My weight loss has slowed down over the past month or so. I’m still averaging about a pound a week, which is great, but I haven’t had a 2 or 3 pound week in months. I think the slow down could be attributed to a number of factors – I have less weight to lose, I’m not being super strict about my food (I could work harder in this area but since I’m still losing about a pound a week I sort of feel like why bother?), and I can’t exercise as hard or as much due to the sciatica (which seems to be getting better – keeping my fingers crossed it heals completely in the next couple of weeks). During the past few weeks, I’ve been inching towards a pretty important personal milestone – getting down to what I weighed when I graduated from high school. According to the scale yesterday, I’m about 0.8 pounds away from reaching that goal. I’m pretty excited and hoping that I can lose a pound this week so that I can finally be under what I weighed when I graduated from high school. And that would mean that I’d be the lightest that I’d ever been as an adult.
I’m getting to the point where I’m running out of historical data points around my weight. When I was heavier, I had plenty of data points to reference. When I was 40 pounds heavier, that was about the same weight that I was when I started grad school. 50 pounds heavier? That was what I weighed when I graduated from college. And so on and so forth. Right now, I just know that I’m 0.8 pounds from what I weighed when I graduated high school, 20 pounds from what I weighed my freshman year in high school, and I weighed about 130 (my current goal weight) when I was in 6th or 7th grade. Three numbers. That’s it. It feels like I’m getting to an area that I’ve never been before (at least not since being a teenager) and so it’s exciting to wonder what I’ll look like, what I’ll feel like, and what size I’ll be wearing. All the numbers I’ve gone down to in the past couple of years I’ve experienced before (and not really all that long ago). This feels new.
I don’t have much to report about my life so I figured a fitness update was in order (and there really isn’t much else going on):
- When I increased the intensity of my running workouts a couple of months ago, I started noticing a sharp pain in my left thigh. The pain would usually only occur when I was running and go away after I stopped running. At first, I thought it was because I needed to get some new running shoes but my new shoes didn’t help. I then figured it was just normal soreness from challenging my body so I ignored it. The pain got so bad last week that it started lingering for a few hours after my running workouts. I decided that this couldn’t be normal so I took a break from running for a week hoping that it would heal on its own. When the pain didn’t go away after a week’s rest, I went and saw my doctor. It turns out that I have sciatica. The good news is that my doctor doesn’t think it is back/disc related and she seemed pretty optimistic that I’ll be back to my normal running workouts in a few weeks. From my understanding, it sounds like the cause of the problem might be lack of proper stretching. The muscles around my sciatic nerve are tight (which apparently happens when you exercise) so they’re causing pressure on the nerve. For now, I’m taking a week off from anything that triggers the pain – running, walking, hiking, and bike riding. I can still exercise but my options have been pretty limited this week – elliptical (not the crossramp kind since that also triggers the pain), swimming, and resistance training. I’m also supposed to take Advil 3 times a day (to alleviate the inflammation) and do the piriformis stretch. That stretch, by the way, is literally a pain in the ass – although it doesn’t seem as hard to do now as it did when I first tried doing it Monday night. Starting next week, I can get back to running (YAY) but I have to take it slow – I’m only supposed to do half of my usual workout for the first week or so. If the pain doesn’t go away after a few weeks, I have to go back to see my doctor for more intense treatment. I’m hoping that it’ll heal up sooner rather than later.
- I’m back to taking swim lessons but with a new instructor. I’ve only had two lessons so far but I really like my new instructor. She seems to really know how to work with adults and I’m seeing a huge improvement in my skills. Her availability seems pretty limited, though, so I’m hoping I can continue to work with her over the spring and summer. I was started to get really down about my swimming skills – like I’m never going to get any better because I didn’t learn as a kid. It’s nice to be excited about swimming, again. And its been great timing since I can’t run right now.
- After the whole sciatica thing, I started thinking that I really need to learn more about running. For the most part, I feel like I’ve been running blind. I knew enough to find a running plan online so that I could actually slowly progress to running a 5K and I knew enough to go to a running store and get proper running shoes for my feet but other than that, I really don’t know much else about it. I decided to buy a running book so that I could learn more about proper training and stretching. I looked through a number of books at Borders but settled on this one. Even though I’m not very far into it, I’m really loving reading this book! For one thing, since I can’t run right now, it is nice to at least think about running. The book is really positive and very encouraging. I looked at other books and some of them seemed to have a condescending tone – like spending a whole chapter lecturing you on how to get motivated. Umm . . . given what I’ve accomplished the past few years, I’m not sure motivation is my problem.
