Movember

Movember is an annual event involving the growing of moustaches during the month of November to raise awareness of men's health issues, such as mental health, prostate cancer, testicular cancer and suicide.

The Movember foundation encourages men to get involved and help raise awareness of the health issues, as well as offering advice on how to spot potential issues or more importantly stopping preventable deaths.

I think I will be focusing on more so on the mental health side of Movember, not to dismiss prostate & testicular cancer but I feel I can talk in a more free flowing way with the mental health topic. I also like the mental health groups CALM: Campaign Against Living Miserably & The Burnt Chef Project.

Mental health in general is something that has been highlighted massively over recent years. Despite saying that, It is still a major issue not just for men but for women too.

I think mental health isn't something you are taught in schools, I mean I don't know how things are in schools now but when I attended there wasn't any mention of it.

I can understand why because mental health is mental well being and ultimately how you feel and trying to teach 20-30 kids at a time, who all are all different and feel different things at different times seems very overwhelming.

We as people, emotionally change thought out on a daily basis and both little and big things can alter our mental well being.

There is a stigma with a lot of men talking about how they feel, and I think that has been passed down from old school generations. I think it is regarded as a sign of vulnerability or even weakness. In my experience, I myself have been tight lipped about all manor of mental things. Not so much now because I know I have a good string of friends that I know are there, but even with them there you can still have days where you don't want to talk.

With COVID & the lockdown restrictions, I have seen an increase of people feeling down and changes in their behaviour. Two examples off the top of my head are not being able to physically see anyone for a length of time & football being played without fans.

Now the not being able to physically go and watch a game of football hasn't effected me a great deal but for other people where football is their life and their football ground is like their second home, it all takes its toll.

A big thing for me about 6 months ago when I didn't feel in the best of places was running. I wasn't doing it to lose weight although I was at my heaviest point. I remember just wanting to make things better, I had ever took my eye off cooking and blog work and stuff like that. I ended up losing a decent amount of weight and being able to put any aggression or frustration or bad feeling into running up this horrible hill 15 minutes into my run. I don't run now because I felt better and felt I didn't need it as much, but I'm thinking I may start up again soon.

I remember scrolling through YouTube late at night at motivation videos and I found a video based on Tyson Fury. In that video he talks about his mental struggles and his downfall and eventual rise from being out of shape and heavy to becoming heavyweight champion of the world.

Key points in the video is points about stimulating the mind and setting yourself long term and short term goals in whatever it is you do or want to do.

If you have a few minutes then watch the video because it changed how I was thinking at the time and I even related to a good amount of it.

For Movember I made some moustache biscuits. I brought some cutters from Ikea I think it was and haven't got round to using them.

Now making biscuits and cookies and stuff like that has never been a strong skill for me and decorating is even more daunting. I swear making these stressed me out more than I'm comfortable with. Biscuit's are fragile things!

I made them a few weeks ago so really this post should of been made and posted well before it has been, but that's life.

So yeah, I know this has been a bit of a late ramble but its something I wanted to highlight & talk briefly on.

Don't be afraid to reach out, men or women. We all have a short stay here, we should make sure its a happy as can be.