Yes I am still alive, didn’t think so a couple weeks ago, but I made it!

So let me start off by saying, I will try to not complain or whine through this blog post…I did say try! If it’s too much scroll down or skip it altogether 🙂

I know it’s been a month since I have posted.  I didn’t really think it has been as long as it has!  Like everyone life gets busy, sometimes you are just stuck with the same schedule with 100 extra things thrown in..  In some cases it works and for other things it doesn’t.  Again priority is the key.

What have I been doing the past month?  Getting every virus going around! Taking care of sick people, still keeping with my workouts, doing all my regular wife/mother duties.  I really don’t know other than that because everything has passed in a blur.

We had been given stomach bugs and bronchitis.  I say given because I had to pick up my oldest from school on a day 6 children left before 8:30 am with the same symptoms! Oh boy, I didn’t realize what we were getting.  It started with a fever, sore throat, headache, body aches, chills and a horrible burning your chest.  The flu. Not the pukey flu, this was the flu virus.  Needless to say I caught it, my husband and my son (whom recovered without any medicine surprisingly).   Sufficed to say I didn’t recover without the need of lots of cold medicine, ibuprofen and predisone.  This took me out for about two weeks.  I literately lost two days I can’t remember, I slept for two days!  My husband wasn’t in better shape but he went to the doctor early and they were able to get him tamaflu since we finally figured it out.  It went in to bronchitis.  I started on predisone (wish I didn’t have to), it helped with breathing but it was miserable.  Struggling to breath is scary.  It hurt to take a breath and coughing to exhale hurt.  Also the side effects of the medication aren’t all that fun either.  Steroids make you grouchy, hungry, shaky and bloated.

I finally started to feel like I could walk a good distance by day 8.  I attempted to go to the gym. Running was out of the question.  I did a spin class, I just rode the whole time with low resistance and kept my legs going.  I was determined to last the entire class and I did.  I came home and slept.  The next day I attempted to run and had a coughing fit on the treadmill, lol.  Sometimes my stubbornness outweighs my intelligence.  I did my cardio dance class, low impact.  Came home slept. I finished the week with muscle mix and another spin class.  I was not up to par at all.  My stamina was low and I was weak.  Of course, you’re probaly all saying “Duh, you’re sick.” My mind was telling me we can’t just sit here anymore! My body wasn’t into it.

This was really humbling for me.  Sometimes you take the days you are strong, determined, successful and things are easy for you, for granted.  I was extremely frustrated.  The medicine didn’t help either.   I was brought back to a place, I had forgotten about.  I don’t want to seem like a spoiled baby and that I don’t deal well with not feeling 100% day in and day out, but when you get used to feeling a certain way maybe it makes the situation seem worse.  It made me remember the days of failure.  It made me realize how tough it would be for someone else that couldn’t fix this problem.  They had to live with breathing like this everyday.  I watched my Grandma struggle with breathing issues, my whole life.  She was a smoker.  Otherwise she was one of the healthiest people I knew.  She smoked in her teens and until she was in her sixties.  After she quit, she saw the signs of what that had done to her body all those years.  Her later years were filled with breathing treatments (3 different types), inhalers and medications.  We would fear her getting pneumonia at least once if not twice a year.  Emphysema took her life.  I had asthma as a child, it was not fun.  I couldn’t do sports before high school.  In junior high I had a note from the doctor stating I had to walk all of the laps and mile runs.  How embarrassing!  No wonder I was out of shape and struggled with weight.  I luckily grew out of it by high school was able to participate in sports.  But when I get a bad cold lungs is the area it attacks.  So to end this kind of depressing paragraph, stemming from these last couple of years  of being so healthy to being this sick, drew up a lot of memories for me.  I couldn’t imagine having this everyday of my life.  God bless the people who do!

Another issue with us all being sick was we had to postpone our Easter dinner and I was sick on my birthday.  Awww.  It was very sad. I had a lot of guilt that day. No, not on my birthday, come on I didn’t want to get older! lol.  Easter was a very quiet day here.  I felt so bad for my kids.  A day that is usually filled with family, egg hunts and playing out in the yard, was Mom and Dad camped out on the couch.  The Easter bunny was smart and had everything ready the week before, but it wasn’t the same. Best part of the day though, my daughter received her very own bible.  I was able to enjoy her reading to me out of it and finding the answers to her questions together.  Even though we had push forward a week, it was still great.  Besides I know someone else who sacrificed a whole lot more than I could ever imagine 😉

Maybe I didn’t handle the couple weeks I was sick very well, but now that I am feeling much better, I am back to fighting to get back what I lost.  This week has started off awesome!  I rocked a spin class on Monday 27.5 miles in an hour I  burned 711 calories! Stayed for a Zumba Toning class and burned another 588 calories!  Tuesday another spin class 25 miles and 694 more calories burned! Plus my 1.5 mile run.  I am back and I am better!! So thankful for my trainers!

For my birthday my husband gave me a Polar Heart Rate monitor.  I love it!  It syncs with the spin bikes, treadmill and the other cardio equipment at my Y.  It records your heart rate, calorie burn, distance and times.  Android has an app for my phone so I have it right with my music and everything!  It’s so awesome.  Watching my heart rate while I am working helps, I can tell if I am too high so I don’t die 🙂 and I know when I need to be working harder.  I also am so thrilled with seeing the work I put out.  Sometimes you just think you aren’t doing enough, but this is the proof you are staying on track.  I put a link on the side for amazon if you want to take a look!

Before I got sick I started taking two classes on Friday.  Yes, I am doing Zumba.  Never thought I would say it, but I can do it.  I still may look goofy but it’s a great workout and I have fun!  So this week I added another class on Mondays, Zumba Toning. That one was really good!  I remember telling my husband last year that I would never be in shape to take two classes in one day.  Well…I am there. It’s fun and giving my body a change.  Never thought I would be taking 7 classes a week!  I am still not dropping weight, I think I am where I am meant to be and I have to be okay with it.  Am I quitting? No way. I think with the tantrum I have thrown over the last couple weeks shows that this is my life now and will jump over whatever I need to in order to feel this way.

The other day I was sitting on my couch trying to think about getting back to blogging, I was re-reading them.  I was shocked at myself and then I was disappointed in myself.  Because in the last two weeks I had completely obliterated the person I am.  Where was my patience? Where was my self control? Where was my happiness? Wow. Life just keeps on teaching doesn’t it?  As I was reading, I inspired myself.  Even though I got sick it was horrible but it was temporary.  It didn’t seem like it at the time but I was going to get through it and I did.  It was keeping me from doing the simple things and things that I love and that angered me.  Yes I was hungry I really tried to keep that under control, but you can only do so much.  I was dwelling on the negatives.  I realized after I started getting a little better I would be able to make up for the time I missed at the gym.  I needed to realize that if I am so focused on my health, my body needed rest to recover, I needed to give it resst.  If I needed ice cream to soothe my throat or eat things that were not hard for me to fix (even if they were unhealthy), I had to put it aside and deal with consequences later.  That is what this week is about.  Getting back my groove and taking excess weight back off.  Being accountable.  I didn’t lose myself.  I am still focused, because I am willing to come back.  In the past I would have just kept on eating, finding those reasons to not be in the gym after I was better.  I am taking back the control, because I can and I want to.  Just because I can’t control everything, I am taking what I can control.

I hope I didn’t whine too much or you all think I’m crazy! Just another example of the fights you go through with life and things that can take you off of a path you want to stay on!

Thanks for reading! Hope everyone is healthy and enjoying this beautiful time of the year!!