Chronic fatigue - a recovery path

Over the next few posts I'll be detailing what I have been doing over the last few years to try and recover from significant chronic fatigue symptoms. In my case, the development of the illness has been:

- I became very ill overnight
- I tried to carry on
- I was too ill to carry on, I struggled to do anything, even basic stuff
- I stopped normal life. I had to
- I spent ages like this. I tried various treatments like steroids and anti-depressants; it felt like I had been poisoned.
- I had to deal with psychological issues due to the tremendous change in my circumstances
- I stripped back my life to basically nothing
- My body became deconditioned
- I tried pacing over a couple years. The deconditioning was significant.
- I gradually moved over to an intensely healthy diet. It took time
- I used pacing to gently do more from a baseline functioning I could cope with
- I was backwards and forwards for a long time
- Finally, there were gaps in the fog
- I used deep relaxation techniques to cultivate more gaps
- I started doing graded exercise therapy along with the pacing and relaxation
- I measured everything I did. I was surprised by the amount of hidden activity I was doing

And that's where I am today. Not out of the woods by any means. Here's a summary of the things I find useful (I will perhaps explain more another time);

- planning and goal setting
- measuring heart rate - especially with regard to activity and stress
- a pedometer
- reduced fat, sugar, caffeine, alcohol diet
- recording my significant daily activity
- exercise, not in the traditional sense
- using metabolic equivalent tasks
- working with other people
- drinking loads of water
- fish oils
- diet, not overeating
- a balanced approach to activity
- not watching TV
- putting myself first (in a constructive manner)
- reading other people's experiences

Anyway, expect some charts and things over the coming weeks as I try to illustrate these points.