Fitness, Health, and Gaming: My Story

[daanji]

I know exactly how you feel Khat. For the longest time, I have been depressed. During tough episodes, I'd have really dark thoughts that were unhealthy. I beat myself up and berated myself for all sorts of random things.
Honestly, I'd say that I have always had a depressive personality. I'm fun to be around and I am a funny guy, but I just never got excited or energetic about anything. I was always calm, even, and reserved.

I knew for my fitness and diet to work, I'd have to get my depression under control. Of course I am proud to go to a doctor to get diagnosed and get a prescription. So as an Engineer I did the next logical step, I looked how to solve my depression the natural way. First, I did some research on foods, herbs, and exercises that can boost mood. I started taking these supplements

1. SAMe
2. St. John's Wort
3. Vitamin B Complex
4. Ginkgo biloba
5. Echinacea
6. Folic Acid
7. Multi-Vitamin

I did not take these every day. Instead, I rotated them, once per day - I did not want to overload my system. Plus, it gave me a chance to figure out what actually worked. From my experiments, I found that a combination of SAMe and St. John's Wort worked the best.

I also made a point to avoid Gluten and tried to get plenty of iron (I ate a lot of spinach salads), iodine, Omega-3s, almonds, cashews, and drank detox teas (dandelion).
In addition to the food, the 2x walks I did every day ensured I got a minimum Sunlight and Vitamin D.

For me, this worked wonders. I have never been as social, happy, and energetic as I am now.

Depression can be hard to combat and can easily be the root cause of unhealthy lifestyle and choices. For me, I had tried to fill the void with food, gaming, and computers, which just lead to an endless spiral.

So, I encourage you to take your depression by the balls and tell it to get lost one way or the other. Once that is solved, everything else will fall into place


As for WoW related news, even though I started dieting and exercising I stilled played WoW a LOT. When MoP came out, I was playing 2-4 hours per day and even more on the weekend. I'm such an addict
I got my 10-box team to Level 90 and got their professions and gear maxed out. Even got all 10 Exalted with the Tillers. However, due to the "Recent Account Actions" I ended up getting temporary suspensions 4 times in a row. Once during Thanksgiving and another during Christmas when I had plenty of time to play. As a result, I ended up finding something else to do and got bored of WoW. I canceled all 10 subscriptions in January.

I will eventually be back - the 5.2 changes making it tempting. Considering I haven't taken a break from WoW in almost four years, I think perhaps it is time to take a long break.

For now, I am training to run 5K with the hope of actually doing a 1/2 marathon someday.