This House Is Clean!*

It has now been 18 months since I was released from the hospital from my bout with West Nile Virus. The prognosis from many doctors was that it would take 3-4 years to fully recover, and indeed, many times it felt like it would take that long. Easily.

Mid-year last year, I decided that it wasn’t like me to sit back and let nature takes it’s course where my recovery was concerned, and began to proactively bring about my own wellness. Changing my eating habits (which had become pretty atrocious over the past ten years) took quite awhile, and even now they’re still not where I want them…but I make progress every day in this area.

My dogs keep me active, but I joined a local gym to supplement my activity level, for I was in serious danger of becoming a couch potato head. So now I add a few hours of intense treadmill work to my weekly list, as well as strength training. As I’ve mentioned, it feels really awesome to be back into that groove, no matter that there are some mornings when I have to talk myself into going. Once I get moving, I find my momentum.

This increase in activity has also gone a long way toward helping to restore my overall motivation. I feel that having discovered a very low thyroid and taking the steps to correct it has been almost a miracle cure when it came to my outlook on life and overall optimism. For several years, I thought I had a form of clinical depression. Come to find out, it was that pesky underachieving thyroid gland.

Since becoming proactive about my health and my life, I have lost a total of 13 pounds (out of the 40 I will eventually lose). But the piece de resistance to all of this came when I went in last week for a follow up physical with Doc Vinny. He tested everything for me, and…?

A CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH.

That’s right, all of the issues that had cropped up seem to have been averted.

Thyroid = Normal
Blood Sugar = Normal
Cholesterol = Very good
Blood Pressure = Normal
Resting Heart Rate = Excellent
Cancer Screening = Negative
Heart = Strong
Liver = Normal
Kidneys = Normal

I had no preconceived ideas about the outcome of this physical, but I can tell you that I danced a jig right there in Dr. Vinny’s office when we got done, much to his amusement/horror. Yes, I put my clothes back on first, so don’t go getting all visual on me.

So, as Zelda Rubenstein (aka Tangina) said in the film *Poltergeist: This house is clean!

Things To Remember

There are times when it feels like my brain is a bald-slick tire and thoughts are a patch of black ice at night. I have days when I can bear down on a particular chain of thought and I feel the connection being made, that I get it. Other times (mostly at work), there comes that slipping feeling, like the more I apply the brakes, the more my brain wants to spin out.

It’s very odd.

Yesterday I joined a gym instead of trying to rely on the measly little so-called “workout room” located on property, which is really just a room the size of a bedroom with some workout equipment thrown in.

About four blocks away, a new gym opened this week. They’re offering the first 300 people a $19.95-for-life membership, with no introductory fees or no other hidden stuff. And no contract…leave any time. Yeah, you read that right. Pretty straightforward.

There’s nothing like the smell of a new gym. I think I like that smell better than the new car smell. Maybe not. But I digress.

I’ve been thinking about committing to a gym to inspire me to be more consistent in my workouts, and at the price I got (cheaper than online porn!), I figured there was no reason NOT to commit.

So I did.

Working out at home, or in an under-equipped facility like the one my community calls a workout room, can be good for beginners who are a bit shy about appearing unknowledgeable in public…that “first-timers” fear. I don’t know about you, but I tend to get lazy when I work out by myself. I don’t push myself very hard, some days. Not like the old days when I was a competitive bodybuilder and power lifter. Of course back then, I worked out five to six hours a day, six days a week.

I ran on the treadmill at my new gym last night for about forty minutes, just getting the feel of being back in a real gym after more than ten (!) years. It was like coming home.

This morning, I did my first real workout…40 minutes on the treadmill, then a relatively difficult opposing-muscle-groups routine that I made up on the spot. I had forgotten what it felt like to really push myself. There were a couple other people in the facility (it’s open 24-hours a day…and no, it’s not 24-hour fitness, but a newer franchise), and their presence didn’t allow me to slack off even a little.

It. Was. Awesome.

I don’t want to be a muscle head like I was in my twenties. I just want to drop some extra pounds, tighten up what I was blessed with, and shift some stuff around that seems to have slipped when I wasn’t looking. One of the things I really enjoy about working out is: sweating. Yeah, that’s a weird thing to enjoy, but it means my body is working hard, and working as it should.

Here’s me committing to my return to fitness.

Yay.