Funny thing...

One of my least favorite things to do each year is go in for my annual check-up. I like my doctor, and I know it's good to make sure there aren't any problems that I could be unaware of, but I just feel like it's usually so unnecessary. I don't have a history of serious ongoing medical problems (although, my list of random problems and issues that pop up is pretty impressive), and I'm perfectly fine going to the doctor if I have a concern. Regardless, I dutifully make my appointment to go every year because that's just what responsible people do.

Since I was there already, I decided I would finally ask my doctor about my weight. The struggle to get back to my pre-injury weight has been slow, and I still have at least ten more pounds to go. I was still trying to lose weight prior to when I got injured, so I was thinking that I would need to lose an additional 15 or so pounds beyond what I had previously weighed.

When I asked her what I should weigh, though, she got out her BMI wheel, looked at me, and told me that the BMI chart wouldn't give me a fair idea of what a realistic weight would be. Since I have a large frame and a muscular build (my interpretation is that she was describing as solid, hardy, sturdy), I was already at a healthy weight prior to getting hurt.

That's the first time I've ever heard a doctor say that I didn't need to lose weight, and unfortunately I heard it a year too late to appreciate it in the moment. But it does let me know that I am capable of achieving the one thing that I've felt has eluded me my entire life - good health.

Now I just need to lose these last ten pounds. Anything beyond that will just be a bonus!

Halfway

The last several months have been filled with uncountable frustrations and difficulties for me. Most of it was fueled by my injury and the havoc that wreaked on my daily routine. Regular exercise was out of the picture, and I was having a really hard time reigning in my eating habits. I've definitely struggled to maintain some control over my health, wellness, and fitness, and even though I managed to hang on without regaining all the weight I worked so hard to lose, I felt defeated.

I think I've reached a turning point in my efforts, though. For one thing, I'm excited about running again. It was a very strange experience to work so hard to be able to run and then not actually desire to go running once I was capable of it. I read an article in Runner's World recently that explained that some of that is related to fear of reinjuring yourself or of not being able to perform at your previous level, but most of it is simply because you're out of the routine. Hearing someone that had been a runner for two decades admit to the same struggle I was facing helped immensely.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've regained a lot of the enthusiasm for taking care of myself that I had lost. I've been eating much better, and I've been getting out and running on a more regular basis. This week I started my official marathon training. Following the prescribed schedule, I'll be cutting back on the distance of my long runs for a few weeks, but I'll be increasing my mid-week mileage (which means I'll be running five days a week instead of three). Having a schedule is good for me - it takes some of the pressure off of me to try to figure out what I should do/how far I should go.

I also have finally seen some significant results on the scale. I am now down 10 pounds from the most I weighed post-injury. I have about 10 more to go before I reach my pre-injury low (and unfortunately I had about another 15-20 to go before that). It took me six months to get back to this point. It was a difficult, emotionally challenging, frustrating six months, but being able to finally see these results validates the work, the determination, and the prayers that got me back here.

Maybe I'm halfway back to my pre-injury weight, but if I could measure the progress of my emotional and psychological health, my attitude, my heart, I think my spirit has progressed much, much farther than that. This experience has definitely tested my faith and determination, and I have a feeling that it will continue to test me. But I also know that every challenge we overcome makes us stronger, more confident, more faithful.

I make a point of praising God when I run. Maybe it hurts, maybe I want to throw up, maybe I'm tired and want to quit, but I'm capable of running, and I never regret the discomfort I went through once I'm back home.

Thank you, Lord, for my body that is strong and can run. Thank you for friends and family that have supported and encouraged me, especially when I was a depressed, emotional wreck. Thank you for showing me how strong I can be when I surrender my worries and cares to you.

Measuring Success

It's not a big secret that I'm a goal-oriented kind of girl. I do ridiculous things like register for marathons to motivate myself to stay active. As such, it's really, really important to me that I see progress on my way to accomplishing my goals. But progress is so subjective...

I am trying SO hard to get off the weight I gained when I got hurt. Until recently, I had a lot of mental hurdles I needed to overcome to get to a point where I felt more in control of my eating. Well, this past week, I really felt like I was on top of things. I had calorie deficits all but one day, I walked or ran five days out of the week, and I even passed on dessert when I took my mom out for dinner on her birthday.

Needless to say, I was actually excited to weigh myself yesterday morning to see how much progress I had made. Turns out that it wasn't that much. I was down about 0.4 pounds. Now, at least I was down, but still, I put in an awful lot of effort to see the scale "only" budge 0.4 pounds.

So what happens when you don't see the fruits of your labor? When your hard work doesn't show up in the outcome? I could easily throw my hands up in the air and give up. I want to do that a lot of times. But I have to remember how far I've come and I have to keep my goal in mind. Maybe I didn't make much progress this week, but all the small steps along the way lead up to big, measurable results as long as I don't give up my efforts.

On the plus side, I ran seven miles on Sunday and my pace was under 11 minutes per mile (down 27 seconds per mile from the week before). I might not see progress on the scale, but I am seeing it on the trail at least!

Committing

I have a confession, friends. I have not been fully committed to regular runs, strength training, or a healthy nutrition plan. I've been running, I've been trying to eat well, but I haven't been committed. My efforts have been very half-hearted. Enough to keep me going, but not enough to help me progress in my goals. This has to change.


The biggest problem is that I haven't really been planning. I might make a loose plan ("I think I'm going to try..."), but nothing I've fully thought out, and therefore, nothing I've stuck to. I've let myself derail on my diet a number of times more than I can readily recall. It's been frustrating and discouraging, and I've wanted to throw in the towel so many times. The only reason I haven't is because I know what the outcome will be: 224 pounds.


I'm going into the upcoming week with a plan. 1) I will get up early each morning. I will run the neighborhood route on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I will walk a shorter route on Tuesday and Thursday. 2) I will go to the bike trail Saturday and get a long-ish run in. 3) I will not use social occasions as permission to indulge in foods that will not help me meet my goals. I'm going to dinner and frozen yogurt with some friends this weekend. I have already let one of them know what I am eating for dinner and that I will be passing on the frozen yogurt. It sucks that I have to rely on telling someone else to keep me accountability, but that's my reality right now, so there you have it. 4) I will NOT continue to give in to unplanned indulgences. I don't have any specific mechanism in place to accomplish this, but I am bound and determined to beat this behavior.


The good news is that I have fully committed to a half marathon in September and a full marathon in October. I know I'm capable of taking better care of myself than I have been, I just need to tap back into that will-power to move forward.

Out Of Control

I went a whole week with very limited sugar intake. And it honestly wasn't that difficult. At the end of the week, even though I wasn't particularly craving anything sugary or desserty, I broke the fast with some frozen yogurt. It was delicious. But I felt like I had opened Pandora's Box by eating that small bowl of chocolate and peanut butter sugary sweetness.

The week after the fast ended was awful. I started craving sugar to an extent where I did not experience any form of satiation. I just wanted more and more of it. And I came to a hard realization - for right now, it's not something that I can allow myself to have.

I whole-heartedly believe that when people are taking steps to change their eating behaviors, eating plans based on deprivation are bad ideas. Mostly because deprivation leads to binge-eating those things of which you are depriving yourself, which leads to guilt, which leads to self-sabotage. However, those of us that have been successful in any sort of weight loss program over the long-term also know that it's really important to identify trigger foods.

Unfortunately for me, pretty much anything that falls into the "sugary" category is a trigger food: cake, candy, chocolate, cookies, ice cream, etc. It doesn't matter - I crave it all, and once I have a little, I want more. And if I can't have something sugary, then I'll just start mindlessly eating in general.

I have to accept that for me, for right now, I'm better off without it. Not just because of my efforts to manage my weight, but also for my health in general. I just don't feel as good when I'm eating lots of sugar. My energy level is down, my blood sugar is all over the place, I have headaches, and I'm tired constantly.

Maybe one day I'll be able to eat a cookie or two after dinner at a friend's house and be satisfied, or buy a quart of ice cream and not constantly think about eating it, but I'm not there right now.

Do you want to be a toughie or a tubby?

I recently started going back to the gym. Because the activities I used to do at the gym are off limits for the time-being, I thought this would be a good opportunity to work on some of the activities I generally avoid. Namely, weight- and strength-training. Specifically for my upper body. As someone who largely avoided gyms except to use the pool and the treadmill, this was a completely new universe for me, and I needed some help.

I started going to a new church in the fall of last year and got involved in a small group. I found out a couple of the guys went to my gym, and they kindly agreed to help me get started. I am very grateful to Mark, who willingly met me at 6:30 am on a morning when he didn't have to be at work until 10, and for Rick, who provided a great deal of instruction and comic-relief. Apparently, weight-lifting is more effective when you make faces in the mirror. Who knew?!

In addition to providing me with a greater sense of purpose in the YMCA weight room, Mark and Rick also shared their personal work-out motto with me: Do you want to be a toughie or a tubby? When they first told me their motto, it made me laugh... a lot. But it's grown on me a lot these last few days.

They use it in terms of motivating each other to finish their work-outs, especially if they run into circumstances where one or the other doesn't want to do a certain activity. It definitely makes sense in that capacity. But I've been finding myself saying it more to myself outside the gym - specifically when I have to make decisions about what I eat.

I have to remember that the effectiveness of my work-out isn't over just because I've left the locker room. For some reason, it's really easy for me to leave the gym and then act like I never did anything good for my body. I'll crave sugar-laden mochas and chocolate chip cookies instead of fruit and yogurt and lean proteins. But by making those poor nutritional choices, I'm working against accomplishing my fitness goals. I say I want to be a "toughie" in the gym, but then I leave and I make "tubby" decisions. That's got to change - pronto.

I'm gonna be a toughie... all the way!

Under the Knife

I scheduled my surgery for December 16, 2010. It was about a month from my last doctor's appointment. As I left, Dr. Gondi assured me that they'd get me fixed up. I believed he was going to do everything he could, I just wasn't sure that it would work. The doctor had told me that he was usually able to resolve IT band problems with more conservative treatments, so I was already the exception. What if I was the exception after the surgery, too? I wanted to be optimistic, but I also wanted to be prepared for the worst.

That month was rough. I had gained about 12-15 pounds back over the last few months, and I was terrified that with the waiting period for my surgery and the recovery period afterwards, that would just continue to increase. I was mentally struggling to make good eating choices, and as half-hearted as my efforts were, I was at least trying to be reasonable. The other challenge was that this was all happening in the midst of the holiday eating season. Amazingly enough, though, I held steady at my 12 - 15 pound gain. I am very thankful it wasn't worse, but I also felt like I was at the brink of falling out of control and it was all I could do to hang on.

Surgery day arrived and it was cold and snowy, which isn't completely normal for my part of the country. But everything still ran on schedule. The highlight of the experience for me was the anesthesiologist. My mother had worn a Georgia Tech sweatshirt and it turned out that he was a University of Georgia grad. After some good-natured banter, I was wheeled into the operating room. He told me that since I went to GT, I should start counting down from 100 in prime numbers. I remember thinking that I couldn't count down from 100 in prime numbers because 100 wasn't a prime number itself, but I think all I articulated was that I couldn't count down from 100 in prime numbers. I'm sure that destroyed his opinion of GT grads!

I woke up feeling groggy and tired, but otherwise not too bad. I made it out to the car and into my parents' house without incident, despite the snow and ice. My knee ached, and I was very sleepy, but I was able to walk without crutches and my little dog, Abigail, stayed by my side the entire first day, so overall I was in pretty good shape.

Everything was looking good, but it was still just a matter of waiting to determine if the surgery would effectively resolve the problems I was having.

It all started when...

Most of my close friends know that I've gone through a major transformation in the last year and a half. I've struggled for most of my adult life with weight management. In the summer of 2009, I started Weight Watchers and also started running again (I picked up running off and on since I was in college). Over the course of about six months, I had lost 65 or so pounds and to my surprise, was actually sticking to a regular running regimen for a period of more than just a couple of months. I felt amazing, and I was enjoying the benefits of having a strong, healthy body for the first time since high school.

When I began running in 2009, my initial goal was to build up my stamina to run the Virginia 10-Miler in September of 2010. It seemed like a lofty goal when I could barely run half a mile without getting winded. I was surprised at how quickly my body was able to build up stamina, though, and I ended up running a 10-Miler in April of 2010. With that goal behind me, and with the entire summer to train, I set my sights on a much loftier goal: a marathon in October 2010.

I did my research, downloaded my training schedule, and stuck it to the refrigerator. I was doing great - sticking to my workouts, getting my long-runs in, focusing on my nutrition. For three months, I adhered to my schedule, building my long runs up to 18 miles, and I realized that I was going to be able to run 26.2 miles in another two months. I felt amazing!

Well, I mostly felt amazing. My right knee was the exception. I started noticing the pain when I was running down a big hill one day on a 10-mile run. Not a big deal - aches and pains are normal when you're putting that kind of strain on your body. I came home, took a few advil, and took it easy for the rest of the day.

The next day I went running again, and got the same pain in my knee. I cut my run short and came home and took some advil. I took it easy for a few days, thinking I would be fine after some rest. I didn't want to miss any long-runs, though, so at the end of the week, I laced up my shoes, grabbed my water bottle, and headed out the door for a 19-mile run. Eight miles in, the pain came back, but I kept going. That was the last time I was able to run.

After that, I tried again a few times, but the pain came back after about a mile and I would have to stop and go home. I knew it was a problem with my IT band, so I made an appointment with the orthopeodic center and they confirmed my fears. The marathon was out and running was on hold.

I worked with an amazing physical therapist for a month. Although I was following the program she created for me, I wasn't experiencing the relief I was looking for. After that, the doctor tried a cortizone shot - it worked for a couple of weeks, then all of a sudden, the pain increased. I couldn't walk down stairs, walk around the block, or even swim without pain in my knee.

I ended up stopping all forms of exercise - everything hurt! It was incredibly frustrating and I could feel myself slipping into a mild depression. I'm very goal-oriented, and I felt a little lost without a specific goal to be working towards. I also felt myself slipping back into my old eating habits. I struggled to keep off the weight I lost, but I still started putting a few pounds back on. I was terrified that without my ability to run and exercise, I would regain all the weight I had worked so hard to lose.

I went back to the doctor and he told me the one thing I didn't want to hear: my injury was going to require surgery. As much as I was looking forward to experiencing relief from the pain, I was also very nervous. Surgery was my last hope - if this didn't work, I was out of options.

With a lump in my stomach and barely holding back tears, I walked to the scheduling center and set the date.