Just a quick update before I go to bed--and yes, I realize that it's not even 9 pm as I write this. But my leg hurts and sleeping is a much better alternative to being awake right now. I'll return to story time as soon as I feel less depressed and more like putting the effort into writing something of substance.
I went to a new orthopedist today. Same diagnosis with the ankle, although at least this guy actually took the time to look at it.
The real shocker came when he took a look at my knee: it's not just bursitis. That sucker is infected. Cellulitis. Woo.
The question is: HOW? I don't have any cuts or anything on or around my knee.
I'm slightly worried, because it MAY be related to the cellulitis I had in my hand earlier this month. I have chronically, painfully, excessively dry skin on my hands, and it cracks when the dryness gets bad. Couple that with a job that requires me to shake hundreds of hands daily & touch ipads and track pads that have been soiled with the bacteria of the mall-going hordes, and you have a recipe for disaster.
I'm scared that if these things are related, then the antibiotics might not work (again). Or that it could mean something more serious.
All I know is that, right now, my knee is killing me. It's swollen to the point where it's two times larger than the other knee.
How the hell did the ER doctor not catch this???
Sigh. I hate everything.
Bed.
Kaila
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming...
...to bring you this important newsflash:
My body is fucked.
I'm sorry to have disappeared from the blogosphere for a few days, but things have been rather bad in injury-ville.
My ankle has been giving me trouble, and, while I've been attempting to partially weight-bear at home, I've been using crutches as much as possible. And while I've been going to the gym, I've been doing seated upper body work & light stationary bicycling.
I even took yesterday off. So when my knee started to randomly feel like it was bruising while I was standing (on one leg & supported by crutches) & helping my customers at the Personal Setup table yesterday, I had little cause for concern.
That is, until I sat down to talk with one of the Experts & rolled up my pant leg & saw THIS:
My body is fucked.
I'm sorry to have disappeared from the blogosphere for a few days, but things have been rather bad in injury-ville.
My ankle has been giving me trouble, and, while I've been attempting to partially weight-bear at home, I've been using crutches as much as possible. And while I've been going to the gym, I've been doing seated upper body work & light stationary bicycling.
I even took yesterday off. So when my knee started to randomly feel like it was bruising while I was standing (on one leg & supported by crutches) & helping my customers at the Personal Setup table yesterday, I had little cause for concern.
That is, until I sat down to talk with one of the Experts & rolled up my pant leg & saw THIS:
 |
| ow. |
The pain got progressively worse as the day wore on. And when I stood up after elevating the leg through lunch, I nearly screamed from the pain. It got to the point where the process of stabilizing my leg while crutching my way through the mall was enough to start tears streaming down my face.
Needless to say, I left work early--and, by "left work early," I mean "the business team wheeled me out of the store in a wheelchair." And while I'm infinitely grateful to them, I was embarrassed as hell.
I drove myself, with my left leg, to the hospital. I sat in the waiting room for two hours, and spent another half hour waiting for a doctor once in the examination room. The diagnosis? Bursitis. The explanation for how I got it while not-weight-bearing at the Personal Setup table, "Um, I don't know."
The nurse who put the ace bandage & leg immobilizer on me said, "It almost looks like gout. But that's an old man's disease."
Why is it that all of the healthcare professionals I've interacted with this month sound like a bunch of idiots who don't know what they're talking about? What did I do to deserve shitty health care?
Anyway.
I'm getting an MRI tomorrow. I didn't work out today. People have been making that "I pity you" face at me all day. I currently hate my life.
Also, the inflammation has actually gotten worse:
 |
| fuck. me. |
I'm currently icing my leg and contemplating easy home remedies, such as using a steak knife for amputation.
I give up; I really do. I know I deserve all of these injuries, after the way I treated my body for the last 10 years. But paying the piper sucks, no matter when or how the payment comes up due.
I miss the gym.
Kaila
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Go Go Gadget Exposition:
Before we continue the story:
1. Ankle update: a) work is incredibly hard on crutches b) the stationary bike, despite being a non-weightbearing exercise, hurts me like a motherfucker.
2. I apologize in advance for the length of Part 2 of this story. It's the longest leg of my journey through ED. Bear with me.
Go go Gadget Exposition:
Sophomore year at Columbia was rough. I was fortunate enough to have the BEST ROOMMATE in the world, the amazing company of Shannon & Mark, who kept me (in)sane through Creative Writing, and a lead role in one of my favorite plays in the universe, Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing.
Once The Real Thing ended, however, and the semester wound down, I found myself sinking even deeper into a food-fueled depression. I was in a situation codenamed SOL (shit out of luck):
In high school, I had taken about 8 grillion college credits through the AP program & passed all of the tests with flying colors (with the exception of statistics, which was a hilarious waste of my high school's resources & credit hours). I had also taken the maximum number of credits at Columbia every semester (21), and even petitioned to take more one semester.
Because I had gained so many credits, transferring to a Florida school to take advantage of my Bright Futures scholarship was impossible: I had not only already earned my Associate's degree--with the exception of one math & one science class--, I had already completed nearly all of the requirements for an English major. Not only wouldn't the schools accept me as a senior, but I was also hindered by the fact that I hadn't technically completed my AA.
The University of Central Florida accepted me after hearing my sob story, but when I went down over Thanksgiving/my birthday of 2006, I was so depressed by the campus & the school that I considered dropping out of college altogether instead of transferring.
Somehow, however, the English department of the University of Florida decided to make an exception. The accepted me as a senior on the condition that I finish my AA in the next year. I took them up on it &, come January, I packed up my grandmother's car & moved to Gainesville, Florida.
I should have known that things were going to go awry when my tire exploded on the Turnpike on my way up to school. Murphy & his damn law have never been particularly nice to me...
To put it nicely, I was miserable in Gainesville. I was leaving the center of the apathetic intelligentsia & entering the center of all things sports & athletics related. Here, we celebrated football victories (like the National Championship, which we won on my first day of school); at Columbia we asked, "We have a football team?!" At UF sorority girls in itty bitty tank tops ran around campus all day; at Columbia, we layered in scarves & sweaters so we could get milkshakes from Tom's or giant slices of pizza from Koronet's at 4 am.
I was fortunate enough to have one of my closest high school friends find me an apartment in the same complex in which she lived (3 miles from the school, around the corner from I-75, and right across the street from the "Beef Teaching Unit," which was just a glorified way of saying "cow pasture"). Nevertheless, I started the new year & the new semester with nothing but trepidation & sadness.
More soon...
1. Ankle update: a) work is incredibly hard on crutches b) the stationary bike, despite being a non-weightbearing exercise, hurts me like a motherfucker.
2. I apologize in advance for the length of Part 2 of this story. It's the longest leg of my journey through ED. Bear with me.
Go go Gadget Exposition:
Sophomore year at Columbia was rough. I was fortunate enough to have the BEST ROOMMATE in the world, the amazing company of Shannon & Mark, who kept me (in)sane through Creative Writing, and a lead role in one of my favorite plays in the universe, Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing.
 |
| Greatest roommate in the entire universe. I am so lucky that I got to spend even a semester sharing a space--and a nest--with Ana. |
Once The Real Thing ended, however, and the semester wound down, I found myself sinking even deeper into a food-fueled depression. I was in a situation codenamed SOL (shit out of luck):
Because I had gained so many credits, transferring to a Florida school to take advantage of my Bright Futures scholarship was impossible: I had not only already earned my Associate's degree--with the exception of one math & one science class--, I had already completed nearly all of the requirements for an English major. Not only wouldn't the schools accept me as a senior, but I was also hindered by the fact that I hadn't technically completed my AA.
The University of Central Florida accepted me after hearing my sob story, but when I went down over Thanksgiving/my birthday of 2006, I was so depressed by the campus & the school that I considered dropping out of college altogether instead of transferring.
Somehow, however, the English department of the University of Florida decided to make an exception. The accepted me as a senior on the condition that I finish my AA in the next year. I took them up on it &, come January, I packed up my grandmother's car & moved to Gainesville, Florida.
I should have known that things were going to go awry when my tire exploded on the Turnpike on my way up to school. Murphy & his damn law have never been particularly nice to me...To put it nicely, I was miserable in Gainesville. I was leaving the center of the apathetic intelligentsia & entering the center of all things sports & athletics related. Here, we celebrated football victories (like the National Championship, which we won on my first day of school); at Columbia we asked, "We have a football team?!" At UF sorority girls in itty bitty tank tops ran around campus all day; at Columbia, we layered in scarves & sweaters so we could get milkshakes from Tom's or giant slices of pizza from Koronet's at 4 am.
 |
| Believe it or not, non-Columbia Seinfeld fans, Tom's Restaurant was just around the corner from my dorm. (& later, in grad school, on the same street as my apartment!) |
I was fortunate enough to have one of my closest high school friends find me an apartment in the same complex in which she lived (3 miles from the school, around the corner from I-75, and right across the street from the "Beef Teaching Unit," which was just a glorified way of saying "cow pasture"). Nevertheless, I started the new year & the new semester with nothing but trepidation & sadness.
More soon...
Friday, June 24, 2011
I Can Has Moar Story Time?
I'm sitting here in my dark house with the rain pounding on the window, and I felt the urge to write. I don't have any fitness updates for you, since I haven't worked out in three days now**, and the only food worth talking about are the black bean & avocado brownies that I just made for one of my friends who is going gluten-free.
What better time, then, to start telling you Part 1 of Part 2 of the Story I Haven't Finished Telling You Yet. (The title changed, since we're on the prequel now.)
This story begins in New York City. The summer of 2006 is just beginning, and I have just received a letter from North Broward Preparatory School--the high school from which I graduated, and from which I received what was supposed to be a $50,000 scholarship to be paid out in $25,000 after the first year of college (assuming a 3.5 GPA or higher) and $25,000 after graduating (again, with a 3.5 or above). The letter informs me that I'm receiving $14,000, even though I have a 3.9 after my first year at Columbia University because now, somehow, the scholarship takes into account whether or not we're receiving student aid. Which I am, only it's so nominal that the scholarship wouldn't even begin to help cover the total costs even at its full promised amount.
So basically I'm fucked, is what they're telling me.
I make a decision: I'm going to work all summer, and maybe I will have enough money to stay.
At the same time, I'm also shooting past the "Freshman 15" and into the "Freshman 25" with amazing speed. Even though I'm not drinking like my friends are, I'm no longer running cross country, and my schedule is so crazy, between 20 page theses on the death of feminism as heralded by the "third wave" and rehearsals for 5 different theatre pieces (some full length, some not), that I'm eating whatever I can whenever I can--which does not make for healthy eating at all.
Compound that with the fact that the boy who I've convinced myself I'm in love with has just made out with me &--literally--the next day gotten himself a girlfriend, and you have one very depressed, confused Kaila. (Or Kay, since that's the name I was going by throughout college.)
I spent the summer getting steadily bigger as I worked for Watson Adventures, an amazing scavenger hunt company down in NoHo; Jazz Improv Magazine, where my aunt was the advertising manager at the time; and Testtakers SAT Prep, which was my first experience teaching high school.
When I went home to visit my mother about halfway through the summer, I was wearing a size 8-10 in jeans (when I was previously a 2-4), and feeling terrible about myself. I decided to start working out at the gym when I got back up to NY, although I had no idea what I was doing. At the time, my mother & my aunt were doing a cleanse called "Isagenix." My mom ordered some for me, and I spent the next two weeks utterly miserable.
The cleanse: drink a smoothie in the morning, drink 4 oz of this vile cleanse liquid for a snack, eat a salad for lunch, drink more cleanse liquid, and then drink a smoothie for dinner. If you get hungry enough to pass out, 6 almonds or 1/2 an apple are acceptable.
Needless to say, I didn't lose any weight, and all that happened was I felt tired and irritable for two weeks. I did it again two weeks later. Still no change.
I started the next semester angry and fat, and I was still poor. Which meant that this was going to be my last semester at Columbia. I would be leaving my dream school--and the Ivy League--for a Florida school, which my prep school had conditioned me to believe was far inferior. I was just starting my sophomore year of college, and I felt like I had already failed at life.
(To be continued...)
**PS the aircast was an epic fail. The doctor suggested crutches for when I'm at work or on my feet for extended periods of time. So...FML.
What better time, then, to start telling you Part 1 of Part 2 of the Story I Haven't Finished Telling You Yet. (The title changed, since we're on the prequel now.)
This story begins in New York City. The summer of 2006 is just beginning, and I have just received a letter from North Broward Preparatory School--the high school from which I graduated, and from which I received what was supposed to be a $50,000 scholarship to be paid out in $25,000 after the first year of college (assuming a 3.5 GPA or higher) and $25,000 after graduating (again, with a 3.5 or above). The letter informs me that I'm receiving $14,000, even though I have a 3.9 after my first year at Columbia University because now, somehow, the scholarship takes into account whether or not we're receiving student aid. Which I am, only it's so nominal that the scholarship wouldn't even begin to help cover the total costs even at its full promised amount.
So basically I'm fucked, is what they're telling me.
I make a decision: I'm going to work all summer, and maybe I will have enough money to stay.
At the same time, I'm also shooting past the "Freshman 15" and into the "Freshman 25" with amazing speed. Even though I'm not drinking like my friends are, I'm no longer running cross country, and my schedule is so crazy, between 20 page theses on the death of feminism as heralded by the "third wave" and rehearsals for 5 different theatre pieces (some full length, some not), that I'm eating whatever I can whenever I can--which does not make for healthy eating at all.
 |
| Doing German abstract theatre on the steps of Low Library for my friend's final project. |
Compound that with the fact that the boy who I've convinced myself I'm in love with has just made out with me &--literally--the next day gotten himself a girlfriend, and you have one very depressed, confused Kaila. (Or Kay, since that's the name I was going by throughout college.)
I spent the summer getting steadily bigger as I worked for Watson Adventures, an amazing scavenger hunt company down in NoHo; Jazz Improv Magazine, where my aunt was the advertising manager at the time; and Testtakers SAT Prep, which was my first experience teaching high school.
When I went home to visit my mother about halfway through the summer, I was wearing a size 8-10 in jeans (when I was previously a 2-4), and feeling terrible about myself. I decided to start working out at the gym when I got back up to NY, although I had no idea what I was doing. At the time, my mother & my aunt were doing a cleanse called "Isagenix." My mom ordered some for me, and I spent the next two weeks utterly miserable.
 |
| With friends in Central Park |
Needless to say, I didn't lose any weight, and all that happened was I felt tired and irritable for two weeks. I did it again two weeks later. Still no change.
I started the next semester angry and fat, and I was still poor. Which meant that this was going to be my last semester at Columbia. I would be leaving my dream school--and the Ivy League--for a Florida school, which my prep school had conditioned me to believe was far inferior. I was just starting my sophomore year of college, and I felt like I had already failed at life.
(To be continued...)
**PS the aircast was an epic fail. The doctor suggested crutches for when I'm at work or on my feet for extended periods of time. So...FML.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Reasons Not to Develop an Eating Disorder
I definitely just wasted $90 & 2 hours.
I limped into the orthopedist's office, wrote out a very detailed medical history, as well as a fairly well-substantiated hypothesis as to why my stupid ankle's been hurting, and, after taking a couple of x-rays & playing too many games of "Hanging with Friends" on my iPhone, the doctor walked in, pressed my ankle with his thumb (which hurt), and then said, "You're probably right."
So....stress fracture. Woo. Anyone ever had one of those? They're tiny little sub-hairline fractures that are often un-diagnosable because they often don't even show up on x-rays. They usually only hurt when you're doing whatever activity it is that you injured yourself doing, but if you let them get bad enough (like I did), then you'll feel the pain all the time and/or more intensely.
If I'm right, then this is my third stress fracture. Why do I think I'm right? Well, besides all of the symptoms aligning with the diagnosis, stress fractures numbers 1 & 2 occurred during the aftermath of Part 1 of The Story I Haven't Told You Yet. Let's just put it this way: Stress fracture #1 occurred about a year after I had reached my low weight of 97 lbs at 5'5". I was running cross country, and I landed funny while hopping up onto the sidewalk from the road at the end of a run. That's all it took to make me spend my very first District competition on crutches & cheering my teammates on from the sidelines. The following year, I tripped on a sprinkler head & had to sit out of Regionals.
Why would such seemingly trivial incidents result in such ridiculous injuries?
Osteopenia.
Basically, by being an anorexic (or whatever the eff I am) and not only under-eating, but denying my body of the nutrients that it needs to maintain things like bone density, I have given myself pre-osteoperosis. The good news is that osteopenia can be reversed. And I guess I did that when I started eating better through the first half of the decade. But relapse number 1 in 2007 (which is Part 2 of the Story) and Relapse number 2 (which you now all know about) must have re-reversed that trend...and while I'm up 25.5 lbs, and I've been eating much better AND taking all sorts of necessary supplements to aid in my recovery, I'm apparently still at risk.
So let my stupid, stupid, useless injury be a PSA for the rest of you. Don't fuck your body up: eat food.
Speaking of which...I've been contemplating making a life change, but I don't know if my digestive system will be able to handle it. I stopped eating red meat in the spring of 2001...but I don't know if it's worth trying to reincorporate it into my diet. I don't really want to eat it, per se, but I feel like I'm missing some of the vital nutrients that I could be getting from having red meat every few days.
I don't know...it's worth considering, I suppose.
Anyway. Now I'm just pissed at myself, I can't work out today, AND I have to work until 10 tonight. Le sigh. Off I go...
Kaila
I limped into the orthopedist's office, wrote out a very detailed medical history, as well as a fairly well-substantiated hypothesis as to why my stupid ankle's been hurting, and, after taking a couple of x-rays & playing too many games of "Hanging with Friends" on my iPhone, the doctor walked in, pressed my ankle with his thumb (which hurt), and then said, "You're probably right."
So....stress fracture. Woo. Anyone ever had one of those? They're tiny little sub-hairline fractures that are often un-diagnosable because they often don't even show up on x-rays. They usually only hurt when you're doing whatever activity it is that you injured yourself doing, but if you let them get bad enough (like I did), then you'll feel the pain all the time and/or more intensely.
If I'm right, then this is my third stress fracture. Why do I think I'm right? Well, besides all of the symptoms aligning with the diagnosis, stress fractures numbers 1 & 2 occurred during the aftermath of Part 1 of The Story I Haven't Told You Yet. Let's just put it this way: Stress fracture #1 occurred about a year after I had reached my low weight of 97 lbs at 5'5". I was running cross country, and I landed funny while hopping up onto the sidewalk from the road at the end of a run. That's all it took to make me spend my very first District competition on crutches & cheering my teammates on from the sidelines. The following year, I tripped on a sprinkler head & had to sit out of Regionals.
Why would such seemingly trivial incidents result in such ridiculous injuries?
Osteopenia.
Basically, by being an anorexic (or whatever the eff I am) and not only under-eating, but denying my body of the nutrients that it needs to maintain things like bone density, I have given myself pre-osteoperosis. The good news is that osteopenia can be reversed. And I guess I did that when I started eating better through the first half of the decade. But relapse number 1 in 2007 (which is Part 2 of the Story) and Relapse number 2 (which you now all know about) must have re-reversed that trend...and while I'm up 25.5 lbs, and I've been eating much better AND taking all sorts of necessary supplements to aid in my recovery, I'm apparently still at risk.
So let my stupid, stupid, useless injury be a PSA for the rest of you. Don't fuck your body up: eat food.
Speaking of which...I've been contemplating making a life change, but I don't know if my digestive system will be able to handle it. I stopped eating red meat in the spring of 2001...but I don't know if it's worth trying to reincorporate it into my diet. I don't really want to eat it, per se, but I feel like I'm missing some of the vital nutrients that I could be getting from having red meat every few days.
I don't know...it's worth considering, I suppose.
Anyway. Now I'm just pissed at myself, I can't work out today, AND I have to work until 10 tonight. Le sigh. Off I go...
Kaila
Monday, June 20, 2011
Whining and Dining, or, Why I Can't Eat in Restaurants
Hello friends.
It appears that my close acquaintance ED is trying to creep back into my life.
And, just like the ex-boyfriend you didn't want to see in public on a day when your hair was frizzy & your sweatpants were on, ED showed up and caught me by surprise--naked and wiping the sleep out of my eyes.
You see, I had to go out and buy a new pair of pants. My old ones no longer fit over my thighs or my ass. This is not a good thing.
So I stepped on my scale on Friday morning, and apparently I now have 20 pounds to lose if I want to get back to my happy weight. I haven't been this heavy since I left Columbia University in December of 2006.
So do me a favor: either leave this blog for a second & go to your pantry or, if you're reading this at a red light on your mobile device (for shame! pay attention to the road, silly!), pull up at your local Publix & go to any aisle not in the periphery of the grocery store. Then I want you to pull out any packaged food & read through the list of ingredients. Check to see if there are a) more than three ingredients listed, b) any ingredients whose names you cannot pronounce or c) simple sugars or starches in any incarnation. If you could answer "yes" to at least one of those things, then the food you're holding is not clean.
It appears that my close acquaintance ED is trying to creep back into my life.
And, just like the ex-boyfriend you didn't want to see in public on a day when your hair was frizzy & your sweatpants were on, ED showed up and caught me by surprise--naked and wiping the sleep out of my eyes.
You see, I had to go out and buy a new pair of pants. My old ones no longer fit over my thighs or my ass. This is not a good thing.
So I stepped on my scale on Friday morning, and apparently I now have 20 pounds to lose if I want to get back to my happy weight. I haven't been this heavy since I left Columbia University in December of 2006.
 |
| At almost 150 & a size 10 in jeans |
 |
| Me, crushing Patrick with the freshman fif--uh, twenty-five. |
So what does this have to do with eating in restaurants?
Well, let's start with a show of hands: how many of you are familiar with the principles of or actually practice Clean Eating?
I got onto the Clean Eating bandwagon almost two years ago now, when I was doing some research on Jamie Eason. I ended up picking up a copy of Oxygen Magazine, which sounds like it has something to do with that obnoxious women's television channel, but is actually a fitness & muscle magazine for hardcore gym rat women. (It's not as hardcore as Muscle & Fitness Hers, which is another of my favorites, but I like it because it does have a ton of really great nutritional articles on top of being unapologetic about pushing resistance training and muscular bodies for women.)
 |
| Can you believe this woman is over 50??? Tosca is a huge, huge inspiration. |
Oxygen is published by Robert Kennedy, and his wife, Tosca Reno, is an over-50 fitness model AND the author of the Eat-Clean Diet series. Now, while the English major and former magazine copy editor in me wishes that her editors would be a little less forgiving in publishing her articles & books as written, I think the principles & science behind eating clean are too important not to talk about.
So do me a favor: either leave this blog for a second & go to your pantry or, if you're reading this at a red light on your mobile device (for shame! pay attention to the road, silly!), pull up at your local Publix & go to any aisle not in the periphery of the grocery store. Then I want you to pull out any packaged food & read through the list of ingredients. Check to see if there are a) more than three ingredients listed, b) any ingredients whose names you cannot pronounce or c) simple sugars or starches in any incarnation. If you could answer "yes" to at least one of those things, then the food you're holding is not clean. 80% of fitness is eating clean. That's not to say that you can sit on your ass all day, but as long as you eat nothing but egg whites, you'll get thin. You have to combine a super-tight diet with resistance training and high intensity cardio in order to gain muscle, lose fat, or just get truly fit.
I cook all of my own food. I sometimes spend up to 7 hours on my days off preparing chicken breasts and ground turkey and tilapia and sweet potatoes and oatmeal and quinoa and egg white omelets for the week. I eat tons of vegetables and low GI fruits. But because I've completely damaged my metabolism (more on that another day), I'm still packing on pounds.
I also eat 6 meals a day, each at 2.5-3 hour intervals. So going out to eat is really difficult for me. Not only don't I have control over how the meals are prepared or what meals are even offered, my timing gets thrown off, and I usually end up having to wait long past my mealtimes and then getting so ravenous that I'll eat anything and everything in front of me.
In the last four days, my grandma left for Chicago, one of my sisters came home from college for the weekend, one of my sisters left for a trip to Poland, and my family celebrated father's day. All of those events heralded the communal partaking of food...which was difficult beyond belief for me.
Now, there's NOTHING wrong with eating clean. In fact, that's how we all SHOULD be eating, all of the time. But in today's culture, those of us who DO eat clean are considered abnormal. I don't even enjoy eating out anymore anyway...there is too much salt and fat & sugar in prepared foods, and I can even taste the difference between a salty restaurant dish and one I prepare myself. But either way...
Eating out means a loss of control--and eating disorders are all about maintaining as much control as possible. Eating disorders can arise (or at least mine partly did) out of a feeling that the rest of the world was nothing but chaos. If we can control the way our bodies look & feel or the way our food is prepared or when or how....then maybe we can avoid spinning totally out of control.
So this is why I don't eat in restaurants. This is why I have trouble spending time with my family. This is why I don't go on dates.
It's not a fun place to be. But when I try to go out of my comfort zone, the old panic sets in...and now that the scale AND my pants are telling me some ugly truths, it's even harder to let go and just try to be normal for once.
So there's that.
Anyway...more later. I'm off to work.
Kaila
Friday, June 17, 2011
DEFCON 3
Alright....ankle fail is at DEFCON 3*.
Even though I iced before I went to bed, the fact that I had to be on my feet all day (and wearing shoes--no barefooting for me at work...) basically put me back at the "advil-isn't-cutting-it" stage.
I somehow pushed myself to go to the gym after a 7 am workday. I will NEVER understand people who like working out in the afternoon. I was so pre-exhausted from an intense workday PLUS I had to deal with the fact that my ankle was throbbing the whole time that I found it nearly impossible to push myself the way I normally do.
I did have the forethought to run to CVS & buy a wrap for my ankle, so that I could at least have a little stability while I lifted, squatted, and otherwise attempted to make up for the ridiculous number of calories I consumed this afternoon after I realized that my packed lunch** was inedible and that I had to resort to a prepackaged meal from Starbucks (since the food court doesn't actually sell food***).
I had tried to purchase said wrap before work, but I apparently do not live within a 10 mile radius of a 24 hour Walgreens. I had to be at work at 7 am, so I left the house at 6 so I would have time to find a Walgreens & indulge my caffeine addiction before clocking in. I stopped at not one but THREE drugstores (two Walgreens & a CVS), and not one of them was open. Seriously? You couldn't get to my old house without passing two 24 hour Walgreens. I'm terribly disappointed. And in pain because I couldn't wrap my ankle until 4:30 pm.
Anyway.
My workout was "meh" at best. I had to cut all of the jumping movements out of my dynamic warm up. I tried jumping jacks at the outset and my leg said, "Thanks, but no thanks." I didn't push it.
I'm feeling weak, and I don't like it. I'm still gaining body fat (as evidenced by the fact that yet another pair of pants is now in the "I can't fit my rear end into this anymore" drawer), and I'm frustrated as hell. So instead of going out tonight, I'm icing my ankle, going to sleep, and hoping that I can run tomorrow, because I somehow have to make it through a family dinner at an Italian restaurant without having a panic attack over the pasta course tomorrow night.
I honestly don't know what to do.
To top it all off, I'm facing a really huge "win-lose" decision at work, and as much as I'd like to just make the selfish decision because it's technically the easy one, I'm having a hard time determining if it's actually a decision that's going to help my career growth or my team in the end.
I'll leave you on a positive note, though:
At the gym today, I ended up training near where an overweight girl was working with one of the trainers. We started talking while resting between sets (after I complimented her on holding her planks for a minute, which, trust me, is NOT easy). At one point, I was doing my offset squat/shoulder press superset, and, as I grunted my way through the last rep on the shoulders (a rep, by the way, that I don't know how I pulled off, because my shoulders were DONE and I felt terrible about since it was one rep less than I wanted to do), she turned to me and said, "You are really amazing."
So even though I feel terrible about my workout, or not lifting enough, or whatever, there is someone out there who looks at what I do and is inspired to push herself. I guess I can live with that. And try to stop hating on myself. Yeah, that's a work in progress.
Kaila
WORKOUT:
Dynamic Warmup (amended to remove all jumping movements)
Super Set 1: Woodchops (8x3x2) & Planks (90 s)
Super Set 2: Offset Dumbbell Squats (8x3x2) & Standing Alternating Dumbbell Shoulder Press (6x3x2)-->raised the weight on the shoulder press
Super Set 3: Single-Leg Dumbbell Deadlifts (8x3x2) & Machine Assisted Chin Ups (6x3)-->raised the weight on the Deadlifts & lowered the assist on the chin ups
Super Set 4: Alternating Lateral Lunges with Dumbbells (8x3x2) & Two Point Single-Arm Dumbbell Rows (8x3x2)-->raised the weight on the lateral lunges
*Which, in my strange, little brain, means serious, serious preemptive RICE.
**Remind me NEVER to ruin a good meal of green beans, bell peppers, and sweet potatoes with canned salmon again. It was all I could do not to vomit.
***And if that DAMN FALAFEL GUY tries to convince you that the shit he's peddling is healthy because it's vegetarian, vegan, gluten & lactose free, then feel free to remind him that he's holding a tray of fried food and that he's an idiot.
Even though I iced before I went to bed, the fact that I had to be on my feet all day (and wearing shoes--no barefooting for me at work...) basically put me back at the "advil-isn't-cutting-it" stage.
I somehow pushed myself to go to the gym after a 7 am workday. I will NEVER understand people who like working out in the afternoon. I was so pre-exhausted from an intense workday PLUS I had to deal with the fact that my ankle was throbbing the whole time that I found it nearly impossible to push myself the way I normally do.
I did have the forethought to run to CVS & buy a wrap for my ankle, so that I could at least have a little stability while I lifted, squatted, and otherwise attempted to make up for the ridiculous number of calories I consumed this afternoon after I realized that my packed lunch** was inedible and that I had to resort to a prepackaged meal from Starbucks (since the food court doesn't actually sell food***).
I had tried to purchase said wrap before work, but I apparently do not live within a 10 mile radius of a 24 hour Walgreens. I had to be at work at 7 am, so I left the house at 6 so I would have time to find a Walgreens & indulge my caffeine addiction before clocking in. I stopped at not one but THREE drugstores (two Walgreens & a CVS), and not one of them was open. Seriously? You couldn't get to my old house without passing two 24 hour Walgreens. I'm terribly disappointed. And in pain because I couldn't wrap my ankle until 4:30 pm.
Anyway.
My workout was "meh" at best. I had to cut all of the jumping movements out of my dynamic warm up. I tried jumping jacks at the outset and my leg said, "Thanks, but no thanks." I didn't push it.
I'm feeling weak, and I don't like it. I'm still gaining body fat (as evidenced by the fact that yet another pair of pants is now in the "I can't fit my rear end into this anymore" drawer), and I'm frustrated as hell. So instead of going out tonight, I'm icing my ankle, going to sleep, and hoping that I can run tomorrow, because I somehow have to make it through a family dinner at an Italian restaurant without having a panic attack over the pasta course tomorrow night.
I honestly don't know what to do.
To top it all off, I'm facing a really huge "win-lose" decision at work, and as much as I'd like to just make the selfish decision because it's technically the easy one, I'm having a hard time determining if it's actually a decision that's going to help my career growth or my team in the end.
I'll leave you on a positive note, though:
At the gym today, I ended up training near where an overweight girl was working with one of the trainers. We started talking while resting between sets (after I complimented her on holding her planks for a minute, which, trust me, is NOT easy). At one point, I was doing my offset squat/shoulder press superset, and, as I grunted my way through the last rep on the shoulders (a rep, by the way, that I don't know how I pulled off, because my shoulders were DONE and I felt terrible about since it was one rep less than I wanted to do), she turned to me and said, "You are really amazing."
So even though I feel terrible about my workout, or not lifting enough, or whatever, there is someone out there who looks at what I do and is inspired to push herself. I guess I can live with that. And try to stop hating on myself. Yeah, that's a work in progress.
Kaila
WORKOUT:
Dynamic Warmup (amended to remove all jumping movements)
Super Set 1: Woodchops (8x3x2) & Planks (90 s)
Super Set 2: Offset Dumbbell Squats (8x3x2) & Standing Alternating Dumbbell Shoulder Press (6x3x2)-->raised the weight on the shoulder press
Super Set 3: Single-Leg Dumbbell Deadlifts (8x3x2) & Machine Assisted Chin Ups (6x3)-->raised the weight on the Deadlifts & lowered the assist on the chin ups
Super Set 4: Alternating Lateral Lunges with Dumbbells (8x3x2) & Two Point Single-Arm Dumbbell Rows (8x3x2)-->raised the weight on the lateral lunges
*Which, in my strange, little brain, means serious, serious preemptive RICE.
**Remind me NEVER to ruin a good meal of green beans, bell peppers, and sweet potatoes with canned salmon again. It was all I could do not to vomit.
***And if that DAMN FALAFEL GUY tries to convince you that the shit he's peddling is healthy because it's vegetarian, vegan, gluten & lactose free, then feel free to remind him that he's holding a tray of fried food and that he's an idiot.
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