The God Factor
I don’t know if your are a spiritual person, but as I was sitting in church on Sunday, I absorbed the message put forth by the pastor, “Those doing God’s work will be faced with obstacles. It is guaranteed.” Now, while I am not implying that my personal weight loss is the Lord’s work, although of course I look to Him for direction in all of my life (and He is great at helping one overcome obstacles), the message did get me to start thinking about recent obstacles that I have faced so far.
Week Four
I’ve completed week four of my journey, and I am at a point where some things are getting easier and more of a habit. I find that my body looks forward to exercise and gets naturally antsy and my spirit cranky when have a day off from it. I find that I tend to snack less, and when I do, I reach for things such as a glass of skim milk or a banana instead of a cookie or some dark chocolate. My energy is greater and more even during the day. In short, I think I have passed some sort of threshold.
That said, there is now a sort of fear in me that something will get in the way of my journey and I will fall into my old habits. Do you ever feel that way? It is easy to get discouraged. One day of exercised missed or a bad food day could easily lead to more.
Obstacles and Injuries
This past week, I’ve run into a couple of different obstacles. The weather was a big one. My primary form of exercise right now is 3.2 miles of walking in the mornings outdoors, and I have been working up to running for some of it. It is hard to go walking in the middle of a thunderstorm, not to mention dangerous. I have been overcoming this by switching to indoor activities. I’ve also had two injuries this week. The first was my hip, and the second was my knee.
Its Hip to Overcome
The first, early on, was when I injured my hip using a gifted, used elliptical that has a problem with the tension control. I was able to stretch my hip out throughout the day and for the next day, change my stride on the machine to protect my hip. I’ll be making sure to add hip stretches both before and after I use the elliptical. I also asked my handy husband to fix it for me.
Knee-dy
The next injury occurred yesterday. Feeling really good, I pushed myself to integrate more running into my walk. Foolishly to test myself and perhaps impress the neighbors, I tried running up a steep hill (for a matter of less than a minute) and put undo pressure on a week knee (I had surgery on it years ago). Endorphins flowing through, I pushed through my routine for the morning, not realizing that the injury was worse than I thought. I continued through the day, carrying furniture from a yard sale, playing in the neighbor’s pool with the kids, running up and down the basement stairs start the was and fetch things. By early evening, my knee was swollen, and I was hobbling around. There was nothing to do but rest it and ice it.
Giving in
Today, I had to make a hard decision. My knee feels better, but it is still in pain. I am itching to get on that job bra and sneakers (and the rest of my clothes of course) and get out there. I wrestled with myself. If I just walked, I should be okay, right? My knee twanged coming down the stairs in response.
First, I have to give in to a day of rest in order to overcome this obstacle. My plan is to give in and rest my knee as much as possible, while finding opportunities to not give up. I can tone my arms by lifting milk jugs or my kids, for example. I can stretch throughout the day to be good to my muscles.
Have you had a moment in your diet or exercise program when you were hit with obstacles? How did you overcome it?
You can read more blog posts by Mary Ann Romans here!
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