Hormones and diet and workouts, Oh my

I promised an explanation about the tears in my last post, so here goes.

If you’re looking for a post that is going to give you warm fuzzies and go to the place where tears are born, you may be disappointed, because this won’t be it. Or, maybe it will. I haven’t decided yet. In general, I’m not a crier. Not because I’m afraid to, or it makes me feel weak. On the contrary, I think that at times, crying is great. It’s an easy release, can make you feel lighter, and it’s an honest part of life. I don’t cry much because in general, I’m a pretty happy person. If I’m crying, it’s usually because I’m laughing so hard.

Or, driving away from a workout.

Seriously?

I’ve heard a lot, and I’m sure you have too, about hormones. At 42 years old, I hear more about them every year. Getting ready for the big M. For you guys, just in case, that means Menopause. I’m not going through that part of life yet, but it seems like once you hit 40, everyone’s talking about it.

Well, I have learned, and very quickly, over the last month, that hormones RULE MY LIFE. In a way that I could never have imagined. A previous female coach I had talked a lot about hormones, but I always thought that if I ate right and continued to work out, I would be ok. Turns out, it’s a precarious balancing act. Precarious might be too strong a word. No, no it’s not. It’s precarious in the beginning. That’s how it felt, so we’ll leave it at precarious. Once things start to balance out, we’ll call it a new word. Something more gentle so I don’t frighten the 30 somethings coming up on this amazing time in life. I mean that in both of the ways that you probably read it.

Where are the tears you’re asking? All over my car. All over my sweat and tear soaked t-shirts. My shoes. All of it. For the first two weeks of my new program, it was the same. Every day. I would go in and work out. When done, I would go to my car, turn it on, begin to drive away, and the tears would start to flow.

I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t mad. The only thing I was, was wet, tired and sore. But there they were. Damned things. Rolling down my face screaming things at me that I couldn’t hear until I listened. After about a week of this, I had to message my trainer. I felt like I needed some validation that I wasn’t cracking up. I messaged her, a little hesitantly, wondering if, the next time I was dangling from the TRX, she’d clamp me down and phone my family.

She responded almost immediately with “It’s totally normal”.

Not only was it normal, but that she has had more than one client who cried EVERY DAY for the first month, and then at least once a week for the next couple of months….and that it was normal, and ok.

That made me cry. What the hell???

She went on to explain a little more of what my body was going through doing the type of training I was doing, including all of the changes that were going on in my diet, my mind etc. Hormones. Mine had been all over the map for years and I had no idea. Well, I had an idea, but I just didn’t think that I was (as everyone is) so overtly affected by them. This outpouring was my body’s way of responding to the balancing and shifting of hormones and the overall effects of what I’ll call healing. I really feel that even with the constant ‘ouch’ and ‘oh lord, this?!’, that my body is in the process of healing. In so many ways.

It would be extraordinarily dishonest of me at this point to say that biochemistry, hormones etc, were the only source of my tears. They are all contributing factors, but there are many emotional, mind-set issues that went into them as well. Healing body. Healing mind. More about those the next time I write.