Brains, Brawn and Bamboo

Colitis is still there, but subsiding. The blood loss has been having an impact on me (getting cold when I wouldn’t normally, feeling tired and weak), but the frequency and amount is starting to stall -all without medication. I’m hoping that this is a sign that my body is self-regulating; finally beginning to heal itself. Time will tell if I can get in complete control again.

I’ve been casting half an eye to the future. As usual, I’ve lost weight…again…thanks to colitis having a tantrum. I’ll record just how bad it is tomorrow. As for now, I feel I need to put on some weight. I certainly want to get back to 170lbs as quickly (but as safely) as possible. I’m considering what to do with my diet (thinking more liquid meals, as less digestive stress) and potential training. Anyone with mass gaining tips/workouts etc., please feel free to help a skinny wretch in need of serious mass!

Have been thinking that, until colitis is properly subsided and under control (and hopefully that is the direction I’m going in, rather than suprise aggresive flare-up!), I might try some weighted-vest walks. Build some strength endurance with relatively low physical stress, combined with walking meditation, maybe?

Of course, I’ve also been considering 20-rep Death Squats supplemented with crazy mass gainer shakes, just to shock some weight back on. I’m an idiot like that.

I’m feeling better, even if I’m not better. Looking forward to increasing my training soon. Hope everyone out there doing fine - stay healthy, and be kind.

First, the situation.

Roughly two weeks ago the medication I had been slowly getting used to over the past month was increased from a half-dose to a full dose. Like before, this increase prompted my body to have a bad reaction: nausea, cramps, lack of appetite…god, the constant nausea. This past Tuesday, I reached Breaking Point. I’d had enough; enough of taking medication that either didn’t do anything or that made me more ill than the colitis it was meant to control.

I made a decision to stop taking it. Moreover, I made a decision to stop taking all my medication. It either did nothing or made me worse. I don’t know much about anything, but experience has taught me something that I now realise my intuition knew all along: that powerful foreign chemicals are not the way to control my condition.

Since stopping the medication, the nausea, lack of appetite etc. caused by the medication cleared up, almost over night. Good. Unfortunately, since then my colitis has been having a ‘wobble’, and I’ve been bleeding/cramping again. Bad. That is now, also, starting to clear up. Good. I’m hoping it was just a reaction to the changing chemicals in my body.

I haven’t gone sans medication in over three years. My hope is that, by giving my body time to flush out all foreign substances, I can encourage natural healing and regeneration that dependence on medication may have repressed.

And that’s the main crux of why I’ve made this decision. It occured to me that colitis has completely dominated my worldview for the past. By taking the medication, by believing that my health and wellbeing was dependent on the myriad of tablets I was prescribed, I was reinforcing a dangerous thought-paradigm: I am ill, I am broken, I am fighting a battle everyday with myself.

I am now resolved to break this thought process. Rather than drowning out my body’s crying, smothering it with drugs, I am setting it free. I will listen to what I need. I will meditate and engage in a conversation with my heart about what the initial emergence of colitis was trying to say, and I will respond in kind.

This is not the first and last thing I will say on the issue, but I am coming to see that, maybe, the predominately Western belief of ‘No Pain, No Gain’ is dangerous. Struggle and effort are not, but beating yourself down in spite of your self is. This issue especially affects bodybuilders, fitness athletes, sportsmen and champions of physicality of all methodologies. Too often do we repress the symptoms of a whole and intelligent body to ruthlessly pursue a goal. Again, goal orientation is not a problem, but the savagery, the reckless abandon with which people attack things…I don’t know whether that’s entirely good anymore.

Certainly, I don’t think it’s right for me anymore.

I’ve put any hard goals (rep limits, weights etc.) on hold until I am able to establish a deep connection with my body, my subconscious and my place in life. I’m taking time to talk to my heart. What are you trying to say, body? How can we help each other?

Sorry if this is too new-age or hippy for some of you. I don’t mean to make you squirm. But sometimes, you have to try something radically different.

I’ll be back with more. For now, thank you for reading. Comments are, of course, welcome.