A day in the life

Some of you who could stumble upon this rarely updated blog (trying to change that!) might be familiar with my journey with fitness over the past few years. You might have heard about my injury, physical therapy, and then successful effort at a 20 pound weight loss. If not, well, here’s the summary:

Rewind to the first week of April 2010. I went for a jog on the first nice day in a long time. The next day I was very sore. “Oh well, walk through it,” I thought. The next two days, I went for walks. The soreness in my left quad slowly dissipated. The soreness in my right quad got severely worse. That weekend I attended a wedding and wore some pretty killer high heels. When I woke up the next day, I couldn’t put weight on my right leg.

I eventually made my way to the ER where the doctor thought it would be a stress fracture… until the x-ray showed a huge lump in the middle of my quad. Fearing the worst, I was given a script for vicodin and a referral to a specialist, and told to stay on crutches until further notice. After more x-rays and the longest MRI in the history of MRIs (4.5 hours spent in the machine, and I almost peed my pants), I was given a diagnosis of Myositis Ossificans.

Basically, the jog probably tore a bit of muscle deep in my quad, near the bone. Because it was so close to the bone, my body didn’t know how to heal it and started healing the muscle like it was bone. A chunk of my quad calcified and I essentially grew a bone in the middle of my leg. I spent 3 months on crutches in the worst pain of my life, taking the max amount of vicodin I was probably legally allowed. Once it was clear that my pain was subsiding and the calcification had stopped increasing, I was in physical therapy. I had to learn how to walk up stairs again.

Needless to say, all the inactivity and vicodin was not good for my waistline. I topped out at 150 pounds. Now, I’m about 5’5″, and have a relatively tiny frame. I’m pretty sure my wrists are about 5 inches around.

I looked, and felt, horrible.

August 2010–At 150 pounds.

By the start of 2011, I was finally ready–and physically able–to start shedding the excess weight. And I was dedicated. I was at the gym 5 days a week, walking and biking. I kept myself on a strict, well-balanced diet. By May, I was down to 128, and I felt GOOD.

En route from 150 to 128.

May 2011. 128 pounds. Running almost every day. Healthy.

Fast forward to today. I certainly have failed at keeping the weight off. Since I began dating Tony, I’d gained 10ish pounds (although today I weighed in at 136.8). Certainly not as bad as I was, but I’m ready to readjust my lifestyle and get it all off for GOOD.

So, here I am. I’m setting some monthly goals for myself, primarily based on fitness and not weight loss. I miss the way I felt when I was at 128–not just because of how I looked, but because I was active and eating well all the time.

Some of my goals:
1. Finish the C25K program.
2. Go from running 5k to 5 miles.
3. Finish the 100 push-ups and 200 sit-ups challenges.
4. To have people associate me with the word “active.”

Yeah, I gained weight. But what’s worse is what I lost: My level of fitness. My active lifestyle. That’s what I want to find again.

Granted, I haven’t completely lost it, but I wasn’t good at maintaining. This is changing. I’ve been at the gym every day but Tuesday this week, in fact. I’m not a lost cause. I just am not at my peak level of fitness anymore, and I haven’t felt as good in my own skin.

So I’m starting over. Reset. I will get back to that level of fitness. In fact, I’ll surpass it.

I took measurements of myself yesterday, as well as “before” photos. Assuming all goes as planned, by my birthday (July 7) I’ll have a very good set of afters–and I’ll be off to run 5 miles.

WISH ME LUCK!