Yippie!  Whoo Hoo!  I sipped water while I walked today.  Twice!  (See previous entry.)  AND, my average speed was higher than last time, though not my highest since I've been keeping track.  I'm happy with this.

I'd been complaining to Boss lately about how I always hear other people saying that exercising gives them more energy and I hadn't had that happen yet.  I was talking to Boss about it because he is a big advocate of exercise and he's been giving me advice.  (My favorite piece of advice he has given me so far is to remember that I am competing against myself, not anyone else.)  So I told him that I can really feel a lot of benefits from walking, like better mental focus and the ability to completely and totally relax (sometimes it's like being enveloped in this heavenly blanket of happy for a little while), but I'm still waiting for more energy.  I told him that after I would walk, and even for the whole rest of the day and evening, I would be so sleepy that I had to work to keep my eyes open, and I just wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep for 12 hours.  I kept wondering where the turning point was, when that would stop happening.

And then on Wednesday, I got an email from one of the many lists I'm signed up for, and it was about magnesium.  It mentioned that magnesium can "relax muscles and ease athletic injury, support energy production, promote healthy restful sleep, encourage calmness and lessen stress, maintain blood pressure within normal limits, maintain healthy blood sugar/glucose levels, promote regularity and healthy digestion, support healthy breathing and a healthy heart, reduce symptoms of Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS), and support normal bone structure".  And the funny thing is, I used to take magnesium until (I think) not quite a year ago, when I quit all the extra supplements and decided to add them back one by one, over time, to see what was really helping and what wasn't.  Well, I went on the gluten free diet, and that helped, and then I started taking YAZ, and that seemed to help for a few months, and I forgot about adding the supplements back, and my depressions were (are? I don't know yet) still coming more often and becoming harder to fight, and the fatigue has seemed to get worse.  I started back on magnesium Wednesday night, and I am noticing such a difference.

And yes, I feel a little more energy.  There is a spring in my step, and moving my muscles feels good.  I still feel sleepy, but not fatigued.  I was up late last night, so that could be part of why I'm sleepy, too.  However, I HAVE stopped napping in the evenings like I'd gotten into such a habit of doing.  I can't quite remember when I stopped, but I think it's been three or four days.  That could be why I feel better, too, since napping would always cause me to have broken sleep and not sleep more than about four hours at a stretch most weeknights, and by not napping I'm sleeping straight through, somewhere between about six and seven hours a night.  It may not be the magnesium after all, but until I know, I'm going to keep taking it.  Judging by how I had been feeling even on weekends, when I do get more sleep at a stretch, I think it's a combination of both.