A Recovery Plan

It's Friday!  Good thing, because I was barely hanging in.  I went back to work on Thursday and things were rolling along pretty smooth.  I had a busy day, lots of people to see and plenty of catching up to do.  Then suddenly around 4pm I felt really tired.  Really tired, like I'd been feeling before.  So I immediately took myself home and straight to bed.  I am so motivated to get healthy, there will be no pushing myself or hurrying of my recovery.  I stayed in bed for most of the afternoon, allowing my body the rest it seemed to need.

Today, Friday, is weigh-in day.  I skipped last week because of being sick but hopped on the scale this morning.  I was a bit surprised to see an even lower number, 134.8 pounds.  What the heck is going on here?  I feel like I'm eating a lot, and that, coupled with very little exercise... I just can't explain this dropping weight.  Just reinforces that the scale only tells part of the story.

I had a nice coffee meeting this morning to go over a new project.  It's not something I'll likely be going into here but I will say it's very exciting to be thinking about something new, something in which I have full ownership and that is, for me, profoundly reflective of who I am today.  I don't tend to think of myself as an artist, or having any artistic talents, but I actually did feel a bit of creativity flowing when going over the project.  As I drove back to the office the sun was shining but a perfect amount of cloud cover was keeping me cool.  And then a song came on that I've been kind of obsessed with lately, Joss Stone's Right to be Wrong.

My energy level was good today, I didn't get tired come afternoon time.  I went to the gym after work and walked for 10 minutes on the treadmill, again at 3.0mph.  I followed that up with another shortened round of full body strength training.  My muscles all seemed to be working fine.  Ian, my OG trainer, was there and we got to chat a bit.  He was very encouraging about my recovery.  And of course he took the opportunity to remind me of how tiny I am, something he tells me practically every time he sees me nowadays.  I told him I'm not trying to lose weight but that the scale is going down regardless.  He said not to put too much stock in it, my body being sick and now recovering, the weight will stabilize again when I'm back to my normal routine.  That was good to hear.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not scarfing down huge meals and tons of crap and lamenting the scale dropping.  But I do feel like I'm eating more than enough to *not* be losing weight, at minimum, and possibly the scale should be inching up even, so it's a bit strange.  Must be what Ian said, being sick does strange things to the body and I can't expect to make sense of it all.  So I just figured out why it bothers me.  I think I'm afraid I'll expect myself to maintain this new sub-135 weight.  I was happy to maintain sub-140 but this seems a bit too much.  I just need to remind myself that just because I dipped below 135 doesn't mean it's my new goal weight. 

We had the kids' wonderful former daycare provider, Mimi, over for dinner tonight.  The kids were so happy to see her and it was fun for me to catch up with her over a glass or three of wine.  I haven't had red wine since, well, since new years when I got so sick.  For dinner we had pizza and salad and I'll skip telling you all the other crap I ate tonight (pure junk, I'll just say that).  I'm currently working on a large glass of water before I head off to bed.  Miguel is working tomorrow and I'm taking the kids to a birthday party so it's going to be a full, busy day for me.  I don't want to have even the slightest headache. 

I made myself a rough plan for the next few weeks of my recovery.  I still have to decide if I want to walk the 12k on Sunday.  I'm seriously on the fence right now.  Part of me wants to do it, part of me wants to take a pass on walking 8+ miles.  The weather might be the deciding factor.  Right now the prediction is for a cloudy day with a high of 64°, not super enticing.  We'll see.  Anyway, here's the plan I came up with. 

	Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat
3/17 - 3/23	12k walk?	15min easy walk lite full body weights	15min easy bike lite full body weights	rest	15min easy walk lite full body weights	15min easy bike lite full body weights	rest
3/24 - 3/30	30 min walk	20 min brisk walk limited chest/tri	20 min brisk bike limited back/biceps	rest	20 min brisk walk limited legs/shoulders	20 min brisk bike limited chest/tri	rest
3/31 - 4/6	30 min jog/walk	25 min easy jog full back/biceps	25 min med-int bike full legs/shoulders	rest	25 min easy jog full chest/tri	25 min med-int bike full back/biceps	rest

I'm not sure if this will ultimately be the plan, so much will depend on how I'm feeling.  But I wanted something to guide me.  Plan B, or Plan C even, can be developed if needed.  I'm totally willing to tweak things as needed.  The most important thing is, I know where I'm going.  How I get there is not set in stone.