Good to see everyone back!

I like Emily's challenge of checking the blog every day and posting something if no one else has yet. If I had been doing that in December, there would have been a lot of posts from me--after my orthopedist visit I kept waiting for someone else to post so I wouldn't be talking to myself! Then I gave up checking the blog at all for the most part.

Here's a quick rundown of what's happened to me in the past couple of months: went to PT for my SI joint problem. Spent six weeks doing PT. Got better. It was amazing, actually--I was in a lot of pain at the start and was thinking this would never get better and I'd have to get surgery or something, but then over the course of a week or so, it just improved daily until the pain was gone and I could do all of my normal activities again. I "graduated" from PT the last week of January and went back to my normal routine of three to four days at the gym each week, and keeping up my PT strengthening and stretching exercises at home.

And two weeks later I was in pain again. Aaarrgggh! It's not as bad as before, and I've been telling myself for the past week that I just need to redouble my strengthening and stretching. Cycling is still fine--I don't have any pain doing that. Running hurts, so I stopped doing that. And on Saturday I tried swimming again, and that was awful. It hurt as soon as I hit the water (I'm guessing from the cold) and when I tried swimming, the pain was unbelieveable--kicking at all caused so much pain that eventually I just stopped kicking and made it back to the ladder using just my upper body. I was glad that the pool I was in never got deeper than five feet.

So while I was worried about getting myself back in shape for the triathlon this summer, now I'm worried about being able to do it at all. There's no way I'm getting in open water feeling this way. I'm back at the orthopedist in one week, so we'll see what he has to say, and in the meantime I'll stick with the stationary bike at the gym.

As for food, I managed in one week to undo all the good I did throughout January. I had dropped about four pounds in January, then when it snowed I spent the whole time baking and eating. I actually haven't weighed myself since then - too scared to look - but I'm back to eating well, and I've given up sweets for Lent, so that'll help with overeating. All of my clothes are tight, and like Emily I have no spring and summer clothes left in my bigger size (if you all remember I started working at the college a month or so after we started dieting. When I started here I bought some new fall clothes in the size I was at the time, but by spring I had lost so much weight that my new spring clothes are all based on me being 135 pounds. Those don't fit me anymore!), so I have no choice but to lose weight before the weather warms up!