Clearly you are unwilling to get the help you need to address the training and nutrition issues. Though I’m always more than happy to discuss academia and offer advice, I suspect that this mental barrier you experience – an inability to address the fact that you are the culprit behind your body quite literally shutting down (despite being provided the same advice nearly every day for months on end) – does not exist in a vacuum. It makes me feel that my or anyone else’s advice on any other matter would also be futile.
Also, has it ever occurred to you that your undernourishment could inhibit your academic performance, even just a little bit?
I bet I can guess some of these logs. You are playing the dangerous game of “keeping up with the Joneses”. Some of those folks have been training longer than you have been alive - you have to put that in perspective. The best thing about the pursuit of health/fitness/strength is that the only person you have to compete with is yourself. It’s not really even a competition for you at this stage, the primary goal should be focused on getting healthier; i.e. get your weight up, your hormones back to normal and prioritize mental health.
This reads as a depression symptom. Your university should have mental health counselors you can call being an enrolled student. Set up a time to call them and talk or call one of the many free hotlines available. I echo @dagill2 - talk to a pro.
I am willing to help here, but there has to be some give and take - cut out the walking that we all know you are doing but not logging and take that time to and apply it to your academics. You mentioned you had 2 disappointing grades recently. Refocusing this excess (counterproductive) walking time to studies will go a long way both physically and mentally. By simple estimation, the amount you are walking even at a 4.0 mph pace has to take 3 hours out of every day.
This is my thought too. Proper nutrition is everything. If your burning excess calories (which you are) to the point your body is shutting down, it will protect the primary brain functions first - not the ones used for deep academic studies.
One last list of priorities you should set IMO:
Get your weight to 105 lbs and keep it there - the strength will come
Focus on academia instead of exercise for the time being
Exercise only 3x a week for less than 1 hour.
I will refrain from lifting/nutrition advice in the future based on the above.
Most of my walking is actually done in place while doing required readings or while listening to lecture. 3/5 of my classes (the easy ones) are taught flipped so I just go on walks while listening to lecture
Every single person I’ve ever met who has been diagnosed with depression has expressed these sentiments. I’m not an expert or a professional, but that’s enough for me to consider it a warning sign.
You engage in this “actually” pattern a ton. Observe it, analyse “Why am I doing this? Why is this my response? What does it mean that this is how I choose to respond to valid discourse?”
Agreed.
As someone diagnosed with depression, I wish I would have recognized this back in college as a warning sign.
The constant comparisons to others is another one. I thought everyone did that until I learned more about mental health.
In my opinion: learning about mental health, how to navigate and manage stress, how ordinary behaviours can devolve into something detrimental, etc. should all be part of general education. Offer a counter-narrative to the productivity porn and unreasonable successes on social media
Not to completely derail, but I agree with this too. The constant push for striving for the next thing, or being productive every waking minute of the day is incredibly detrimental. It leads directly to the “keeping up with the whoevers” syndrome.
I did a “course” on recognising and understanding mental health in the workplace yesterday which was eye opening for me. Not because of the contents, I’ve had more than enough experience of depression with myself/colleagues/partners, but because of how clueless the others taking the course were.
Take this with a grain of salt cause I am no doctor,
But i see patterns in your statements that it might be likely. It also goes hand in hand with your eating disorder (or body dismorphia or whatever it is). The two will feed on each other in a vicious cycle.
It happened to a number of my friends in undergraduate school and I wasn’t able to help them very much at the time, to my sincere regret.
Edit: I am hoping this isn’t coming off as calloused or mean-spirited. I see no reason to sugar coat the truth though.
I am at a loss of words… did not see that coming. This is a thousand times worse than (my naive image of you) taking long walks. It really shows the compulsion you most certainly feel to burn off calories/ reach an arbitrary goal of productivity/ excercise.
I guess with the walking, I’m having trouble ignoring sunk costs.
My body has more or less adapted to my current activity level so I’m still wary of dramatic reduction despite the potential benefits
It ‘adapts’, but you are still burning hundreds and hundreds of calories that you cannot afford. This seems like the absolute easiest thing in the world to fix. Ask yourself this…how much willpower do you really have? And does that willpower count for anything if you are only able to aim it at things that are destroying you? Put some of it on the other side for once.
And as brought up before, lack of nutrition 5 million percent is messing up your brain. Your brain needs fat, and lots of it. Your body might be small, but your brain is probably more or less normal size. It needs food.
Your body has adapted your activity level because it is in survival mode. This results in, in addition to decreased athletic performance, lower cognitive abilities, and for women, the loss of a menstrual cycle, which has dramatic consequences. These points have been covered time and time again in this log, but for some reason, though I think you know all these things, you don’t want to address them. And that is where professional help comes into play, and we all felt very deceived thinking that you were finding someone when in reality that is not the case.