Since surgery on Monday I’ve been struggling with where do I go from here in regards to my various personal health an fitness goals at the moment. Today I was supposed to have another physical therapy appointment and we were going to give running a shot after taping me up. Obviously that didn’t happen as I’ve had to cancel all of my PT appointments for the foreseeable future. I was really looking forward to getting the go ahead on running and starting to train again for a race but considering walking any length of distance takes a heck of a lot of effort at the moment I’m gonna say running is once again a long ways off. In fact I just got off the phone with my gym and asked them if I could suspend my membership for a month since I don’t think I’m really going to be able to use it and it’s way too expensive to let it go to waste while I’m sitting at home on my caboose. I was really hoping on working up to a late spring half-marathon (one of my personal goals for this year) but at this point I think I definitely need to go back to my race calendars and start looking for a fall one instead. Exercise-wise I’m frustrated to say the least. Every time I start to build up momentum life keeps getting in the way. I plan to talk to the doctor next week when I see him about what exactly my limitations are but judging by how I feel when I’m moving about I’m not going to be happy with the answer. Pretty much everything active requires using your core muscles on some level and since being cut open mine aren’t functioning so hot right now.
So, a couple weeks ago I listed one of my reasons for plunging into this Whole30 challenge as being that while I was slightly sidelined (oh if only that was the case now) I wanted to do the best I could for my body to stay healthy and not lose any fitness while my activity level was down. I was frustrated earlier this week by the hospital food and being forced to eat something that I really didn’t want to when I had really had very few problems with making it through my first two weeks of the challenge otherwise. If I was going to cheat I would’ve much preferred it be on something I actually wanted to eat! So at that point my Whole30 was broken and I was left feeling a little lost and wondering what the hell to do with myself from here on out. Despite not having really struggled with the challenge up to that point the idea of starting it all over again seemed kind of daunting to me on some level.
I’ve wrestled with these thoughts for the past couple days (since I can’t drive or work or do much of, well, anything I’ve had a lot of time to think). I thought about just tossing in the towel for now and maybe trying again at some point in a couple months when I’ve recuperated. I thought about ignoring that one day and just finishing my 30 days on March 9th as intended. I thought about sucking it up and just launching headfirst back into the whole thing. All of these had some definite up and down sides to them. The facts being what they are though ruled some stuff out. I couldn’t just continue on and call this my Whole30 because it’s not. While I’m recuperating at my parents’ house and enjoying my mom’s paleo cooking the meals don’t fall into the stricter guidelines of the Whole30 challenge so this whole week is basically a write-off in that regard. I was seriously considering just doing what I’ve been doing for the past few months following my roughly 70% paleo diet but the more I thought about it the more it seemed like a cop-out. The first two weeks of Whole30 didn’t kill me, nor did they even challenge me that much. Aside from needing to set aside some extra time for preparing food I was enjoying my meals, didn’t really crave anything that I couldn’t have and felt pretty darn good. I was trying out new recipes again and was enjoying what I was eating (though I still need to work on breakfast variety a little bit).
So all that being said, why toss in the towel now? Well, my original end date of March 9th was conveniently a couple days before a gigantic St. Patty’s day celebration that I was planning on attending with a bunch of my friends. While I’ve proven several times now that I can go out to the bar and have fun and not drink, the idea of missing out on this day or of not drinking on that day were both really very unappealing. However, holding off on my Whole30 until after that weekend also seemed kind of silly because really within any given 30 day period there’s probably going to be something that could serve as an excuse so if I put it off for that weekend, what’s to stop me from putting it off perpetually?
So where has all of this rumination got me? Not very far honestly. I’m going to be down here with my parents until Tuesday and I’ll eat whatever my mom cooks me. Mostly the cheat issue with her food is butter, not a huge thing but still it’s something. Once I’m back at my place I’m going to continue on following the Whole30 guidelines as I was before hitting this little hiccup on my journey. The way I see it, if I’m going to be stuck at home and not working for a month anyway I might as well take advantage of that and cook my little heart out. Additionally if I’m not going to be able to do much active-wise I owe it to myself to continue to try and be as healthy as possible and help my body out any way I can. I don’t want to put on 10 pounds just because all I’m doing is sitting around and eating all day every day for the next month. As far as St. Patty’s day goes I’m going to play it by ear. As of right now I’m thinking I’ll probably drink and then will have to start my countdown all over again a third time. Knowing that I’m going to wind up cheating again at almost the exact same point during the 30 days is kind of amusing to me, but at least this time it will be a conscious decision on my part rather than something forced on me by circumstances beyond my control. I’m okay with that because at least I know that every other day while I’m recuperating I’m doing the best I can to keep my body healthy and hopefully when I finally do get the clear to run and exercise again I will find that I haven’t lost too much fitness to this whole ordeal.
