fitness challenge update--just a bit late

Part of my fan club. Emily, Bailey, and Arlo. Yes, Emily and Arlo are twins!

Well, that didn't work out. When I started this 12-week fitness challenge I said I'd post every week with an update and that happened exactly once. But in my defense, I've had a lot going on the last few weeks.

Work was insanely busy due to an annual project whose deadline was unexpectedly about three weeks earlier than planned. I and another team member busted our butts for a week gathering all the information and inputting it, and then...I logged in that Thursday and half of it had been blown away somehow. So, I had to recreate all that work we just did by copying and pasting from the other document that somehow was left untouched (same system that blew away the first one), downloading the document history and pulling information from there, and then taking information from last year's document (it gets updated every year) and putting it into the current one. And then one person who needed to provide some information had system problems, too--his server crashed--so I had to ask an IT person to create a report for us in order to get that information. Let me say, the guy is a saint--he turned it around in an hour!

Given the rough week I had, I didn't eat very well at all and it showed on the scale.

Then this past week I had cortisone shots in both hips. I'd had an MRI a few weeks ago, which showed bursitis and osteoarthritis in both hips, as well as some tendonitis in the left hip. The hip pain has been ongoing since probably June of last year, which is a really long time! I'm pretty sure a lot of it was caused by recovering from back surgery during a pandemic, since I couldn't get out much and get back to a regular routine. I'd had two rounds of cortisone shots last year--one worked and one didn't.  I'd been dragging my feet since November in regard to going to a hip doctor (back surgeon gave me the shots) and finally in January I sucked it up and made an appointment. The doctor ordered the MRI and the follow-up appointment was really frustrating and disappointing. I left feeling like he didn't listen to me at all.  Some doctors don't seem to understand that someone who has had gastric bypass surgery is pretty limited when it comes to oral medications.  I can't have any NSAIDs, like Advil or Aleve, which are the things I need right now since they reduce inflammation. Tylenol can be used with no problem, but I've been taking it daily for 3+ years--usually the max daily dosage in one go, sometimes twice a day, which is A  LOT--so my tolerance for Tylenol is extremely high. At this point, it doesn't even work for a headache anymore. And lots of doctors will not prescribe pain meds these days, which is really my only option now if I want real, fast pain relief--it's incredibly frustrating. Also, I think some doctors are biased against weight loss surgery, which can affect treatment. So, not only did this doctor become visibly frustrated with me when I asked about short-term pain relief until I can get the pain under control through physical therapy and/or cortisone shots, he also didn't explain anything about the MRI results in terms of the arthritis, which is a new diagnosis for me.  I struggled with the decision, but I went in search of another doctor and it turned out to be a good experience. He showed me my MRI and x-rays, and explained everything he was seeing; he told me to ignore the arthritis for now as it's very mild; and he showed me some YouTube videos of exercises I can do to stretch out and strengthen my hips muscles. He gave me the cortisone shots Thursday and today I'm feeling a lot better. The pain isn't completely done yet, but I definitely feel much better than I did before the shots. Also, the pain from one of the shots (left hip) was pretty bad these last couple days. Thankfully that subsided yesterday.

This week's story is I ate better, but didn't get in many workouts since my hips were killing me after the cortisone injections. 

So here's my progress to date:  I've lost about 11 pounds, I'm journaling my food intake everyday, and I'm eating better. I'll take it!