50 Pounds Up; 50 Pounds Down ... DAMN! Let's Get This Baby Rolling Again!

COHikerGirl

After a car accident, over 5 years I put on 50 pounds, due to pain impacting my activity. After finally resorting to shoulder surgery and spine surgery, it took me a long, long time to recover, and then learn how to successfully manage my food and fitness.

In 2014, I used MyFitnessPal and DietBet to lose FIFTY POUNDS!! Yay! for me! (It took two 6-month DietBet sessions ...) But then I injured my foot while backpacking, worsened it due to a misdiagnosis that made me feel I could trek in Nepal on the thing. (Mind you, I don't regret it -- the trip was to help re-build Sherpa village homes that had been destroyed in the Nepal mega-earthquake, and I volunteered as well in Kathmandu for a week with the American Red Cross (for which I volunteer here at home normally). It was magical and SO worthwhile ... but I paid a price, limping my way through the Everest region. It turned out, upon my return, that a foot surgeon identified the foot injury as something different, and much more serious, than my podiatrist had thought.

With the increasing pain of a ruptured flexor plate that wouldn't heal (no help from all my activity, there), I was forced by pain to decrease my hiking, biking, and other activity bit-by-bit, eventually putting that 50 pounds back on (partly out of frustration).

I had major foot surgery this past January 2017. After 8 weeks of non-weight-bearing (peg-leg crutch), followed by 8 weeks of a full-time walking boot, I have FINALLY gotten the green light from my surgeon to start CAREFULLY working out. But he's got strict limits on me ... after about just 5,000 steps in a day, that nasty burning sensation returns to the underside of the ball of my foot.

So, I've gotta slowly work back into this whole thing ALL OVER AGAIN. It seems so damned far away ... I know what it took to lose that 50 pounds the first time, and I'm re-committing myself to doing it again, but damn, it's hard. Especially with these limitations.

But somehow, today, with Spring here and being able to at least START down this road again, I'm feeling good. And positive. And hopeful. Despite all.