. Like I'm redoing the Couch to 5K! I did it once before successfully, completing it this past September. But then I was moving to India... and then moved to India.. and then got married... and I just haven't kept up my fitness.

I also share about having PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) and a sleeping disorder (which I am
trying a new treatment for!) and then just random stuff. Like how the weather in India makes it harder to exercise (yep, that's right, I'm in India. I'm an American expat.) Oh, and sometimes I talk about things like using the free Noom Weight Loss app on my smart phone, the youtube fitness videos I've tried out, or the MP3 tracks I'm using for the C25K.

Me after a C25K run

Honestly, this is a very new blog, I just started it in January, so I'm still figuring out what goes on it. So I'd love it if you would join me. And I'll love to network with other health and fitness bloggers, to inspire and encourage me!

As for this week... it's sort of been a bust. Well not really. You know how I mentioned just a couple of paragraphs ago about trying a new treatment for my sleeping disorder? First I should tell you that having a sleeping disorder affects every aspect of my life. I know for sure I would have had a .5 to 1 point higher GPA in college without it, because I was always either sleeping through class or going to class with little or no sleep. I am great at ignoring how bad it was, so every semester I'd be like "This will be the semester I do great!" and then three to six weeks later being like "Oh... right... I hate you sleep!" Yes, sleep and I have been great frenemies. Because basically it eludes me to get to sleep, it eludes me waking up, and it is always completely unpredictable. I've never been able to just lay down and sleep, and once asleep an alarm is no guarantee I will wake up!

And obviously anyone who knows what they say about regular sleep and weight loss knows that some people say without it, you can't lose weight at all. (I have lost a couple of inches, but in my whole life I've never been able to lose more than say, ten pounds. Ever.)

A few years ago when I was newly smacked in the face with the reality of how invasive my sleeping disorder truly is, I realized that my new found desire to someday get my Master's would definitely have to happen after I finally got my sleeping disorder under control, it would be idiocy to do it otherwise. But I didn't have medical insurance to find out what was wrong with me, so that was for someday in the future.

Well, two weeks ago, I got an email from a reader of my regular blog saying that she'd been reading for a while and thought she should speak up. I would complain about my sleeping disorder there from time to time, and it all resonated with her because her daughter had the exact same symptoms. They had gotten her tested and it turned out she had a melatonin deficiency.

When I was a teenager I had tried melatonin, but the first day it had no effect, the second day I slept for 18 hours straight and no one could wake me up. That scared me, so we stopped using it and I've never touched it again, though a few people had recommended it to me over the years.

And now, looking at that incident with the realization that someone else in the world had the same symptoms as me (I've never met anyone who has!) and they were diagnosed with melatonin deficiency... maybe the reason I slept 18 hours was because my body was just needing melatonin so bad that it was like "Okay, quick, let's sleep as long as we can while we have it!"

I mentioned this to the woman who had contacted me, and she said that her daughter had been very groggy that first week, but after that it went away and she'd been normal ever since. So it made me wonder if maybe I'd not given up after two days, I could have solved my sleeping disorder as a teenager.

Linking up with Getting Fit Fridays!

So I talked it over with my husband and mom, and decided to give it a try.

By the way, after we got it, I read on the bottle that it's not recommended for teens. So maybe teenage biochemistry makes the reaction more severe? I don't know.

But I've been taking it since Saturday night (so five doses now). It does work! Whether or not it's the solution, I don't know. I was groggy the first several days, not as much now, but I am finding I'm sleeping slightly more than 8 hours a night (9 to 10) so hopefully that levels out soon.

Anyway, because I'm oversleeping, I'm also missing my exercise-in-the-Indian heat window for the C25K. So I haven't done it this week.

But since regulating my sleeping patterns will change every aspect of my life for the better (including weight loss) I figure a missed week isn't a big deal. And according to my friend, her daughter was "normal" after a week, so maybe next week I'll be normal! And if it takes me two weeks, it'd still be totally worth it!

However, writing this is inspiring me that I can go find another workout video on youtube, and I have no excuse for that!