Living with ADD?

As part of my journey, I wanted to address things that I have neglected or failed to address. One issue I’ve always struggled with is organization and losing things. It has affected me in my personal as well as my professional life.

I had always chalked it up to were these weaknesses that I would always struggled with. It was something I could get marginally better, but never be at the level I wanted to be. However, I watched a documentary that made me believe there may be a reason why I struggled in those two areas.

One day I had watched documentary show,” Our America” with Lisa Ling. I enjoyed watching this show because it always had interesting topics and there was something always new to learn. I had watch the episode where Lisa was being evaluated on whether she had ADD.

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-domaindev-st_emea&hsimp=yhs-st_emea&hspart=domaindev&p=our+america+lisa+LIng+ADD+espisode#id=1&vid=1135d02be91087e82e06ecaee94f832a&action=click

A lot of things she said in the video, I could relate to. At times, I couldn’t focus and it impeded me on getting things done. I would procrastinate on tasks I was not interested in such as cleaning the house or a tedious project at work. I did some reading on the internet and tried to find more information about women and ADD. In many cases, it is harder to detect ADD in women/girls and often not diagnosed because we masked the disability.

But if there was a way for me to get better, I thought I should explore the idea. I went through my husband’s company’s EAP (Employee Assistance Program) and called psychiatrists and psychologists who specialized in ADD. I scheduled an appointment with a psychiatrist near my work.

I know people don’t want to go to doctors because they are afraid of the diagnoses. Sometimes, it’s better to know sooner or later, because it can be detected earlier and treatment can happen. Sometimes waiting too late, you may not be able to fix the issue.

After being evaluated, I found out that I didn’t have Adult ADD. I learned that the reason I was having issues was to due to my long time sleep issues. I’ve had sleep issues since I was a kid. Due to my lack of restful sleep, my brain didn’t have enough time to file all my memories in my brain at night. As a result, my ability to recall was affected.

I’m going to see a sleep specialist and fix my issue. When you have issues, you have to deal with them head on instead of shying away. My issue should have been dealt with a long time ago because I didn’t put me first. Remember, if you don’t take care of yourself and put you first, you can’t take care of others.

Losing Weight

I have struggled with my weight my entire life. I was always seesawing on losing and gaining weight. Things got worse when I had a high stress corporate job. I would stress eat because of the amount of responsibilities of my job. I didn’t feel good about myself or liked how I looked in the mirror. Over the last 5 years I just felt chunky.

Even though I did cardio/ martial arts, I was gaining the muscle, but never really losing the fat. So basically I had fat on top of muscle and muscle weighs more than fat. My daughter has inspired me to get a nutritionist She had hired a nutritionist and started to lose weight pretty quickly.

I tried all the diets and it never seemed like it worked for me. I would lose some weight and then gain it back again. I hated weight watchers because I didn’t like to count. So I hired a nutritionist off of Thumbtack. My nutritionist, Sarah gave me a plan that I had to follow. She gave me a macro diet where I counted my protein, fat and carbs through Fitness Pal App.

Although, I hated the idea of counting. I didn’t want to be where I was at. If I was truly trying the best being my best me, then I really need to put effort towards this. Plus, I spent money to make this happen. I was determine to make this work.

Day 1

When I started the diet, my stomach hurt so bad. I could literally feel it shrinking. In the diet, I don’t count calories, just the macros. When I was looking at the calories, I was taking fewer calories then the recommended for someone of my age and weight. In the end, I was eating less and exercising more.

Day 2 and on….

It was initially hard to do this diet. I didn’t like tracking my food intake. However, there was a benefit to this. I made better food choices because of the information I knew. My daily food intake should be 90 g of protein, 30 g of fat and 130g of carbs. It made me read food packages and I learned in most cases that I was taking in too much fat. Food that I thought was relatively healthy was really not under the diet she gave me.

I really didn’t realize how much fat is in most of the process food that we eat. It often made me think twice if I really wanted to eat the veggie chips that had 5 grams of fat, which would be 1/6 of my fat intake. Over the next four weeks, I stuck to the process. I started seeing results in my overall body.

When I was younger, I was an hour glass figure. However after my late thirties, I started looking like an apple. During this process, I saw my body go from the apple back to the hourglass, which was super motivating.

Through through the three months, I have been on the diet, I’ve lost a total of 13 pounds. I shrank to one size down. Understand I have included cheat days as well. It’s not a quick fix time of diet, but a lifestyle change. It important to put yourself first in order to take care of others. I heard that phrase many times, but I had always done the opposite. As I take this journey, I’m going to address other parts of my life that I always have put off and make it a priority.

My journey of Being My Best Me

The last couple of years have been difficult to say the least. My husband had almost passed away due to Influenza A and Septsis. During that same year, I had a series of mishaps where I almost started to believe that I was cursed somehow. I wasn’t cursed, but it just felt like it.

The next year, my only child, Emma was going off to college and my husband and I became empty nesters. I was in an extremely stressful job that I no longer enjoyed and couldn’t land another job even though I was interviewing like crazy. Things got so bad to the point that I just quit my job and had no other job to go to.

I’ve never quit a job without having another job first. Money no longer mattered and it was either quiting or I was going to have a mental break down. Quitting my job was the best thing I could have done. I had been running so hard for so many years that I had severely neglected myself.

Quitting my job gave me time to look within myself. I never had time to really sit and reflect because I was always on the go. I’m a big fan of Oprah and she’s always talking about living your best life. I wasn’t living my best life. I had gained so much weight that I was the heaviest I had ever been in my life. I didn’t take care of myself and constantly rescheduling appointments because work always took precedence over that.

So at the end of 2018, I decided to put a challenge to myself. I was going to go into 2019 by trying to be my best version of me. I was going to try to take care of myself and not let work take over me. I want to blog and share my journey and hope that readers can relate and understand the challenges women face in today’s world.