Replacing fertility with fitness

Lots of IF bloggers complain about weight gain at some point.  It's hard to avoid, between the cocktail of hormones you're ingesting/injecting/wedging up your hoo-ha and the sheer depression caused by dealing with infertility.  The last thing you feel like doing after crying your eyes out over your latest BFN is subjecting yourself to the agony of a workout session.  Chocolate feels better.  It's tasty and it doesn't make you sweat.  Did I mention it's tasty?

Against all logic, this year I've found two things that have helped to keep me sane through all our struggles.  Number one is blogging, and you guys.  Number two is fitness.  Here's a bunch of reasons why I think it's been working:

1.  It's something I couldn't do if I was pregnant

At least not to the extent that I can do it now, anyway.  Right now I can do a high intensity interval training workout that leaves me gasping for breath and dripping sweat.  I can do abs until they burn and scream and beg me to stop.  I can push my body and make my muscles and heart and lungs stronger.  I might not be able to make a baby, but I can do this.

2.  It fills the void

Scheduling workouts for the week, finding new exercise routines to mix things up, and searching for new healthy recipes online has replaced a lot of the time that I used to spend Googling infertility-related shit like antral follicle counts and AMH test results.  Don't get me wrong, I still spend plenty of time with Dr. Google.  But not nearly as much as I used to.  Blogging helps a lot with that too.

3.  It gives me non-fertility related goals to work towards

Earlier this year I decided I wanted to try a Spartan Race.   Obviously, if I had become pregnant at some point I wouldn't have done it, and that would have been awesome.  But I didn't, and that was OK too because I had something else to look forward to.  Also, while losing weight hasn't really been a specific goal (keeping a healthy body fat percentage is essential to ovulate and get pregnant!), toning up and having my arms lose some of that flippity-flappity underneath has been a nice bonus.

4.  Endorphins

I've never really gone in for the whole "exercise high" thing.  In the immediate aftermath of a workout, and for a good while afterwards, I feel like shit.  Sweaty, shaking, achy shit.  I don't feel like I've ever experienced the high that some people talk about after exercising and yet...somehow this year didn't suck as bad as last year.  When I exercise regularly, things seem less likely to get me down.  And when I am down, the lows seem to be not quite so low and to not last so long.  If that's what endorphins do, then I'm all about them and want to keep my supply flowing!

5.  Self loathing is a great motivator

I'm kind of only half joking about this.  You know when you're putting on weight, but you can't be bothered to do anything about it until your pants no longer fit and you hate yourself?  Well, I've found infertility to work kind of like that.  As in, "Fuck you, body.  You don't want to work properly?  Don't want to reproduce?  Well then 10 more pushups!!  What's that?  It hurts?  You want to stop?  You can stop when you get pregnant or have some embryos in you, that's when you can stop!!"  Sadly, my body has clearly decided that it prefers burpees to labour.  My body is dumb.

6.  It's good for you

Duh.  

I'll end this with a little disclaimer: obviously, everything in moderation.  I certainly haven't become some kind of orthorexic fitness-obsessed psycho in lieu of having a baby.  I've dialled things back before egg retrievals and have taken breaks entirely after transfers.  Nor am I any kind of athlete.  You want that, go read Jane's blog.  That woman eats half marathons for breakfast.  Seriously, she doesn't even train!  But I have found that shifting my focus to fitness during my waiting cycles (of which there have been many) has definitely helped me to deal with things a lot better than I think I would have otherwise.

As for right now, I'm into my third week on Lupron Depot.  No headaches or mood swings, but holy hell have I been feeling warm.  I haven't exactly been having hot flashes, I don't think, but I just generally feel a little toasty at all times, which is strange as the weather has been getting a lot cooler around here.  I've also been waking up at night overheated and damp, though I haven't been soaking the sheets so I'm not sure if that counts as night sweats.  It's early days yet, though.  I'm sure the best is yet to come!