Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Minor Setback...

Okay, so while we were in the midst of moving and had our house packed and moved except for necessities, I'm at home alone and was using a wooden chair as a stool to reach up and open an air vent. Well.... I didn't have the chair directly under the air vent so while I'm reaching, I'm also leaning... and lost balance. The chair went forward and I went down, face-up on top of the chair. Fell square on the small of my back and knocked the wind out of me! I was able to wiggle my toes so that was a good sign and my sweet dog came and licked my face so I was okay .... right? For the next week I thought so. I had an area on the right side of the small of my back that was swollen but that was about it. No bruising or discoloring of my skin. I was continuing with my workouts at the gym and helped my husband move a lot of our things. All was okay as long as I didn't wear anything too tight around my waist. One week later I went to our house to clean it before we had the carpets cleaned. It was about 4 hours of shower scrubbing, sweeping, dusting, vacuuming, mopping, etc. That night it was everything I could do to just get showered and ready for bed. My lower back hurt so bad that I just wanted to lay down. So apparently I over-worked it or re-injured it but from then on I couldn't do any extensive exercise without suffering that night. After about 3 weeks, I was pretty frustrated! I decided to stay home from work and the gym until I was able to see what a doctor said about it.

At this point I was so frustrated and unmotivated, I was ready to throw in the towel on my training. I ate pizza the night before (my husband was working) and ate some candy. I was so on the fence that I was losing my balance. The day I stayed home from work I got an appointment with a sports chiropractor. I think my back hurt worse after I saw him! And I hadn't been to the gym in two days! I was literally in tears because I was frustrated and it was out of my control. HOWEVER, the chiropractor said I could still go to the gym but I needed to take Aleve, use a cold pack on the affected area and he showed me a stretch I needed to do every hour and I would be FINE.  We went directly to the pharmacy to get some Aleve and a cold pack and I tried my best to hold onto hope that it would get better as quick as the chiropractor said until after I had time to let the Aleve, stretches, and cold pack work. This was on a Weds and I had not gone to the gym the day before or this day and I still decided not to go to the gym until I saw how I felt on Monday. I DID re-direct my diet back to my training meal plan. One of these nights I was reading my current issue of Muscle & Fit Hers to try and get me re-motivated and I read an article on getting contest ready and one of the things it said was to start 12-14 weeks out because when it goes over that time frame you can lose motivation. That's when it clicked that maybe I started too early and that's why I had lost so much motivation. But I look back and see how everything had fallen into place so far I didn't think that was the case. I think that I needed to start that early to build my foundation but I did lose motivation because I started so early and therefore, I think that my little break to heal my back was much needed to get me going again.
That Saturday evening I decided to go run around the loop by my house. It felt SO good to sweat again! Granted it was only 4 days I didn't exercise but mentally it gave me a REVAMP that I needed! Both the break and the "Second Start". One of the things different was that I had always done my cardio inside the gym. This felt really good running outside on the road! The next morning I stopped at the gym on my way to church. I was running late, AS USUAL, so I only got 20 minutes in on the elliptical machine and only 157 calories burned but hey, it was better than putting it off! That evening I went for another run around the loop by the house. I felt GREAT! I was ready to get back to the weights!

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