My two week hiatus has come to an end and I am ready to jump back into blogging headfirst.  I had an amazing wedding this past weekend and still find it hard to believe that I am a wife now!! After our wedding, we spent the weekend in Chicago because our actual honeymoon isn’t until January.  So we have something else to look forward to!

Now, let’s get onto the reason you are reading this blog.  As much as I would love to relive every single detail of our wedding and write pages and pages about it, I suspect that you would get VERY bored fairly quickly.  That being said, I do want to talk about some things I learned health/nutrition wise these past few weeks.  Hopefully my experiences can help you to avoid some of the problems I ran into.

Stress is BRUTAL.  I know that I am stating the obvious here, but man did stress kick my butt the past few weeks.  I knew that stress was not a good thing and that it should be avoided, but what I didn’t realize was how much it can really wreak havoc on a person’s body.  I told Adam that is was a good thing we finally got married because I was sure that I would not survive another week of planning the wedding.  I was shocked to see the toll that stress put on my body.  I couldn’t sleep through the night, I had no energy during the day, my workouts felt 20 times harder than they should be, and I felt cranky most of the time.  But even more than all of that was how my appetite was affected.

I have never really had a problem with eating food before.  I like food.  I usually have the problem of eating too much and having to control my appetite.  So I was very surprised when I suddenly did not want to eat at all or would just miss meals because I would be too busy with something else.  I have never had the problem of having to force myself to eat some type of food.  Maybe this is all old news to you, but I was a little out of my element.  I had been eating so well for such a long time that I did not even think that that would somehow disappear.  It was rough and I admit that I didn’t always choose what would be healthiest for me.  Fortunately the whole experience did help teach me, so it wasn’t a total loss.

First of all, never think that because something has never happened to you that it never will, especially when it comes to your body and your health.  You just never know how you will respond to a certain situation or how your body will react to something you put it through.  I think that was a little part of my problem with this whole loss of appetite.  I wasn’t prepared for it and so along with the stress of the wedding I had the shock of something else that had never happened to me.  My body just didn’t know how to handle all of that.  I know it is impossible to be able to prepare yourself for every single type of reaction that you could have to a given event, but you can be prepared that anything, even something that has never happened to you before, could happen.  If you’re even a little prepared for that, your body won’t be totally shocked.

Second, food is important.  Duh, you all know this.  But it is especially important during times of high stress and it is crucial to eat well.  Junk food will make all of your problems worse.  You’re already going through enough, why add bad food on top of that?  You have to eat regularly too.  I cringe thinking about the amount of times that I missed a meal because I was just too focused on something else or the thought of food just didn’t appeal to me.  I am thankful for the times that someone made me eat or I forced myself to put something in my stomach.  While it might sound cruel to force yourself to eat, in my case it was the only way to get that fuel in my body.  If you know that you are going to be going through a stressful time soon, take some time to prepare meals/snacks for yourself.  This might sound time consuming but trust me, when that stress hits you and you think about all you have to do, you will be glad that you thought to prepare food.  It will just be one less thing that you have to think about.

Lastly, we all need some type of support holding us up during tough times.  Again, I know that I am stating the obvious on this one, but you can NOT do it all alone.  Trust me. I tried and sadly that just made all of my problems worse.  I didn’t want to burden anyone with the million problems/thoughts that were running through my head 24/7.  I knew the chaos they had brought into my life, why would I want to give that to people I care about?  Finally, though, I knew that I could just not take it anymore.  I knew I needed help or I would literally just fall apart.  To my surprise, people stepped up and helped me when I asked.  I shouldn’t be shocked because my friends and family are amazing, but I was blown away by how much they wanted to help me.  Once I had other people behind me, helping me, some of my stress and problems were alleviated   I kick myself for not asking for help sooner, and possibly avoiding the train wreck of a person that I had become.

This post makes it seem like planning a wedding is along the lines of pure torture.  But it isn’t, I just didn’t know what to expect and I let the stress get the better of me.  On the bad side of things, I really let my stress dictate my life and I didn’t like that at all. I felt out of control, sad, and just plain old tired.  On the good side, I learned how to not let this happen again and I can maybe give some helpful advice to others so they can avoid it entirely.

Everything turned out fabulous and by the end of the whole ordeal I was married to the man I am in love with.  That was the most important thing and I get to spend the rest of my life as his Mrs.!  Pretty great reward if I do say so myself! Have a great day and I will see you all on Friday!