exercise
Things have been puttering right along here at the casa de Shrinking Kelly. I finally got a new job at the end of March and I’m really enjoying it for the most part.
I’m just an admin assistant, but they met the salary that I was at on my last job so that was unexpected and nice. It’s mostly stress free and I really enjoy the people that I work with.
I’m not sure I ever touched on how stressful my last job was. My office manager back then was a total headcase. Like, no joke, she needed to be on medication for her mental illnesses. She would scream and yell and throw things on the daily and you never knew what you were in for when you showed up at work.
It really ignited my PTSD from my childhood in the worst way possible and for about the last year or two it REALLY messed with my mental well-being.
Having said that, this job has NONE of that and it is so freeing. To come home from work and not bring major emotional damage with me is just so amazing I can’t even put it into words.
It did however, take me a little bit to get back into the swing of things as far as actually putting on clothes and leaving my house. 🤣🤣
The first two weeks I was completely exhausted and could barely function when not at work, but that eventually sorted itself out and I seem to have found my groove.
I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to maintain my level of exercise once I started working again. In fact, I told myself that I would keep at it for a week or two and then move it down to a more “reasonable” level.
Since I lost my job at the end of November, I’ve been managing to get in at least an hour of cardio most every day. Let’s face it, I had nothing better to do at the time and it was really helping with the mental stress I had at being stuck at home 24/7 for four months.
It was that very reason that I wanted to continue it for at least the first week or two of the new job. I knew that I would be nervous and that working out in that capacity would leave me clear headed and less anxious about the new position.
I’ve never been a morning person. Like, ever. It has always been a major struggle for me to get up and get going in the morning, be it school or work. If given my druthers I would sleep until early afternoon and then stay up all night. Lather, rinse, repeat.
That just simply isn’t an option in the real world, so I would settle for sleeping until the last possible second before getting up and doing the bare minimum (shower, brush my teeth and get dressed) before getting in the car and heading to work. No make up, no time to gather my thoughts and certainly no exercise.
With the new job, I just didn’t give myself any other alternative. It helped that I don’t have to be to the new job until nine whereas my old job I had to be there at 7:30, but I just didn’t let myself slide at all. I woke up every morning at 5:30 and was working out by six. No excuses.
After a couple of weeks, I realized that I hadn’t died from lack of sleep and actually enjoyed going to bed early for the most part. Once I reached that understanding with myself, it was fairly easy to just keep going and now it is just habit.
I even incorporate it on weekends too if I have to be somewhere, I just do the backwards math of when I would have to get up in order to be able to get my workout in and then set my alarm. There is no question (a couple of minor exceptions being 5:00 AM departures for whatever reason – mostly travel related) in my mind and therefore I just do it.
There is no way that I would be able to have done any of this if it weren’t for losing my job, so when they say that everything happens for a reason, there is a certain amount of truth to that.
With this level of exercise, I’ve been able to take off and keep off almost 45 pounds since my old job closed its doors without killing myself with super restricted calories. That’s a total of almost 70 pounds since starting this weight loss reboot back in January of 2021 (with 5 months off in the middle there somewhere).
Don’t get me wrong, I do keep myself in a calorie deficit for the most part, but nowhere near as restrictive as I used to be in the past. I don’t really feel deprived at all and I enjoy eating my maintenance calories on the weekends to allow for the big calorie items I might be craving. It’s a formula that *knocks wood* is working so far and I’m thrilled.
It no longer feels like a diet and it finally feels like a lifestyle.
Welp, it’s been a minute since I wrote in here.
Things have been going along swimmingly. If you follow my youtube channel, you will know that the last two weeks I had fairly large losses for me, and that made me happy.
I have been exercising regularly and that has made a huge difference. I started with Walk Away the Pounds DVD’s but in the last week and a half, switched to the treadmill – which we just got back up and running.
I’ve been doing really well on it. The last couple of days of last week and this past Monday, I managed to do 2 miles a day. Pretty cool.
Cut to Tuesday morning. All is well, I shower and drive to work. I get to work and sit down at my desk and something … doesn’t feel right. I have felt this sensation before, many years ago. It kind of feels like my thigh bone has somehow disconnected a bit from my hip bone.
It was familiar and uncomfortable but not yet painful. However, as the day wore on it went downhill rapidly. By 12:30 I was unable to sit in that office chair any longer and came home to lay on ice in bed. I called my current chiropractor but she was unable to get me in until Wednesday at 11:15 AM.
I rested all evening and it just kept getting worse. The pain would travel from my hip to my outer thigh, to the back of my thigh to my inner thigh. Sitting down on the toilet was UNBEARABLE.
I managed to get some sleep and it was the same if not worse the next morning.
The one and only other time this happened to me, it happened over the course of a couple of days not suddenly like this one. And my chiro at the time (sadly, now retired) was able to give my leg a swift pull when I least expected it and the leg popped back into place. I remember it feeling better instantly.
This time, not so much. The onset of the worst of the pain happened in hours and and my new chiro didn’t quite know what to do other than make some adjustments even after I told her what happened last time.
A bit of a backstory–
–Last October my husband and I drove to Vegas for a socially distanced trip to renew our vows for our 20 year anniversary.
I wasn’t in Vegas more than fifteen minutes when I fell down an escalator. See, I’m afraid of heights and escalators are bad for me on a good day when they are going down. My husband has to stand in front of me and I have to hold onto the railings for dear life. Well, we were trying to check into the hotel and we couldn’t find an elevator to get down the one floor to the registration desk. There was however an escalator. My husband and I both had two suitcases and a backpack on, so I would have to get on the escalator while it was moving with both suitcases and not be able to hold onto the railings. I’m cringing now five months later, just typing this.
You can see where this is going right? As soon as I stepped on with the luggage I went cross eyed from panic and immediately fell onto my left hip. I’m not a small woman and when I fall, I fall hard. This was no exception.
A wonderful man saw me eat it and followed me onto the escalator to grab one of my suitcases and help me up. My husband was on the other side begging me to get up before we got to the end of the escalator as I was wearing a dress and there was no way he could lift me up before the escalator ate my clothing.
I laid there wide eyed, clutching both suitcases handles in sheer panic for what felt like fifteen minutes but it was just a matter of seconds. I finally pulled myself up and made it to the end with no further incidences.
I was not unscathed however.
Long story short, I had a GIANT hematoma on my left hip that lasted about …well, it is still there, but now it’s really tiny, but the worst of it lasted like, three months. It was the size of a grapefruit.
I was sure that I had broken something (would never admit that to the hubs and ruin the trip) so even after we got back, I refused to go to the doctor because I didn’t want to know if something was critically wrong with me (that is how my brain works). I didn’t go to the chiro even though I knew every part of my hips and spine were out of alignment, because I was scared that if I HAD broken something, her messing around might make it worse. Eventually the pain got better (months later) and I just wanted to forget about it.
Back to the present —
— My chiro told me yesterday that by her calculations, I had really thrown my body out of whack in the fall, but since I never got it checked and I wasn’t really that active, my body just adjusted and got used to the body being out of alignment. However, my recent foray into exercising and more importantly walking on the treadmill had made my body revolt and say: “ENOUGH!”
So, that is what happened to my right hip … or something like that.
As soon as she laid me down on the table she took one look at my back and said: “Oh wow.” before she even touched anything. And I have a pretty large layer of fat over my bones that isn’t easy to see through. She said my pelvis was so far pushed to the back on my right side that if she put a marble on my back it would roll immediately to the left and fall to the floor.
She adjusted me a lot and told me to give it 48 hours.
I came straight home from the appt and laid on ice.
It was even MORE painful last night but I knew that it would be as I had just been put back into place after being out for five months.
This morning it felt a bit better so I went into work, but left by 10:30 because sitting in that office chair was unbearable again. Also, I didn’t want to screw up all the work that she had done the day before.
I got up and got something to eat a few minutes ago (3:00PM) and it is feeling a LOT better. Still sore and noticeable, and sitting on the toilet still hurts a lot, but much better.
The reason I tell y’all this story is to explain that I am fully expecting to gain on my weigh in Saturday. I haven’t been able to exercise since Monday and being stuck in the house on “bedrest” has made me want to eat the world out of boredom. I’ve been doing kind of okay keeping the eating in check, but there has been an increase in snacking … Not gonna lie. Also, I haven’t been drinking much water because sitting on the toilet hurts so bad. So I will not only be gaining weight, but also water. 😒
I guess I’m okay with the gain. It’s not like I could do anything about the fact that my body rejected my idea of getting fit (at least at this point, five months ago would be a different story).
I will not be as hesitant to go see my chiro from here on out though if something happens, because I am NOT happy about getting sidelined from exercise just as I was getting to love it again.
So I know it’s probably not a popular thing to talk about in mixed company (is that phrase still a thing? It feels like it shouldn’t be…), but chafing does happen to us big people when we start exercising regularly.
If it hasn’t happened to you, consider yourself lucky.
For those that don’t know what chafing is, it is what happens when two pieces of skin rub up against each other again and again with no type of lubrication. It normally happens in the thigh and arm areas. It happens more often on larger people because those areas have more skin as they are bigger than “normal” and tend to be in closer proximity to the other body part because of that.
As I sit here with Neosporin marinating in my armpits I am reminded of the first time it happened to me, when I started training for my first half marathon. I was considerably smaller than I am now but still quite overweight. I was very happy with the way my training was progressing when after a few weeks I was struck my an odd soreness in my armpit area on both sides.
I checked it out in the mirror and there was some slight pinkness in the crease of my pits and I thought: “Huh…that’s weird. Did I shave wrong or something?”
The next day it was worse, and the day after that it was even more worse until it was unbearable and I had to look it up on the googlewebs. I was having major chafing in my underarms and it was NOT going to go away until I took care of it.
I remember buying some anti friction balm and taking a few days off of running and I don’t remember it being much of an issue after that. I feel like it was, but I don’t remember it.
Fast forward to last night after my work out: I’ve only been doing the Walk Away The Pounds videos, but I’ve been doing them every day and quite aggressively. I discovered that if I did the arm movements with every single move from start to finish, I burned a heck of a lot more calories…so I have been.
Last night after my shower and right before bed, I discovered that slightly irritated feeling again in my armpits. I checked it out in the mirror and found the slight pinkness that I remembered from last time.
Thinking I could nip this in the bud, I decided to forgo deodorant and instead pack my pits with Gold bond powder – the green kind. It stung like wildfire when I put it on and I just assumed that meant it was working and went to bed.
Heh. This morning I awoke to angry red welts under each arm and it did NOT feel good. I’m guessing that powder wasn’t the best move I could have made and I regret it now.
So after suffering all day at work today, I came home and reluctantly skipped my workout. I’m NOT happy about this as I have been really loving all the benefits of the workouts lately and I feel like I was finally getting in my workout groove, but I CANNOT ignore these angry weals in my armholes.
*graphic images of overweight armpits (that have some stubble) below*
🤣😂
I’m not pleased at all with not being able to work out tonight. Mostly because I have counted on those extra 300 calories a day to let me have a couple extra snacks a night, but also because I have loved the mood regulating qualities the exercise brings me. I’ve been off anti-depressants for over a year and it has been a REALLY BIG STRUGGLE getting off them. I won’t get into that here, but having daily workouts has made me feel normal again and I missed that tonight a lot.
Thankfully, I have not experienced any of the other nasty chafing us biggies can get from regular exercise (*knocks wood*). Have you guys experienced this? Please comment and share your stories, I would love to know how you handled it!
