When the treadmill arrived (actually the week before, lol) I started to pay much more attention to my diet because well, that's what a health scare does to you. Not only was I determined to exercise but I also started learning more about my diet and not only what I should not eat but also what I was probably missing in my diet. So far, it's not been an easy task to be honest.
One thing I learned is that you can make a lot of different flat breads using chick pea flower and some flax seeds (ground) and it taste so yum! I've found a new love and it's great, I don't think I'll ever eat a regular pancake thing again, lol. They are too boring now that I learned about this. Can go with veggies inside or on top OR a simple one with cheese and ham if you're in a hurry. Done in a heartbeat!
Months ago, still in the old home when I had the ambition to get healthier but was still heavily medicated by tramadol thanks to my back issue, the first step was to buy a smart scale to have good insights in not just my weight but the other things these scales can measure nowadays. I didn't feel much to buy an old school scale while I was already using a smart watch and could get access to nice insights, I still love stats, remember? Even if the numbers don't look too great, I rather know as that's the moment you can start working towards improving things and getting healthier. Nobody ever improved anything by sticking their head in the sand and just ignoring shit.
I knew it was going to happen when I got prescribed these heavy medication because I have had them before, once after having my first child. I still remember that it doesn't take long until you need more of them and I really didn't want to go there. Yet I was happy to have them for a little while because at least I managed to get through the days as I was in so much pain!
The doctor prescribed me these tablets twice a day, which I did for a few weeks, until I noticed I could manage by not taking the first one in the morning and push it towards the afternoon and with that leave it at one. With this, I managed to take only half of what the doc prescribed me.
Yet, every single day around 3/4 PM I started to notice (no matter what I was doing, which was a huge red flag btw) that my back pain would return full force. While the first month, this pain was only appearing this heavily whenever I overdid something, now I started to see a pattern where I was dealing with the same shit but it didn't even matter if I was lifting a bit too heavy or just walking through the house. I started to take note and decided this was probably a good moment to test not taking the medication anymore and see how that went.
I was used to having them and my body said it needed the medication, while in reality, I should just go for a walk and not face these extreme pains anymore. I weaned myself off these tablets not long before I had the health scare and I'm pretty sure that taking these meds didn't do my health any good. I'm glad I saw what was happening and now I know they are even trickier than I thought they were.
I always thought that at this point with my shitty knees (that are just there, no matter how you turn it, they are defect lol) and my back issues that have returned in different forms, I would not be able to run at all on a treadmill, maybe I could do a 10 or 15 min heavy pace walk but that was all I expected from myself. Yet I have been pushing myself (sometimes too hard) and know that I can do more than I thought, which is very motivating mentally.
Where I've learned the hard way that I need more protein than I ate before looking at my health stats, I also know that the scale wasn't that accurate (so it seems) after getting my bloodwork done. I yet have to discuss the results with my doctor next week BUT from what I can see there is not a huge deficiency as my scale wants me to believe (constantly) although I don't know if it can also mean something else she didn't check, so I'm going to ask first before taking other measures.
I've compared my blood work with another moment in 2022 which was the last time I had some done and I can be proud to say that many things have improved since. Some values (which I will keep to myself for privacy) that were way too high or low were now all within a healthy range and I can assume that this is thanks to my hard work in the past month or so. I'm definitely not there yet especially because I should be careful picking up the boxing part, which excites me the most of all options, but I'm proud that I listen to my body well and find other ways to get things moving when I have to take a little rest due to some body part acting up.
From day 1 the treadmill made an extremely shitty noise, a mechanic came to repair it twice while the second time he agreed with us that there is probably some error in the construction because this should not be heard from the first usage. They made us wait 2 weeks before they picked it up yesterday, I'm already missing it because the last days I was too ill to use it and now I feel really bad for not being able to. Mandatory outside walk it is tomorrow, I guess.
Anyway, that's all for now, I'm still trying to shake off this congestion and coughing. I'm not feeling feverish during the day, but in the evening it seems to get a bit worse. I guess tomorrow I'll be loading up on some more vitamins as well as starting some steam sessions again as I would like to be 100% again by the time it's weekend.
All pictures used are my own!
