Monday, May 20, 2013

Low Ceilings, Dark Walls, and Lots of Smoke

Life shifts, life changes in the blink of an eye but we're required to keep at our battle to live the best possible life we can. For the first few months after all my health stuff started up I’d been worried I wouldn’t be able to work out ever again, and with good reason.

Back in November Matt and I were walking for health. We’d only started walking a few weeks before Thanksgiving and during that weekend we were joined on our walks by my mom and sister. It felt great and I believed I’d be able to get into bathing suit shape before we opened our pool for the summer. The week after the holiday it was back to the two of us and we went out one night to do a short three mile walk around the neighborhood.

I don’t know if maybe I hadn’t eaten enough or if it was related to the something else starting to go on with my body but about halfway through I started getting lightheaded and feeling like my legs were weak. Very weak. To the point I wasn’t sure I could actually make it the rest of the way home. I held onto Matt’s arm, we both slowed down and he continued to encourage me to just steadily place one foot in front of the other. It wasn’t easy; it was as if I was on a rocking boat inside my head.

By the time we got home Matt said I was as white as a sheet. I had been drinking water and ate a granola bar before we left the house like I always did but maybe it wasn’t enough this time. I felt like my blood sugar levels were down around zero so when we got home I got more water and a fistful of almonds to try to regulate. Matt went out and got me a steak and cheese sub. I leveled off some after eating dinner but my constitution hasn’t been the same since and the serious wonkiness took hold right around this time.

For the many weeks after that night I’ve been taking it easy on workouts, generally sitting around most of the time so as not to disrupt whatever balance I seemed to maintain by being somewhat sedentary. As you know, if you’ve been around here since last year, I went to just about every possible doctor and / or specialist in the phonebook to figure out what’s wrong with me (still to no avail).

Slowly I started adjusting my food intake and maintaining levels of sodium, fat, fiber, protein, etc. on my own. I started ramping up nutrition, weeded out coffee almost completely, and hardly ever drank anymore. Slowly I started incorporating some form of work out back into my routine.

I think I’m at a pretty good place right now as far as managing my nutrition and water intake and my work outs are getting longer and slightly more intense. I haven’t felt even a hint of what happened that night back in early December but I do still experience the wonkiness sometimes. Just depends on the day. But it seems I’ve been able to manage it to a point. So it’s time to change my whole routine and get my total body health back under control.

We own P90X, Bob Harper’s (holy-mother-effer) workout, a few other yoga/Pilates DVD’s, and the stationary bike. But I’m somewhat bored of these choices. So I started thinking about what I could do to get back in shape and lose the few (ahem, thirteen) pounds I put on since moving to Arizona. I started to reminisce on when I was in the best shape of my life.

Two distinct times come to mind – when I was doing faux finishing full time and back in my club days.

Now I don’t have the capacity to do painting jobs out here in Arizona, plus I’m finally working the way I really want to be, by writing full time, so I don’t plan to go back into a career in the trades. Which leaves dancing as a viable option.

When I was clubbing I went out to dance Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights almost every weekend. And I felt great (if not worn out) because at some point during that time in my life I stopped drinking when I went dancing. Water only. I was there for the moves, not the booze.

So in the spirit of my favorite club back in the day (Envy, now closed and called something else), I’m turning my office into a club every day at lunch. I’m dimming the lights, turning up my iTunes playlist (titled Ass Shaper of course), and starting to swing the flab right off my body. No one else has to see me jiggle to-and-fro but I’m going to imagine being in a Boston club from the mid-nineties and start rocking out to today’s pop rock grooves for about an hour every day.

It’s just too bad the ceilings are so high and the walls are peach. I could really use a nice dark room with low lighting. I wonder how much it would cost to buy a smoke machine?

May’s Month of Music
Get Back in My Life – Maroon 5 (Pandora first track)

15 comments:

Joan said...

Glad you are feeling a bit better. Have fun on your lunch hour!

Karen said...

Workouts should be fun... good for you and glad you're feeling a bit better!

Melissa Macdonald said...

That sounds awesome...I dance when I empty the dishwasher and make dinner, and you're right, no one has to see. I also use my dancing as a means of motivating Owen to walk faster when he walks with me...he doesn't want that to happen!

Melissa Macdonald said...

Er, that is to say, he doesn't want me to dance, which is what I threaten if he doesn't pick up the pace!

Launna said...

I think this is a fabulous idea Jenn, I am going to put some dance music together and try this out... at least it will be fun ;)

Judi FitzPatrick said...

Great way to spend lunch hour, and with riding your bike to work and back, you'll be svelte in no time!
Love you, Mum

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Thanks so much!

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

So very true, if not fun they become stagnant and I stop doing it completely. Thanks!

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Heehee, yup, I can just hear him complaining about you "embarassing" him. I remember saying the same thing to my (insert family member here) but now take pride in doing the same thing to the younger generation lol

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

That's exactly what I'm thinking too! I've got over 5200 songs in my iTunes library so putting a good workout mix together was no problem. There's 6.4 hours in the mix which is good because I won't hear the same song every day! Let me know if you do it & what you think!

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

That's the goal :-) Though I haven't been as diligent about riding to & from work to be honest. That's why I need the music to motivate me to get up & get moving again!

Almost Precious said...

I always felt that exercise should be enjoyable and not torture, so I totally concur about dancing as a work-out regime. It requires energy, burns calories, is best done to music :D and to me it was always fun.

Glad to hear that the bad bout of vertigo and weakness has subsided and I pray that it continues to do so. Thank care dear Jenn. :)

Jak said...

Hmm I wasn't around last year so I will have to check up on that other post. Sounds like what I could experience from diabetes if blood sugars were too low and exerting oneself.

Have they still been unable to pinpoint anything healthwise?

It is pretty sweet you are creating your own dance club in your office lol so its a club as well as a gym as well as your office and command center. Have you reached your goal? Hopefully it's mentioned in the following posts somewhere.

Jak at The Cryton Chronicles & Dreams in the Shade of Ink

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Exactly what I've been thinking! If I have fun I'm more likely to do it again and if I keep doing the "workout" I'm more likely to look how I want. Win-win-win :-)

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Funny but that was one of the first things they checked - blood sugar. But I was allegedly in a perfect range for my age, gender, blah, blah, blah. I wish that was it, at least we'd know how to manage it. Still haven't figured it out. Hopefully soon.