I’ve been away for a while, seems like an eternity to be honest but in actual fact only about 2 months since I last shared my thoughts.  So much has happened but then maybe it’s only that way in my mind.  

I started my journey to wellness on December 31, 2021.  I know I know, you’re thinking why in the heck would you pick that date and not January 1, 2022.  I didn’t want it to be a New Year’s resolution.  It was just a little mind game I started with myself so that it didn’t seem so cliché.  Getting healthier is all about the mind games you play with yourself, really, daily.  It’s the small things, finding what works and what doesn’t and in my case cutting myself some slack this time so I might make it.  Yuppers I said this time because like so many of you, I keep trying, keep trying to work on myself even after giving up a few times.  

I’m an all or nothing kind of girl most of the time.  I decide I’m jumping in and work out 2 or 3 hrs a day and starve myself in some crazy way.  It’s not sustainable in any way, I know that usually when I start but it truly isn’t and I do it anyway.  I needed to think about this differently this time.  I was an incredibly healthy, overweight woman in my late 40’s, but I knew I wasn’t going to stay that way forever and needed a change.  Seems counter intuitive but I really was, I had been to a specialist for some health check ups and the Doctor ran every blood test he could think of because of his specialty and said to me, your blood work is pristine, you are perhaps the healthiest person I’ve had in my office, but at your weight you won’t stay that way forever, so make a decisions.  I started a bit earlier than December to be honest, I started walking last summer after a very long day of volunteering.  I knew then I couldn’t keep up the pace I had set for myself without really focusing on my health in a meaningful way.  I lost 20lbs from July to September and then settled in for the fall. I didn’t lose any more weight but did maintain it by walking a few times a week and watching what I was eating most of the time.  I refocused on December 31 and got to work.  

I had to set new standards for myself, new goals for what success meant.  It couldn’t be an all or nothing this time, but have more markers for success and achievement.  It’s helped me feel like I could do something every day and it didn’t seem so insurmountable.  I was massively successful for 4 months, I felt strong and powerful but not quite with the energy and stamina I had expected.  I started feeling a tickle in my throat March 20.  It went downhill from there.

I went from being able to run a 5k one day to not being able to get down the hallway at home without my legs trembling and weak.  I spent the next 5 weeks struggling to get off the couch or out of bed.  I took 3 days off from work but felt that I couldn’t take any more than that,  not because my employer made me feel that way but my own brain just couldn’t wrap around being as sick as I was.  I stayed in bed as much as I possibly could, would go to a meeting or event when needed and then back home to bed.  I must have tested myself for Covid 19 more than a dozen times but always negative.  I got worse by the day and spent most of that time in tears out of frustration and if I’m really honest just pure exhaustion and weakness.  What a predicament I was in for the first time in my life.  All I could think of how much I wanted to be well to be able to travel in June.  I had blood work near the end of May and it showed that my thyroid was all out of whack, it explained a lot of the exhaustion and weakness thankfully.  I had more tests which landed me with my final diagnosis, Thyroid Flare brought on by severe flu.  Imagine, how could that be possible!!!  My levels started coming down on their own and oh boy did I feel fantastic!  I jumped on a plane for Regina and had a week of feeling on top of the world and back to myself although still not quite strong enough.  

I started the long flight home on that early June Monday.  I felt the tickle in my throat and the soft coughs started mid flight #2.  I had hoped that it was only the combination of the stale airplane air, my mask and being quite tired.  I woke up the next day with the very worst head cold and cough and then sure enough a day later a positive Covid 19 rapid test result.  Ouff, I tell ya, ouff!!  Thankfully I had such a mild case of it, cold and cough for a few days but all in all I managed to get through it much better than I did when I had the flu.  I started to feel better, got back to walking in the morning and watching what I was eating.  The last couple of weeks I’ve felt like myself for the first time in about 8 weeks, the illness that never seemed to end.  I am back to running the 5k I started with in March.  

It’s been a tough road the last couple of months, I’m glad to be back to feeling like myself and have so much more energy than I did.  It seems like my body needed a rest in the worst way, I wish I had listened a bit better but am glad to be listening more these days.   Covid to 5k and beyond and I’m sticking to it!