I recently purchased a Fitbit Zip. It is no secret on this blog that I need to lose weight. The Zip has many great features. One of the features I like is the calorie counter. When I first started using the Zip, I noticed I was logging in a lot of calories. It was accurate, because it was what I was eating. The Zip was eye opening for me to show just how many calories I was consuming in an average day. Wow! I was not paying attention to the amount of calories I was putting into my body. What seemed good temporarily, was taking a toll on my body for a life time.

Too Much Media

For people with a mental illness like bipolar, they need to watch not only for the calories they consume for a healthy body, but also their media consumption for a healthy mind. With my tendency to overreact and obsess, I can hear a news story and once it gets in my mind, it can play over and over again like a broken record.

My Bipolar and Media Consumption Experience

I used to be a news junky. Every chance I got, I would watch news in the morning before work and all afternoon and into the evening. I was so hyped up on what the world was doing that I was not even cognizant of the consequences. This had to stop because the barrage of news was causing me to be depressed, anxious and irritable.

When I heard nothing but bad news for hours on end day in and day out, the negativity brought me down. I had to stop saturating my brain with negative news. The bad news put horribly terrifying ideas in my head. Suicide. Murder. Larceny. Reckless driving. I felt I was above all of that garbage on the news and would never get caught or it would just be okay. Yeah, you bet. That is delusional.

Ways to Battle against Bipolar and Media Consumption

The way I got out of watching so much news is I picked out three or four news programs to watch — one in the morning, one in the early afternoon and late afternoon and one in the evening. When I was tempted to watch more news, I busied myself with another distraction.

What other forms of media do you have that causes you to have problems with your bipolar or other mental illness? Email me at [email protected] and share with me how you win the battle.

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