The last time I posted on here I was finishing my third week of cardiac rehab. And then, I kind of fell off the planet as far as updates go. There are a couple reasons for that but the big one was the end of the school year followed by intensely focusing on what I needed to do in rehab to change the way my life looked going forward. If you have someone in your life with ADHD you may be familiar with hyper-focus or hyper-fixation. I have never been great at aiming this specific superpower which means it isn’t often a super power but rather a super distraction.

Usually, for me, hyper-fixation looks like reading one book about a subject and then being compelled to read 12 more on the same subject in quick succession, and suddenly I am an expert on art theft and forgery. I don’t know if it is because cardiac rehab made me feel so much better, or that feeling so much better made me realize that I had to put in work to keep myself healthy, but I seem to have, for once in my life, directed my hyper-fixation in a helpful direction. For a while there, my diet and exercise were all encompassing. Not in a “perhaps you should see a therapist about that” kind of way, but more a “look ma, no hands” kind of way. I’d learned a new trick and I wanted to keep getting better at it, and show the world what I could do.

I fear that I am making it sound as though this has all been easy, my friends, it has not. I have faced many challenges on the way to where I am right now, and over the last 6 months. In the beginning of my rehab, I was plagued with pain and injuries. Knee pain and plantar fasciitis, so bad it felt like I had a knife in my shoe. I dealt with weeks of feeling very ill and having dangerously low blood pressure as my body got used to the Zepbound. More recently, I’ve gone through tremendous grief and sadness after the sudden and tragic passing of my dear cousin, whom I grew up with and love very much, followed by a bout of Covid which is still around and very real, just ask my lungs.

All of these things made keeping up with my diet and exercise a challenge. Some more than others, of course, there are things you can push through, and things that simply take you out. I have had to learn to roll with the adversity I am met with, and allow myself the time it takes to heal in whatever way that is before pushing forward. This has been super hard!

I tend to be an all or nothing human. I am either going to be the textbook example, the very best at something or I am not going to care about it at all. It has been scary to me to not be in the gym for the last two weeks because of going back to work, grief, travel, and illness, but life happens and I have had to control the only thing I can right now which is my diet. I have not let sadness or sickness lead to a free for all where food is concerned, though it has taken immense discipline. I have still tracked every single calorie, every single day, and yes, there were days when I zoomed right past my allotted calories for the day, but each root beer float, and cookie was calculated. Six months ago that would have been permission to keep going in that direction, after all I had already “messed up” why keep trying now? “You had one cookie? Why not have a dozen…” It has been hard but I have had to change that thinking to, “Of course I went over my calories, things are crazy right now, and that is okay, I’ll do better tomorrow.” I still hate not being “perfect” but I know if I don’t give myself a break eventually, I will have a breakdown, and that really isn’t what I am after.

So here I am, 6 weeks out of my 16 weeks of cardiac rehab, one week post covid, approaching 3 weeks without going to the gym and I am still 25 pounds lighter. I have muscles that are starting to pop out of places I honestly didn’t know we had muscles, my labs are excellent, and the biggest metric of all I am feeling really good. I am back at work and can make it through the day without feeling like I am going to drop when I get home. I am still watching my calories and learning that no food is “bad” but there are trade offs when you are counting calories. You can have a scoop of ice cream here and there, but perhaps a single scoop and not an entire pint. You can give the sweet tooth a reward without punishing the rest of your body. Apparently balance really is a thing and the middle of the road isn’t that bad. Though I will say, a child called my lunch a “Great Depression Lunch” today because he thought my hard boiled eggs and apple sauce was sad. He didn’t know that it is Friday and I treat myself to pizza on Friday nights, which means I have to be a little more strict the rest of the day. It was a good joke though.

Monday, I will start slowly back to the gym and see how my body and lungs perform. I am prepared to start slow if I need to, 15 minutes is better than zero minutes, and I can build my way to 45 again. I used to think participating in my own health and care just meant taking my meds on time, avoiding the obvious things like salt and saturated fat. Those things are important, but there is so much more that I wrote off, I was sure it wouldn’t be helpful to me, my health was past the point it might improve if I tried. I see how wrong I was now, and I am hopeful that my health is far from peaking. I am hopeful that there is much more good to come.