In March I visited a chiropractor, where I found out I have Advanced Spinal Degeneration in my neck. This is causing my vertebrae to grind against each other, while pinching my spinal cord. We think this has a lot to do with my health problems. My chiropractor says my body is running at about 30% capacity (I can attest to this estimate!).
I have been adjusted a few times, and I find that I'm always more emotional afterwards, since I'm experiencing a flood of hormones flowing through my body. It's crazily amazing how powerful our bodies are. We have a 3 month treatment plan set up for me, and I can't wait to get started. But first, to save up the money.
Until then, I'm just going to keep doing my thing: pushing my body every day like a badass. I took up running in January, and I absolutely love it. It's probably quite comical to see me run, but hey, I just don't care. About 7 weeks ago though, I injured my pelvic muscle. Probably from my new love of running. But I didn't realize it. I thought maybe I bruised my hip from running into something (I'm the definition of clumsy). After 4 weeks of the pain not subsiding, and a weekend of 8.5 miles making the pain worse, I knew it was time to see the doctor.
He prescribed me a topical anti-inflammatory to use for the next few weeks, and told me to not do any physical activity (running, hiking, walking, leg training) for the next 6 weeks.
AGGHHH.
He did, however, say I could swim. And because I didn't want to stop moving, Matt and I went out that afternoon on a mission to find a gym with a pool at a good price. And this is where my gym life began.
We joined a gym close to us the very next day (April 6) and have only taken a 2 day break since then. I started out swimming, but got bored with it and realized that it was making my hip hurt even worse. I mean, there are ways to swim that wouldn't, but they didn't get my heart rate high enough. Not to mention I got bored pretty quickly.
Now I weight train my upper and middle body every day. P90X was a great foundation for this, but I have since moved on. I created a 3 day sequence using bodybuilding.com and have been really enjoying getting out of the P90X groove.
Being at the gym is helping tremendously with my social anxiety. I can't even begin to describe how hard it's been to force myself to be around people every day, especially in a place where "normal" people get social anxiety too! Being around a bunch of buff and fit people can be really intimidating. But breaking my mental cycle is imperative if I want to have a life outside of my bedroom.
So I'm a gym person now. I would have never ever guessed in a million years this would happen, especially since I've been a member of 3 other gyms and have gone only a few times and hated it. This time is different. I'm in the right mindset now. And that is most important when it comes to achieving your fitness goals.
P.S. Here is a progress photo from March. When I started P90X again in December, I weighed 151 (which is 9 pounds more than the "before" photo here... I was too embarrassed to take another one so I just used an old one). In the "after" photo I am about 135. Today I've lost a total of 20 pounds. Yay :)
