In a burnout, pregnant and depressed...

What happens during burnout is different for every individual and in my case, I suffered from a lot of anxiety and periods of depression. Besides this, I continuously felt tired and my sleep pattern was terrible. I believed that I was eating healthy but in reality, I was not sure what was good or not for my body.

I am certain that anxiety and depression are deeply connected and rooted in our lifestyle: what we eat, when we eat, what we drink, when and how much we sleep, our level of fitness, and others.

Just to give you an example, there used to be a time when I considered my 15-minute walk with my dog as an appropriate daily physical activity. Let me tell you now - it was not!

There may be people who can stay healthy with that amount of effort, but I strongly believe that 99% of us need more than a leisurely walk to stay in good health.

Moreso, during my burnout I was pregnant with Lilia so that added an extra layer of intensity to how I felt and what happened to my body.

I will spare you all the details but I will say this: after I gave birth I weighed 82 kg. When you're pregnant you look all cute with your big belly but when the baby arrives you're left with that extra weight....well, I was not happy. I wanted to get back in shape but I wasn't sure where to start. So I started with what I knew best: cardio. I started jogging again - because I used to love to jog before my pregnancies and in between. So I started with 3 km, then 5 km, and finally 10 km until I ended up running 100 km on almost a monthly basis. This happened of course over months, not immediately. At the same time, I was doing cycling and spinning. I was trying to eat healthy. I was intermittent fasting. I was doing all I knew and all that worked in the past before I had kids.

Mentally exercising helped me tremendously. At that time it was what I needed because, for me, jogging is therapy. Sweating feels good and I enjoy putting my trainers on and my earbuds and running in sunshine or rain. So slowly slowly I managed to get out of the burnout.

But after 2 years of hard exercising, all I managed was to lose weight - which I was very happy about - but the shape of my body was not changing at all. I was disappointed because I wanted to see more definition in my muscles, I wanted to lose the fat on my belly. I wanted to feel strong and healthy. But that was not happening. I was sure I hit a wall and I had no idea what to do about it. During the next blog, I will share the next steps in my health journey.