Where There's A Will

Getting injured was one of my early fears on my weight loss journey.   I wasn't scared of getting hurt in the gym because I trusted my trainers, but what I feared most was the (at the time) inevitable injury or sickness that would take me out of the game. This was a fear of mine because in every other attempt at exercise and weight loss before this one, that injury or sickness would be the excuse I needed to take myself out of the game, a convenient little escape clause.

Call it bad luck, call it Murphy's law, or call it the devil, but over a year ago in my first month of working out, I came down with bronchitis, a two bugs (one respiratory, one stomach), various strained muscles, and had a terrible cut under my arm that cracked and bled every time I worked out my arms. I worked out through all of those and did whatever I could in the gym because I knew that if I let one of those things take me out at that stage of the process, I was likely to be out for good.  Now, some of those times I definitely pushed myself too hard and probably shouldn't have been working out, but just showing up to the gym and doing whatever I could do was what I needed to do for myself so that I still had that accountability.  Do I recommend it?  No. But that's just what I had to do to overcome that hurdle and change that part of my behavior.

Prior to my lifestyle change of last year, I got sick a lot.   At least every other month I had a cold or bug or virus.  Prior to that change, I had terrible balance and fell down and hurt myself, a lot.  Quite quickly, however, my weight loss, improving balance, and stronger immune system due to better nutrition caused another unforeseen change: I quit getting sick and quit getting injured. And that was even being in a gym constantly where germs run rampant.   Just goes to show that the many benefits of a healthy lifestyle change aren't just limited to what happens on the scale.

Over the weekend I managed to pull or strain something in my left foot, causing me to not be able to put much pressure on it by the time Sunday rolled around.  Confined to the couch for the day, I found myself in the old position of being hurt and laid up.  This time I didn't panic however.  This time, as I propped my wrapped foot up and caught up on the backlog of my Tivo, instead of panicking about not being able to work out, I formulated a workaround plan. "Looks like it's an upper body kind of day tomorrow," I told my husband.  "What if you can't stand?" he asked.  "Well then I'll just do it sitting down," I said.

And that's just what I did. I'm not advocating pushing yourself beyond the safety point when you're injured or sick and there are always times to throw in the towel and trust yourself to get back on the horse when you're better, but if you can find a safe workaround, where there's a will, there's a way. That's the difference in me now versus who I was fourteen months ago: the will.