Thursday, May 15, 2008

No Pain, No Gain?

Okay, for those of you who know me you would know that I'm overweight. Actually, I'm pretty sure I'd actually fall into the obese category. For way too many years I have used and abused and mistreated my body with food. I guess you'd say I had a rude awakening this past fall when I realized just how horribly I was treating my body and finally realized that all the health care education I had was showing me exactly what was going to happen to me if I didn't fix it sooner rather than later.

When I got home from New Mexico last fall I Googled fitness trainer and found an amazing program called Baystate Adventure Boot Camp run by two amazing fitness trainers. They don't yell at us or anything else you might picture from the military boot camp. Well, they don't stand in our face and yell until we yell back Ma'am, yes Ma'am or that type of thing. They do push us. How else would we possibly spend an hour working out without some sort of motivation? Granted, we all should get a lot of credit for getting up and being at the gym at 5:30 in the morning but it's the extra push of the trainers that get me going and it's their encouragement that keeps me coming back.

However, I was in a car accident in February which meant I was out of boot camp for six weeks while I recovered from that. I saw a chiropractor, a doctor and a physical therapist. I was in a neck brace for a week and a half or so. But I wanted to go back to boot camp after six weeks and no one said that would be a problem. I went back knowing full well that I was going to be a little behind where I was when I left and that it was probably going to be a little bit painful. It was two weeks before I'd even put my gym back with the weights in it on that shoulder. But eventually I started feeling better. I could turn my head pretty much as far right as I could left. But, the more I work my shoulders the more I hurt. Push-ups and working the shoulders with weights literally brings tears to my eyes now. I would have thought that by now, nearly three months after the accident that it would be fine. But I almost feel like it's getting worse. The weakness in my right shoulder should be getting better by now. The stiffness in my neck should be loosening up. But if I fall asleep on my back it takes a lot of moaning, groaning, abdominal muscles and pain to get out of bed in the morning. What's the deal?

To top it all off, my feet are killing me lately too. Not both really. Just one. I injured one when I was in track in junior high and I'm afraid now it's grown into full blown arthritis in my foot. So, my foot hurts, my shoulder hurts. Now what? I don't want to quit boot camp. The idea is that if I loose weight the pain will go away in the foot because I won't have so much weight to carry around. At least that's the hope.

As for the shoulder, I'm off to the chiropractor again. Hopefully we'll have a few days rest from shoulders at boot camp. And hopefully the weakness is just temporary and if I work through this annoying pain I'll get stronger. Hopefully.

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