Square One

So, here's a story for you.

First, let me tell you that I sneezed on Saturday. When I did, I felt a twinge in my back. It hurt at first, but it went away. That was that, I guess.

I'm all pumped, been working out, eating right, losing weight, getting back to my pre-disaster weight, etc, right? So, Beck and I head to the park to do my conditioning workout. We get over there, I walk her through the routine, and we start.

I get about 3/4 through the routine, and I'm feeling GREAT. I knew for a fact that I'd be able to get through three circuits. I felt faster and stronger than I did two days before. It was great. Then I start my tuck jumps. On my third jump, something in my back pops. I mean, it POPPED. I landed, and dropped to my back in the same motion.

I spent much of the rest of the day motionless in my bed with hot/cold compresses and ibuprofen. Now, two days later, I'm still hurting, though not as badly as I was.

I still plan on heading to the pool today and doing some light work - just enough to get my heart pumping. And I want very badly to head back to the park and run through my circuits tomorrow. If I was actually feeling improvement between workouts like that, than I need to stick with it. Maybe I'll just skip the tuck jumps for the day.

As for eating, I've been doing OK. Yesterday's schedule was not conducive to solid eating, as we were running all over the place. The worst I had was some all-natural chips from Wild Oats. We had a couple of small banana nut muffins (made with wheat flour), a turkey breast sandwich on wheat bread, a power bar, etc. I think the chips were worse than I allowed myself to believe at the time. They were about 11 calories per chip, which made it easy to have "just one more."

But I realize that this is a constant struggle. There will always be temptations, roadblocks, schedule issues, limited food choices...and even back pain.

I think I'm at a point in this transformation where I need to find creative ways around those things. I've lost 70+ pounds by doing really well for 80% of the time, not great 12% of the time, and really bad the other 8% of the time. But I think I've gone as far as I can with that breakdown of effort.

This is just another hill to climb.