When I left off in July, I was upset about tight pants and a body fat percentage increase. I got rolling with a new weight training program, started watching my calories a bit more (and I will say a bit, I didn't do anything too radical), and soon I was feeling much happier with my pants. I don't know if I actually dropped weight because, as I mentioned earlier, I don't weigh myself at home.
Then I went on vacation for 10 days and had a milestone I'm not particularly proud of: I took more rest days than I've ever had in at least the past five years. I pretty much did nothing other than lounge on the beach, read, nap and overindulge in every way. (Well, I did attempt one big swim in the lake -- got totally seasick after less than half an hour and then had to go lay down for an hour to recover.) That wasn't my goal when we headed out of town. I had a big idea that I'd swim or do yoga every single day. My hope was that if I completely avoided weight-bearing cardio, my plantar fasciitis would resolve or radically improve by the time we got home.
No such luck. Even after 10 sedentary days, my foot was still hurting every day. And somehow I just hadn't been able to motivate myself to exercise. I really missed being able to run, that's for sure. Without that, I felt lost, aimless and just not very excited about moving my body around. And since I'd managed to make my pants comfortable again, I didn't feel particularly compelled to get active.
Getting on the ball again after we came home was hard. The first time I went back to the gym, it just felt weird. I was gigantically aware of how easy it would be to simply end the "fitness phase" of my life, go back to the way I used to be, stop organizing my day around my workout. But somehow there was a seed of something inside me that pushed me to start up again. And, after a week or so, I was back in the rhythm -- making an automatic assumption every day that I'd be exercising, and arranging my day to create space for that to happen.
Fast forward to now. My foot is still problematic. I tried a 5-mile run a couple weeks ago, not because my foot was feeling healed but because NOT running on it didn't seem to be helping, so I thought perhaps running on it wouldn't make it worse. (I realize that's terrible logic, but I really wanted to take a run -- actually, it's more accurate to say I really wanted to see if I could still do it.) The run felt great and my time wasn't terrible, I averaged about 10:40 per mile, but I did pay for it the next couple days with lots of hobbling and burning spasms in my foot. No more running since then. But if anything, the experience was helpful because it propelled me to make an appointment with a sports podiatrist. Maybe talking to and getting a treatment plan from an expert will make a difference -- and help me take better care of the problem. (Because, it must be admitted, I've read all kinds of stuff about how to improve plantar fasciitis and I've been pretty half-assed about it. I just want it to get better without a lot of ice or massage or stretching. I know that sounds ridiculous but isn't it also kind of human?)
So, stay tuned on that. In the meantime, I'm still doing the 3x weekly weight training program that I got from my fave trainer in July -- I'll post those workouts next. And I've also started taking Zumba classes a few times each week, which are totally silly but a great workout and I'll post about those separately, too. So it's all good and I'm feeling generally happy with how I look and feel ... but I still really miss that feeling that I'm working toward something.
One thing that I'm hoping will help with that is resuming regular blog entries. And the other, gigantically bigger thing is that I'm finally going to start pursuing personal trainer certification. Over a year after making the decision, I know which organization I want to go with and what the costs are. Now to find the money for the materials ... hopefully I'll be posting lots more about this soon.
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