Okay, here is a TMI post. Read or don’t read. You’ve been warned.
As I have mentioned, I am exercising and trying to figure out my eating like crazy. My typical day includes 90 days of exercise. I start with PiYo in the morning and then in the evening hit the treadmill. I watch Disney movies (what?? I like them) and walk. Well, most of the time. Last Tuesday I RAN two miles on the treadmill. I was watching Mulan. I walked .18 of a mile then threw a shirt over the treadmill display and decided to run until they got to the part where the “soldiers” were singing about wishing they had worked harder in gym class. That is, at my pace, two miles into the movie!!!!! I am telling you what. That run still makes me smile.
Thursday night I watched Aladdin and logged 1 mile running. There wasn’t quite as much in me that night.
Today I ventured outside. I was so excited to try and pound out a mile or two. Two bad I took the route that starts with a steep and then long hill, running into the wind. I made it half a mile and had to slow down to a walk. And coughed for a couple hours afterward. I guess that cold last week is still hanging around.
I want to run 5K again, 3.1 miles, so bad I can taste it. My goal is at least a 5K to celebrate my 40th birthday.
There is a wonderful beauty in the irony that will hold.
On my 20th birthday, I had been sick with Multiple Sclerosis for five years and was taking the first medication to ever show promise in giving a person more times in remission, but not necessarily better long term outcomes.
By my thirtieth birthday, I had done 15 hospital stays over a two year period, including learning how to walk again–twice after the MS yanked that freedom from me. I was, by that birthday, into the second year of doing pulse IV steroid doses every 3 weeks just to try and be mobile. We had to plan my meds around my wedding in hopes I would make it through the ceremony and honeymoon without the wheelchair. I love my wedding pictures, but hate the moon face I had thanks to those medications.
Thankfully, I went into remission, we had Caitlyn, then we had Sue, and finally Patrice. I ended up being one of the very blessed people who experienced remission during and after pregnancy…and ever since.
Roughly four years ago, I ran my first step. Then started doing 5Ks, a 10K and ran the five miles across the Mackinaw Bridge on Labor Day 3 years ago.
Unfortunately, the high doses of a particular medication I took for the Bipolar caused extreme muscle weakness. I stopped running and lost my confidence entirely by May 2012. Exercise and strength have been missing ever since…until about a month ago. A friend of mine and my dear cousin, along with a host of other people had been encouraging me to keep trying. And I finally started again. It didn’t go well at all. So I went back to walking and started doing PiYo. I am now a little over a month into those Beachbody workouts and I feel so much stronger. I am back to craving exercise, it makes me feel good no matter what the scale or Bipolar tell me.
I’m seeing the start of weight and inches lost. Here’s the TMI: I have lost 6.5 inches around my hips and an inch in one leg. And remember those steroid doses? They gave me the gift of a rotten layer of fat over my ribs. I hate that fat. Maybe more than any other jiggles on my body. But this week, I realized, I can no longer pinch the fat there!!! There is still a lot there–40 pounds to lose–but progress is good.
I love that I am taking off that Ab weight. The MS left that horrible junk, but now I am showing the MS who is boss by exercising, living, and doing.
So instead of those battles with MS during those other decades? This decade, I am going to celebrate strength and sticking it to the MS. I’m going to take my strength and work and run with it!!
