A friend of mine emailed me this morning wondering how I could possibly not have updated my blog since May 15th?!? She even started to wonder if her Blackberry had it wrong.

Her Blackberry didn’t have it wrong - I just haven’t had much to say lately. I wake up, I weigh myself, I get frustrated when my weight hasn’t gone down, I do stretches that are supposed to help my injury, I go to work, I attempt to workout given the limitations of my injury, I see specialists about my injury, I get frustrated about the lack of progress in the healing of my injury, I read vampire novels, I go to bed. And then I repeat the whole cycle the next day.

Being injured has sucked. I don’t have a clear diagnosis of what is really wrong with me - I have some sciatica-like symptoms in my left thigh. I have a constant tingling in my thigh, which most of the time I don’t even think about. When I do go running, I have a fairly severe pulling pain in my thigh and sometimes in my butt. Depending on who you ask, this pain might be a pinched nerve due to tightness in my glutes and other muscles in my butt (did you know that you butt does a lot of work when you’re running or hiking?). Or it might be a herniated disk that is inflaming/pinching the nerve. Or it might be a compensation injury due to an imbalance in my form. I also sometimes have pain in my lower back or tail bone but that seems to be more sporadic.

It is frustrating because I’ve been dealing with this injury since February. I’ve seen my doctor, a physical therapist, and a chiropractor. We’ve tried a bunch of different things and so far nothing has healed my leg. I’m trying to stay positive about the chiropractor since I only started treatment with him a couple of weeks ago. If that doesn’t work, I’m supposed to see yet another specialist (I can’t remember the technical medical term but I believe it is a doctor who treats the back exclusively).

This injury has been a pretty major setback for me. I’m angry, disappointed, frustrated, and generally feeling helpless and like a total failure. It is one thing to get injured when you’re skinny. It is something else to get injured when you’re trying to lose weight. I’m actually surprised with how hard I’ve taken it. I knew I was starting to love running but I didn’t realize just how much it meant to me. Not only did it enable me to stay on track with my weight loss goals, I just really enjoyed it. Running makes me feel like I’m an athlete - it makes me feel like I can do the impossible. Sure, I’m pretty slow and I can’t run that far (4 - 5 miles is the longest distance I’ve run) but it still feels like I’m doing something I’m not supposed to be able to do at my size right now. Getting on the elliptical doesn’t excite me or give me the same feelings of self-worth that running does. Running helped me sort through the various emotional and mental junk floating around my mind. For whatever reason, I can’t seem to get the same sort of clarity from any other exercise I’ve tried.

I’ve been trying to see the silver lining to my current situation but that has been a struggle. I keep reminding myself that I’ve come a long way and accomplished something that most people can’t do. I’m at the lowest weight I’ve been in 11 years. And despite my injury, I’ve still managed to maintain my weight loss. All of those are very positive things but I can’t help but think that they’re excuses. At the end of the day, I’m left with overwhelming feelings of failure, anger, and disappointment.

And that’s really why I haven’t been blogging - nobody wants to read a whiny angry post.

In more positive (but unrelated) news, I just moved to a new apartment this weekend. I LOVE the new place so far (despite having a bunch of maintenance issues).

I have a lot to be grateful for in my life right now - I’m just struggling to see past this setback.