A couple weeks ago, I encountered the dreaded low back pain that has derailed me from exercise plans in the past. I'd been trying so hard to protect my lower back, a weak spot on the tall girls like me, and was incredibly frustrated when it got me anyway.
I took a few days off over the weekend, rubbing any kind of magic potion on it that I could think of and taking muscle relaxers to help me sleep at night. I contacted my trainer that Sunday night when it wasn't any better. What do I do? We agreed to a plan. I called my chiropractor first thing Monday morning and miraculously, got right in. I skipped training that morning and went to get adjusted. I explained that my pain level was a 5-6, but I didn't want it getting any worse.
She evaluated me and kind of snorted. "THIS is a 5 or 6? Maybe I'm just a wimp, but it'd be a 9 or 10 for me."
Oh. I've had a lot of trouble with my lower back, and this pain was nowhere near the worst it's been. My hips had rotated and separated, meaning that no amount of muscle relaxers or medicated creams were going to help. She explained that my stabilizing muscles aren't quite strong enough yet to handle some of the exercises I'd been doing and my hips had tried to compensate for my weak muscles. Exercise is exactly what I need, but I had pushed myself too hard.
Suddenly, I understood why one of our training sessions has a white board with exercises listed for both "stability" and "strength." I need to stick to the stability side of the board for a while longer.
It took two appointments and a few days of rest after the second session to get things back to normal, in total about 10 days, but thankfully today my back feels really good again.
The good thing about this whole experience is that I didn't quit. Even though I was in pain, I went to training and the personal trainers worked with me to modify the exercises so I could do them without pain. I was frustrated because I'd been really pushing myself in training and seeing great results, and suddenly I had to pull way back. I wanted to push harder, but they insisted that I step it back to prevent injury. And it worked!
During this whole ordeal, I needed to purchase some new clothes for the book trailer video I plan to shoot next week. I wasn't expecting to be in a smaller size because I typically need to lose 20 pounds to fit in a smaller size, and I've lost 10 since June (25 since January). I wasn't allowed to try on clothes in the store, due to COVID-19, so I made my best guess on sizes. I went down one size from what I was earlier this year. When I got home and tried everything on, almost everything was too big! One shirt with a straighter style fit perfectly, and the jeggings fit perfectly. The rest of it was so big that it wouldn't stay on my shoulders. What a pleasant surprise! Things are shifting around, even if the scale isn't dropping as dramatically as I expected.
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