Gym Therapy

I had a wonderful evening with Mr. Darcy and the girls last night, and it hit me.  I am definitely starting to feel better.  Things that should be fun but have felt like a chore, like something that irritates, and that something I have had note enough energy or patience for are now starting to feel like fun again.  I even laughed with Mr. Darcy and told him something funny that had happened during my day.  We went to dinner and when the girls jumped on the seats and weren't eating their food and were misbehaving (which they seem to like to do when we go out to dinner, but that they don't do at home), I didn't want to spank them or scream at them.  I simply told them to find their spot and sit on it.  I started to count to 3, with 3 ending up in a time out in the bathroom with me standing outside the bathroom (it's a 1 person with only 1 entrance/exit at this particular restaurant).  I noticed how beautiful and funny they are, gave them kisses, asked them nicely to do things... all without that feeling of complete tension that can reside between my shoulder blades while anger would mount.  I feel like I'm returning to me.  It's coming on gradually, which I can only figure has to do with the synthroid and the B12.  It's been about 1 week of taking them, and it's like the darkness and bits I really wasn't liking about myself are receding, and the fun, more adventurous me is returning.  The me that I want the girls to know.  It makes me proud of myself in that I didn't let one silly doctor convince me that I was wrong about myself.  I knew there was something wrong and I just needed to find a good doctor to listen and help figure it out. 

It makes me sad for my Mom too because in my going through this, I told her about it and she said it was exactly what she went through for years with doctors telling her she was fine when she was irritable and angry and gaining weight without eating more than she did previously, or even worse doctors telling her that she just had to stop eating so much or that she had "hand to mouth disease" or that her problem was just that she had to "push back from the table."  Until she finally found a new doctor because the old one finally made her break down in tears, and the new doctor did tests and looked at old labs and said "you should have been on thyroid medicine for years" and in the next year dropped 35 pounds without doing anything but eating like she always had been and taking her thyroid medicine.  That's not to say that I'll drop 35 pounds in a year, I know.  But it at least gives me hope that if we get my body to work right that I might be able to lose weight.

I thought about all of this at the gym today as I was doing some weight training, and stretching the bejeesus out of my legs... and almost crying because of the pain in my right calf and leg.   It's funny what runs through your head while doing pushups on an incline, inverted rows from a laying down position, squats, shoulder presses, and deadlifts, and tricept pushes.  3 rounds of them.  I thought about my emotional situation and the nice evening I had.  I thought about the fact that the other woman doing weights was wearing her iPhone strapped to her arm to listen to music and then somewhere answered it while she was working out.  I mainly thought about what sweat could do to an iPhone and wondered if it was really made for that.  I thought about my calf and pondered ideas abotu why it hurts.

And then there were times I didn't think at all.  I think those are my favorite parts of my workout really.  My mind is clear and I'm out there getting it done.  Not thinking about what needs to happen next, not thinking about what happened before, just being right where I am hearing myself breathe or listening to the birds chirp or cars pass or whatever, being fully aware of my surroundings as I go.  You don't get it as much with the gym workouts (especially since there's music piped in and people on cellphones... or one of my favorites, reading the newspaper while on the stationary bike. If you can talk on the phone or read something made of paper, it's my personal theory that you're not working hard enough.), but then that's why I'm not generally in the gym.  But it worked today.

The stretching was a bit of torture today.  My arms were fine, but my legs oh my legs.  The spot under the meat of my calf on the right kills me... when I walk a little bit of pain, but when I do certain things (like stretching my outstretched leg over to the left while laying down or doing certain calf stretches) make me want to cry.  The good news, in a way, is that my appointment with the dietician was rescheduled for Tuesday, so now I have a lunch hour during which I plan to use my Trigger Point set for my full legs.  I expect pain and tears, but I'm sure it will be worth it all.

With exactly 29 days until St. Anthony's (not counting today), I just have to make it through so I can have my A game ready to go!