and I feel...

Note: not my foot.

Between my foot fracture and my constant traveling, there has been exactly nothing on the exercise front. No Pilates, no swimming, no weight lifting. I had good intentions, but other things became more important and now I'm more than halfway through my boot experience and all I can say is that I've spent a lot of time sitting.

I've been eating like shit and sitting. Bad news.

When I saw my neurologist last week, she weighed me. I had a good idea of what my weight was but color me surprised when that scale read 218.0. I knew it was wrong (between the boot, my clothes, the fact that I hadn't pooped, and the meal I ate before I came into the office) but for that moment in time that's what my weight was. It's down in my medical records now which makes me sad, but then I realized... what if I was wrong? What if I really gained all that weight?

My last weigh-in was in April 30, I logged in at 207.0. Today, May 29, almost a month later, I'm at 207.5 I'm sure my weight has gone through a roller coaster course since then, but I'm pleased that after all this time the damage has been minimal. What a load off!

My foot still isn't feeling that great, and that's just WALKING. I can't even imagine running right now so I'm preparing myself for more time in the boot, although maybe that'll change by my follow-up appointment next Tuesday. Fingers crossed!

Since I've been spending so much time out of town and now with my foot being fractured, I suspended my gym membership. Obviously I can't do cardio but I should be keeping up with weight lifting... my bad. I just can't justify a gym membership to lift weights when my best routine only lasts 20 minutes... it takes longer to dress and drive to the gym. So I'm meeting someone in town tomorrow to buy a used set of adjustable dumbbells! I'm pretty excited.

I'm not thrilled that I'm [unintentionally] building a home gym here, but I need something and a $30 Craigslist score is too good to pass up.

feel the day today.

This. This shit. It finally happened.

And by "it" I mean the almost unavoidable running injury. I spend a lot of time talking about the wonders of Vibram Five Fingers, but the truth is that running is a tough sport and eventually your body will need a break.

Or in my case, your body will break.

In the last three weeks, I have run exactly three times. The first was a late night 10km run in the rain, the second was 5km mid-afternoon also in the rain, and the third was just shy of 9km running about the Abbott campus north of Chicago. Each time, my foot was uncomfortable during the run, sore immediately after, and extremely tender the following morning. It's hard to tell if my extremities swell because of my Diamox/Lasix regimen, I just don't have enough free fluid in my body for it to collect noticeably in any one area, but I could tell that something was off. I asked friends, I consulted Dr Google, I rested 10 days between runs and the intensity of my discomfort only grew.

At work this morning, I grew a pair and called a podiatrists' office recommended to me through my insurance and they squeezed me in later in the afternoon. I left work early, drove to the office, and within minutes I was having x-rays taken and was sitting in an exam chair waiting to be seen. Doc asked some questions, pushed on various parts of my upper foot, and dropped the news:

Likely stress fracture, 3rd metatarsal on the left foot.

Everything I had read on the Internet gave me the advance warning to expect this, but it's still disappointing nonetheless. But the nagging feeling that drove me to make the appointment this morning is also the voice of reason: I could take care of this now while it's still minor, or I could roll the dice and run the risk of developing serious problems down the road.

The good news is that I was expecting 6-8 weeks of avoiding weight-bearing activities and the doctor prescribed two weeks for now. In two weeks, I'll have a follow-up at which point he will reassess the situation. I have every intention of being smart for the next two weeks, I feel like that's a pretty small price to pay for a good outcome. I've been cleared for low-impact activities such as normal walking (nothing crazy), swimming, and weight lifting (sitting down, of course) which is great because it's practically summer and my apartment's pool is opening soon.

The down side is that it's practically summer, and I tan incredibly easy. Awkward summer tan lines FTW? Nope.

going down swinging.

I took a package of these monstrosities home from the grocery store on Saturday with the idea that I would follow the serving size (two cookies, 140 calories) and I would have a treat to last me weeks. Yeah... that didn't happen. By Sunday I had already cleaned out close to half of the package. #NoSelfRestraint

I ate the last two cookies before heading out for a run today. Normally a banana is my pre-run nom of choice, but I opted for the cookies to be done with them. GET THEM OUT OF MY FACE. I think it goes without saying that I can't have treats in large quantities like that because the simple fact of knowing it's in the pantry will drive me to think about it constantly. I have been thinking about cookies all week, not necessarily because I wanted cookies but because I knew they were there. The lesson to learn from this is that I still have trust issues with myself, and for now it's safer for my mental and physical health if I stick to single serving packages to prevent myself from going off the deep end.

Sure, it's not as economical to go the single-serving route (bulk saves!) but... you know how people will say things like "I would do anything..." or "I would pay anything..."? Yeah. That. I would do anything, I would pay anything, to be healthy (and skinny). So there. Here's my cost: I gotta pay more for less economical portions of food, especially when it comes to treats.

Because I'm a normal person not on a diet, and I get to have cookies too. Don't judge.

Anyway... HUGE non scale victories happening today.

1. White pants. Okay, they're capri pants, details ugh. The last time I wore these last August, I was about 15-20 pounds heavier (fighting with the scale right now so I don't exactly know my numbers) and I remember thinking "ugh, these would be so perfect 10 pounds from now." At 15-20 ish pounds, I can verify that my thoughts were true. These, in fact, might be a little too big now but my weight doesn't always cooperate with my seasonally inappropriate wardrobe so I'm going to wear the shit out of these pants until they fall off my hips.

2. That brings me to my next victory... belts. If you don't already know, fat people can't wear belts. Normally our pants dig into our skin so bad that we already suffer from red welts banded around our midsection without also adding the torture of restricted leather and a metal buckle. Belts and fat people do not get along. Plus, maybe this is a personal thing, but I was always very conscious to buy extra long shirts to cover the waist band of my pants so you couldn't even see a belt if I bothered to wear one. I was so concerned about hiding my lumps of fat that wearing a belt never served a fashion purpose, and I certainly didn't need a belt since my pants usually were snug on their own. But but but... I need a belt. And my midsection is flat enough that I want to show off a belt. I think I'm gonna go to the store and buy a belt... for the first time ever (seriously). Umm, where does one procure a belt? Are there belt stores or something? Seriously. I need help.

3. My panties don't fit. At first I thought I was imagining it, then I convinced myself it was one pair of panties in particular, then I thought that all the fabric on every piece of lingerie I own was simultaneously becoming too stretchy. No, it's confirmed: I'm definitely a smaller size now. I have tried every cut, every color, different types of fabric (cotton, lace, silk...), same results. All my panties come from VS and in my entire history of shopping there I've never bought anything besides an XL but I can proudly say I am L now. My ass is still big, whatever. My Mexican roots and Velveeta have made damn sure that it will always stay that way and I'm okay with that. #curvyissexy

Badonkadonk courtesy of Velveeta.

is everything really meant to change?

Numbered list Monday! (Shush, that's a thing now).

1. I am definitely an inclement-weather runner. 70 degrees and sunny... all of Iowa City is hitting the pavement, and you can usually find me napping. I don't like sunny runs! You won't convince me to wear a hat (that would involve buying a hat) and running with sunglasses is just awful. No sunny runs. 46 and raining, now THAT'S where it's at. I don't mind being wet when I run (not that it happens between my water resistant pants and a windbreaker over my shirt) and Vibrams have a super-special-awesome power of not holding onto water. It's my idea of perfection.

2. Not that I've been to the gym in a while but... my speed training treadmill experiment may have paid off? I've brought my 5k time to 32-ish minutes (give or take) and I'm learning how to kick. I'm not in the habit of ending runs with kicks, usually because I'm beat towards the end, but I managed to run an 8:50 mile the other day and it was exhilarating. My body felt like it was dying but I survived to brag. Good times!

3. I've only gone on short runs as of late, but it seems like my average pace has increased. I want to believe it's because of the speed torture experiments I was doing at the gym, but it could just be that I have less weight to carry around. I guess it doesn't really matter. The fact that my natural pace is at 10:30/mile is AWESOME and I'm proud and if you're judging then you suck. The first time I ran a full uninterrupted mile, it was almost 17 minutes and I spent the entire time praying for it to end. Now my tempo is 10:30, my PR is 8:50... that is undeniable progress.

4. Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo and as a Mexican in denial, I have some things to say about this. First, I love celebrating pretend holidays, but this one in particular barely even registers on the radar in Mexico. Valentine's Day, Son's Day (that's a real thing)... basically everything is bigger than Cinco. I'm pretty sure Bud Light or Jose Cuervo or some other awful company hijacked this holiday for PR purposes and it was a smart play. Way to go. But for serious, white people, LAY OFF THE AVOCADOS. I swear it's absolutely impossible finding avocados this time of year because they've all been picked over by the hoards of douchebags who equate May 5 with guacamole and margaritas. Tomorrow, the grocery stores will be full of avocados. Today, the grocery stores are probably already full of avocados. But yesterday and Saturday... no dice. And that really pisses me off. It's not uncommon for me to eat an avocado as an entire meal, in fact most of the time that's what I do with avocados. It's not a side, it's not a garnish. It's a fruit just like an apple or an orange and you should treat it as such. So yeah... my feathers are all ruffled because a pretend holiday has motivated tons of people to clean out all the avocados from the grocery stores on the weekend that I went shopping for food. I NEED AVOCADOS, I'M DYINGGG. For serious. That shit's not a commodity in my house, it's a staple.

5. In case you're wondering, I did find avocados. But they were super super super green and I'll probably have to wait a week for them to ripen, and once that happens I'll have to eat 4 avocados in a day or else they'll start to turn. I have so much anger. #mexicanproblems. Speaking of which... I had to drive an hour out of town to find my favorite tortillas. Normally we pick them up from Sam's Club when we visit my family in Des Moines but trips to the 515 have been sparse lately. We tried the Sam's Club in Cedar Rapids and they don't stock that product there which really broke my heart. I had to make the drive to the QC for a Craigslist thing anyhow so I convinced boyfriend to come with me under the guise of hunting for these tortillas at the Davenport Sam's Club. [Side note, I love Craigslist, but it's really pissing me off that they've added the LOCAL RESULTS feature at the bottom of the page because I always seem to find the PERFECT item 50 miles away. It's always 50 miles.] The Quad Cities delivered and we walked away with SIX BOXES of tortillas. Thank goodness we happened to go shopping on Cinco de Mayo or else people might have thought I was Mexican or something. HAHAHAHAHA ethnic denial aside, why do I have to drive an hour to find the perfect tortilla? I'm not exactly sure if that's #mexicanproblems or #ruraliowaproblems.

6. Surprising fact: IIH will get you permanently deferred from donating plasma (and depending on the state in which you reside, your name might be added to a D0-NOT-ACCEPT registry) but donating blood and blood products is perfectly okay. The only reason this bothers me is because donating blood is a voluntary activity and donating plasma pays you for your time. So... you're healthy enough to do things for free but not healthy enough to get paid? I call bullshit. As it was explained to me, plasma cannot be collected because the idiopathic nature of the condition makes it impossible to tell the effects of the plasmapheresis and it's "for our safety." Except... they're perfectly happy to collect platelets which is the same effing process (down to the same machines) they use for collecting plasma. Now, I hope I'm not giving off the wrong vibe here. I wholly support the blood DONATION industry, I think it's a marvelous thing to do and if you're healthy you should consider doing it as often as you can (I am a proud O negative and no stranger to the UI DeGowin Blood Center). They have worked with me for years navigating the details of my condition and they've been happy to take my whole blood (double units, sometimes) and platelets on many occasions, and I would never complain about sitting in those chairs (SAVE A LIFE, FOLKS). But places like BioLife... suck it. Greedy bastards.

7. Two weeks and a day until my next neuro appointment. I don't know if I should hopeful for news or just prepare myself for the same routine? Things feel different, but I'm not sure if I'm just reading into it more than I should.