The horror of health creep

Have you ever wondered why you aren’t feeling as physically and mentally as good as before? You might be suffering from from health creep.

A Good Start

In my youth I was super-fit, I used to walk everywhere, cycling at the weekends and playing football on a Thursday evening and Sunday morning. I used to religiously enter a local walking fun race every year called the ‘Star Walk’, a 12-mile walk starting in the city centre and finishing at Hillsborough Sports Stadium. Thousands took part and some took it very seriously, participating on behalf of various clubs whilst some were just out for the day and would dress up and maybe take a detour or two to a pub on the way.

Image courtesy of the Sheffield Star - article link

The walk was serious enough to close the roads along the route and so there used to be thousands cheering participants on. To me this was a benchmark of my fitness at the time but also a great way for ‘ordinary folk’ to participate in such a big event. I managed a top 50 finish out of the thousands involved, but used to walk at least 9 miles a day (work and back) and often walked the route the evening before the race day.

Changing Circumstances

At 27 I got into a serious relationship, so gradually ditched the healthy options and spent more time playing pool, to a good standard as I played for county for a while, but 5 evenings a week in the pub isn’t a healthy training regime. I started to earn a decent wage and ‘spare’ time became less. A few years later I got my first PC which then probably took up a large chunk of any time left.

As the years went on my weight crept up, occasionally dropping back a little as I tried to do something about it, once doing Atkins for a couple of weeks and losing 2 stones but obviously then to put it all back on again.

Looking back I was very fit, probably too thin for my height and so initially people wouldn’t necessarily notice. I remember someone asking me if I’d been working out as I started to fill out which obviously didn’t dissuade me.

Into Teaching

I had worked for several years in industry, Computing, Electronics, Design and Manufacturing and was used to clocking on and off, not necessarily physically but my work was around a standard shift pattern mostly around the standard 9-5. What this gives you is a definitive time to switch on and off from work. I would sometimes use spare time to upskill but generally work left my mind when I left my workplace.

Teaching is a very different profession, education involves continuous improvement of practice and resources which can eat away at your work-life balance. I quickly went from trainee to full-time teacher and then to manager with teaching responsibility. The added responsibility for hundreds of people, taken seriously, can take away most evenings and weekends and whilst the job is advertised at 37 hours or so it can be an impossible task to do in that time. I am very conscientious and so tend to want to give as much time as is needed.

The Balancing Act

Juggling a challenging career and family life can be a real balancing act, we often talk about work-life balance being important but when we say ‘life’ what do we actually mean? Yes it’s relationships, personal time and hobbies but also health and well-being. A fulfilling career can help with your mental and physical health but you can also have too much of a ‘good’ thing. We are naturally curious creatures which does lead to always requiring some form of input. This can be constructive such as learning from a video, researching online or something as simple as watching TV or scolling through the socials. We also need periods of thought and reflection, a busy schedule can often push this time out. At my busiest, days can be stacked with work and social life, and time to truly rest only comes in a shortened period of sleep.

Taking back control

There comes a time when your body will tell you that it’s had enough. It may be that you have an early night or a good lie in on a weekend but more seriously health-related toll on the body can be stress, weight, blood pressure and sugar. This won’t happen overnight but, as I’ve been told from a health professional, it will get you in the end. This is not to say that you can’t wind the clock back and recover however some do not get the opportunity to make the right changes so it is important to be wary of the health ‘creep’ that can happen over time.

I love tech and so have several monitors that track my BP, sugar, weight stats (including detail about fat and muscle weight). Having that information to hand at least shows me that hopefully things are going in the right direction physically. I have made time for regular workouts to add to the 2000 calories my body burns up by just existing (BMR, or Basal Metabolic Rate). It’s a simple calculation, if I take in more than I burn up then I will put weight on whereas keeping lower than the amount I burn will make my weight drop. There are other factors such as water retention and muscles but the point stands.

Mental health needs time and peer support including from your workplace

as you are no good to them if you’re not physically and mentally up to the task. Any decent employer will want the best of you and will do all they can to support that to happen, in turn you will rightly give them 100% committment. A balanced life should involve a challenging but rewarding career that has no negative impact beyond the workplace hours. Stress is your body’s natural reaction to feeling threatened, pressured, or overwhelmed and in the short-term it can be helpful boosting focus and energy, however long-term stress can lead to physical and mental exhaustion. You can limit stress in two ways, reducing the issues causing it and regulating your body’s reaction to it through meditation, physical activity (through endorphins) and quality sleep.

In Summary

If you were to be able to press the pause button (wouldn’t we all!) and ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you physically healthy?

• Are you mentally healthy?

• Do you have a healthy work-life balance?

• Do you give yourself time to maintain / improve the above?

If the answers to any of the above are no then you need to make the change

• Make time to get physically active. Physically feeling better will also help you mentally.

• Make sure you have enough time away each day to properly relax, no input other than the sound of your own thoughts, or some decent progressive rock playing.

Life should not be a constant struggle, only you have the power to make of it what you will. Think about the free time you have in the evening, maybe you jump on your socials before bed, maybe a final check of those emails, STOP and give yourself some headspace.