It has been so long since my last post and I realized that I had a number of blog entries started but never published them. The first part of this post was originally written in October 2013. I decided that it is relevant to what I was planning on posting today, so we'll start there and work our way up to now!
From Oct. 2013:
"I was in the process of starting a long Facebook post, but stopped myself and decided to switch to the blog instead (something I'm going to try to do more of, for reasons I won't get into now). So, I see my last post was in June 2012, and it was about (what else) my weight-loss and exercise struggles. Surprise, surprise... But guess what? This time around things are actually WORKING! Hooray! Let me explain:
Last summer (around May/June) I started something called the squat challenge. It's 30 days of squats of increased value with a rest day every 4th day. You start with 50 on the first day and work your way up to 250 by day 30. Here it is:
And my ass wasn't looking too bad, either ;)
It's amazing for your leg muscles, and what's more amazing, I actually finished it. And my legs got super sexy, as seen here:
And my ass wasn't looking too bad, either ;)
Almost immediately after this awesome transformation, I decided it was time to see a podiatrist...finally. I have had foot problems for over half my life now, since my surgery at age 15. It took a couple months of x-rays and a long wait to get into the podiatrist's office, but after one thing led to another, I was also finally diagnosed with a variety of problems. Here is a foot diagram so you can have half a clue what I'm talking about haha:
The first diagnosis is what I assumed all along: severe cartilage loss in the joint between the calcaneous and fibula/talus, resulting from my foot surgery 15 years ago. I had a piece of bone in that joint (where the cartilage should have been) which had to be removed, as well as a number of bone spurs. So after that all that was left was basically bone-on-bone. Just to be clear, there is nothing that can be done to fix this. It's basically arthritis now. I can have those bones fused, but I am WAY too young for that. It would essentially give me a club foot and cause rapid deterioration in my other joints. So, of course, this was somewhat bad news. The other obvious diagnosis was my poor foot posture (aka flat feet). Not a surprise whatsoever. What was a surprise, though was that was determined that I needed to wear a walking cast boot to "rule out" a stress fracture in my calcaneous bone. This was totally new information. After I researched it more, it made so much sense, given that my foot would seemingly get "better" but then hurt like hell again after exercising on it. I've always described the pain as feeling like my leg bone is trying to break through the bottom of my heel. When I showed where the pain was to my podiatrist she said that it was "all bone" that was hurting, and given that I have hardly any cartilage to cushion the weight of my body on this bone, I've literally been crushing it with every step I take. Luckily, the current stress fracture was fixable... by use of a walking boot cast:
I had to wear this thing for 7 weeks. Never in my life have I been so stir crazy. And I coped with it by eating copious amounts of ice cream. So, as you can imagine, I turned blobby again. All those squats ended up being for nothing. The weeks ticked by and within that time I also had an annual physical exam from my regular doctor, with full blood work and everything. This was the first time in years that I've had blood work done. And the results have sparked a big change in the way I now look at my diet.
I had high blood sugar. Not super high, but 2 points outside of the highest "normal" range."
And that's where the October 2013 post ended. I'm assuming it is because I took a break to eat a quart of Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream. All that talk of high blood sugar can really make a person have some cravings. The summary of the rest of this story is that after the boot came off, I got some good custom orthotics and started tracking my calories. I lost a total of 25 lbs. and entered into a weight category that I hadn't been in since high school. It felt amazing!!
But then the holidays came and I decided to give myself a break and completely give up on weight loss or counting calories for about two months. The result? I gained back about 12lbs. Shocking, right? No. But I'm not beating myself up about it because I know it will fly back off once I get back on track. My reckless holiday weight gain was almost entirely caused by Venti Iced Caramel Brûlée Lattes from Starbucks. And chocolate chip cookies. Basically, just pounds and pounds of sugar.
So, now I got an espresso maker for Christmas, I'm avoiding the Starbucks drive-thru and I'm not making 14 dozen chocolate chip cookies. I expect to be back to my pre-holiday weight in no time. Which brings us back to what I wanted to post about in the first place... I'm doing the 30 Day Squat Challenge again! So here we go... Squats are a Bitch:
Days 1-3 of this challenge are the most difficult. Since I've done this challenge once before, I am typing from experience here. It might seem like getting up into the 100s would be the hardest part, but no. By then your legs are used to it and adding on a few more squats doesn't feel like much of a difference.
Getting started is always the hardest part of anything and these first three days are brutal. My legs are literally giving out from under me. I'm walking around like a newborn baby fawn. Getting on and off of the toilet is like an epic struggle of good vs. evil every single time. There's not enough Advil on earth to make the first three days of this challenge any better.
Experience has taught me, however, that this challenge is worth it. If you can get past the first few days, the results really show. Last time I did this my legs looked and felt amazing. I'm not someone who is in shape by any means, so the results from this amount of exercise were dramatic. (As seen in the sexy leg shot above!) Unfortunately, last time I wasn't able to keep it up because of the whole cast boot fiasco. So here I am again, suffering through days 1-3. Hopefully at the end of this go-around I'll be able to keep things going and add on more exercises/challenges.
[ j. ]
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