wednesday wrap-up - week 7

I was so looking forward to having an excellent report for you all. I had also thought that I'd be posting here every day. Alas, that's not the case!

The cold I had a couple of weeks ago is still around. It's a wacky bug which is now affected my head. I had a killer sinus headache on Monday. It was so bad that I actually had to leave work early. I went home and got into bed and felt much better after a couple of hours of sleep. Today, the headache came back though so I had to resort to taking some drugs because I didn't want to leave the office again today.

Fortunately, in between episodes with the cold, I've had some good days. On the weekend, we did a fair bit of walking (until I started to feel like crap on Sunday afternoon). We're trying to get into more of a routine to walk together, with the dogs, in the evenings. I realize when we are doing it, how out of shape I am but I'm determined to keep at it. Even if we just do a lap around the small block, I feel good about that. Eventually, we'll expand it and when I've conquered that, we'll expand it further. I'm taking my time with this so as not to discourage myself. Walking with the cold does make things more difficult while I'm doing it but afterward, my cold symptoms go away for a little while so that's pretty good.

Anyway, the wrap-up isn't really awesome this week but I'll do one anyway!

So, having said all of that, here's my weekly wrap-up:

summary - week ending March 24

• vitamins and water - back on track on both scores. The cold made me want to drink lots of water in an attempt to flush the crap out of my system
  
• didn't post here as much as I'd wanted to
  
• bought a buttload of gorgeous produce on the weekend and have been enjoying snacking on berries and apples and other good things
  
• gave into a bad craving for potato chips while I was really sick but here I am, being honest about - bully for me huh?
  
• feel good about my first attempts at a coordinated exercise plan. Now that the nice weather has returned to my part of the world, and all of the ice is melted, there is no long an excuse to avoid it so I'm getting out there and moving my considerably huge butt. Yay me!
  

deliberate

Happy Spring folks. It's freezing cold here today even though it's officially spring. I shouldn't complain really. If we'd had a day like this 2 weeks ago, it would have felt balmy. Funny how quickly your body can adjust to a change in the temperature isn't it?

I wish that my body would adjust to other things as quickly. Today, I've deliberately made my meal portions smaller and my tummy is grumbly. In a few days, I'll have adjusted again to smaller portions but for today, in addition to being cold, I feel like I could eat a small horse. Well, a small horse sized clump of some kind of food I enjoy.

For now though, I'll grab another sweater and eat my carrots and be grateful for the sunshine.

Missing in inaction

I feel as though I should explain my unplanned absence of the past few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, it got bitterly cold around here. I’d been feeling like I was fighting a cold bug, a little run down, achy, you know how that goes. Everyone in my office had been sick but I had resolve. I would not get sick. The weekend arrived and rather than give into the bug, I kept busy and felt better. I mean, we got some things done around the house and I was able to sleep in and generally go at my own pace.

On the Sunday afternoon, again, it was way cold. Sunny but bitterly cold. I went out onto the deck with one of our dogs. I was wearing yoga pants, a t-shirt and a sweat shirt and leaned against our deck railing while Gracie did her thing. I straightened up, walked back into the house, sat on the couch and experienced massive pain in my back.

This has happened to me before, but not for a good long while. I think it was a combination of stress and the cold, more the bug than the actual temperature. I was laid up for 2 days at home. I crawled back into work on Wednesday and was feeling “okay” by the weekend but really had to limit how much time I spent either at a desk or on my feet. Last week, I started experiencing hip pain. I know it was caused by the funny way I had to walk when my back was messed up. That hip pain eventually migrated to the knee area and is now in my calf. It only really aches toward the end of the day and I am feeling much much better.

Last week, in an attempt to move my old bones and get the achy parts loosened up I did some walking. I wish I could say that I was on a regular exercise routine but I’m not. I also wish I could say that I compensated for the lack of activity by making consistently good food choices but I can’t say that either.

Chocolate has been consumed (not in mass quantities but in larger than I should have), chips have been consumed (although without dip – that counts for something, right?). I did buy some ice cream treats but managed to buy the sugar free mini-sized ones. Overall, it wasn’t a binge fest but it wasn’t great.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been doing much better. I’m feeling better too and that will help me too. It’s a little too easy to “treat” yourself when you’re laid up. That’s when I shouldn’t be doing it but, well…. you know…

I want to get totally back on track and to do that, I need to post here. It keeps me honest and focused.