Attacking Depression!!

Life…

Life is never constant, it’s full of ups and downs, sometimes everything can be going right, and the train is going at full speed, while other times everything is going wrong! It’s during these bad times that we have a decision to make… we either get depressed lie on our beds feeling sorry for ourselves, or we rise up to the challenge!

I’ve been depressed at least three times in my life, and I was able to surpass them all, some by sheer willpower, others by the help of friends and family, through my journey I learned a lot of ways to overcome any bad thing that may happen in my life, I learned mechanisms, some scientifically approved, to overcome depression and to make me much more productive.

The first time I was depressed was when I joined college.

I don’t know about other colleges but here in my city the new college students have 1 whole month of heavy drinking every single night and only eating pasta and tuna… Back then I had a really awesome alcohol metabolism, I could drink and drink, damn I could drink for days without stopping and I wouldn’t puke, I would get drunk but I wouldn’t puke. So, when I joined college I would drink and drink and drink almost every single night, just image the sheer amount of calories I consumed in alcohol! Adding to this I only ate pasta and tuna for 1 whole month, and my body loves to store fat…

One month was enough for me to go from 90kg to 110kg, yeah… the worst part is that I didn’t stop after that month, I kept drinking and drinking and eating crappy food without any minerals or vitamins!
By the time the first year of college was ending I was a 120kg ( 264lbs) guy… I don’t know if you have ever been fat but it’s not pretty. Not wanting to look yourself in the mirror because you are fat, having your self-confidence down to almost 0, not wanting to go to the beach or the pool. I didn’t even want to go to classes, I stopped going! The only time I actually left my home was to go out at night and drink some more alcohol! Alcohol made me feel better about myself, so I got addicted to it.

One day I was lying in bed after playing Guild Wars 2 all night long and I looked up at the ceiling of my room, the same ceiling that has helped me make some of the best decisions in my life, and I thought to myself: “What the hell am I doing with my life? I’m getting fatter and fatter, I’m having breathing problems just climbing some stairs. I’m wasting my health and life with alcohol and video games!” And so, I decided something that is now the base of my life, I decided to start lifting!

I lifted all the way through summer vacations, I soaked in as much information as I could about bodybuilding /fitness/ nutrition, by the end of the summer my bodyweight was down to 80kg! I arrived at my first class and I got so many compliments from everyone! I got addicted to them! My journey in the fitness world was just starting!

I got addicted to bodybuilding, I had and still have all my meal plans planned, I never skipped one workout, if I had to skip classes to go to the gym I would do it. Going to the gym was my priority. I was finally having more self-confidence! I felt like a BADASS! I was getting bigger and bigger, I was outweighing everyone, everyone was small compared to me! I was GOD a STUPID DUMBASS!
Not going to classes and always trying to keep my bodyfat in single body digits finally caught up to me.

Yes, I had quitted alcohol and knew a lot about nutrition, but having low calories to always be as shredded as I could, made me not be able to study, I was having brain fog after studying for a couple of minutes, I got tired very quickly, I was sleeping for 12hours because my body needed that rest time, and so, I had no time to study.

Not studying and skipping classes made me lose track of the subjects we were studying, I started failing in college… 2 years went by and I failed almost every single subject I was taking! My college friends left me behind, and, not knowing anyone from other years I had no willpower to go to classes, it was like a vicious cycle, a vicious cycle of despair and social anxiety, a vicious cycle that my father got me out.

This was the second time I was depressed, my parents weren’t even home at that time, so I spent 1 whole week thinking how I was going to tell my father that I was failing college… I couldn’t even sleep!

When I finally came clean to my father that I was flunking out subject after subject he wasn’t mad, he understood, the same thing happened to him, but on a much smaller scale. He looked at me and he understood that I had learned my lesson, he told me he didn’t raise a quitter, that I was stronger than that, that I wasn’t going to quit, that I could do whatever I wanted to do if I put my mind to it, and so I did! I didn’t quit, I went back at it with full focus! No more social anxiety from not knowing anyone in classes, I tried to talk to everyone as much as I could!

And so, I overcame the second time I got depressed in my life, it wasn’t by my own willpower but by the motivation my father gave me…

Now the third time I got depressed is probably the worst… I was doing great in college, getting better at studying, getting more and more friends, and I had my life all set, I decided to try the vegan diet to see how my body reacted to it… spoiler alert: My body hated it, I ran into all sorts of problems, lost muscle, got anemic, and got fat. It might be good for some people, but it wasn’t for my body, I tried my best, 2 years of being vegan, I’ll do a post about this another time… I just hope I don’t get flagged by a vegan extremist…

So, like I was saying, everything was going great, and I met a girl which I liked! It had been ages since I liked someone… and things were going great with her. I had a couple of dates, we clicked, etc… etc… we started going out just before the exams started. I won’t go into much detail about all this, but let’s just say 1 week into the exams she stopped talking to me, for no reason (looking back I was probably too clingy), I got a little depressed, but I had exams to focus, so I couldn’t do anything! I had to focus on exams, I passed all of them while being stressed out and a little depressed. My friends helped me out in this part because they came to my house every couple of days to make sure I was studying.

When I finally had my last exam I decided to send her a message, to see what the hell happened, she had huge depressions sometimes and I know how she got so I was actually worried, no one had seen her anywhere, I only got 3 words back… I’ll forever remember those words, I wasn’t even worth a whole phrase, only three words… The words aren’t important, let’s just skip that.

Someone that I trusted had just broken up with me through a text message with three words, I felt like I wasn’t worth anything… but this was just the start.

When I received the message I wasn’t even at home, I was in my car, I had to drive all the way back to my home, and when I entered my home my father called me. I sat down on the couch and he told me my grandfather was just hospitalized and that it wouldn’t get better, he was in a coma for 5 days before he finally passed! I was intending to go and talk to my grandfather for 1 month, but exams kept me busy, I had no time!
I felt the depression crawling in with the combination of having my heart broken and my grandfather dying, almost on the same day…

This time I was ready for it, I wasn’t about to stand there and get depressed for weeks, I attacked it from all fronts.

• I hit the gym hard, I had to stop being a vegan because my health didn’t like it very much, I was having iron problems even though I was eating 1kg of spinach a day! And for the people that tell me, we don’t need that much protein let me tell you guys, at least I do! I lost muscle and gained fat on a vegan diet, which all got reverted in 3 months when I went back to eating meat.

• I started running, running releases endorphins, especially if we run in nature. Every time I came home from a run I was energized and feeling a lot happier. I ran and ran almost as if trying to leave my problems in the past.

• I started having cold showers everytime I got a little depressed. Cold showers have been proven to help with depression, anyone that has problems with depressions should absolutely try it. Every time I turn the water from hot to cold I get more and more enraged, all my problems fade away, it’s really awesome. And not only this but cold showers have been proven to help with hair loss, testosterone production, skin problems, fixing day and night cycles and it converts white fat cells into brown fat cells, which store much less fat in them.

• I started being more productive. I started reading, writing, talking whatever the hell I wanted with whoever I wanted. I started being surer about myself.

• I drove my car a lot because I love the feeling I get when I drive. It's just me, the road, the car and the music, it helps me to think about my problems and the solutions for the problems.

So, in the end, what helped me through depression was :

Start being more productive, hit the gym, having cold showers, running, especially in nature, and bettering myself every second of every minute of every hour every day!

I lot of steemians have passed through depression at some point in their life, and that's why I made this post, I'm trying to teach the Steemit community to be more open about these issues and to be more open with how they dealt with them!

Images are free source - 1, 2,3,4,5, 6,7, 8,9,10,11,12,13,14

Question of the day: Have you ever been depressed in your life? How did you deal with it?

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