The Effects of Stress

We don't realize how much stress effects us, but your body can really take a toll with stress.  I've been under A LOT of stress lately.  Between work, my boyfriend's sister moving back to the city and into his parent's place (looooong story behind this, but trust me this is a VERY negative effect on my boyfriend and I), and my boyfriend and I trying to buy a house, I'm seriously at the stressful peak.

You always hear that being stressed can make you sick, and with the exception of serious conditions like heart attack and stroke and hypertension, I didn't think anything of it.  The fact of the matter is that our bodies are effected by stress more than we think.  In the past few weeks since I've had many more things get added onto my list of things stressing me out and coincidently my body has felt the effects of it.  I've had a bad cold 3 times (yes, 3 seperate times in about 3 weeks) and then last week on Tuesday I was suffering a great deal with abdominal pain and discomfort to the point where my mom almost took me to the ER.  Since ER bills are no joke, I vouched to be stubborn and deal with it that night and just made a doctor's appointment for the next day.  When I explained all my health problems to my doctor, the first thing she asked me "Are you under a lot of stress?".  Wow!  Yes...yes I am.  She immediately told me that I need to find ways to relax and find methods of stress relieving that work for me because my body is really paying the price.  The colds (all 3), those are just because my body has so much going on that it's struggling to fight off something as simple as the common cold.  As for the abdominal pain, well my doctor is thinking it's either an ulcer or something with my gallbladder.  I have an abdominal ultrasound scheduled for later this month to find out more.

I really need to find a good stress reliever.  I thought having my down time after work and just reading a book or playing video games was enough, but it's obviously not at all.  What I need to do is get myself back into working out.  It's going to take a hell of a push, but that used to always be an awesome stress reliever for me, whether it was doing a workout video or going for a run.  Just getting my body going always relaxed me.  I'm just struggling so much to find that push I need to get me back into a routine.  Not to mention it's hard when I feel like people working out is being rubbed in my face a lot lately.  I feel like if I'm not doing it, I'm not up to par with them and it's making me feel small.  I don't like feeling like that, but I can't help it.  I get brought down and then I mentally push the thought of working out on the back burner.  I can't do that anymore because now it's not just for weightloss like it originally was in the past, now it's also to get me healthy again and get my stress reduced.  I unfortunately might have to wait until next week to get started though, because as long as this cold is still kicking my ass (I'm currently fighting that 3rd cold I mentioned above), I don't have the energy for much of anything.  Not to mention, I don't seem to fight off colds well unless I do a lot of relaxing and sleeping.  So, until this cold is gone, I have to take it easy.  Once it's gone though, I have to push myself back into a workout routine, whether I like it or not.