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Gym after baby and for the first time since 2015… Suck it up.

By Mikhaila

I’ve been doing floor exercises since June or July (3 or 4 months), slowly getting stronger. Using 5-pound weights for my arms and just doing bodyweight exercises for my legs with some rubber bands. It started off ridiculously slow. I could hardly do 10 of these guys on my left leg.

And I couldn’t (and still can’t) get my leg straight on my right side because of the hip replacement.

It started off incredibly frustrating but I got stronger really quickly. After two weeks of doing floor exercises, I got stronger. That felt really good because I could feel the improvements really quickly.

I moved to a condo with a gym and I went to the actual gym for the first time since 2015 this morning. I had stopped going to the gym in the summer of 2015 (just after I cut out gluten but before the elimination diet and wayyyy before all beef). My physio had told me I was going to hurt myself because of my ankle replacement failing. So I quit. Then I lost all the weight I wanted to lose by going on the original elimination diet so I didn’t even feel like I needed the gym. I knew I was weak but hell I had abs (which I had never been able to get at the gym).

Then I got pregnant and had a baby and destroyed my core (as it does when you stretch out all your abs to hold a human). Slowly built that up (just by waiting and doing some seriously minor ab exercises) before I started the floor exercises.

Anyway, I’ve been avoiding going to a gym because I HATE it. I came up with excuses. I do need an ankle revision surgery (scheduled in January). It does hurt to do leg exercises. But mostly I was avoiding it because it’s frustrating and it’s hard and that is a terrible excuse. So I went today and absolutely hated it again. Not the exercising part. The frustration part. I’ll keep going regardless. And I’ll hate it less every time. I knew the first time would be the worst.

My left leg is SO weak. And my ankle hurts. And I can see the difference between it and my right leg in the mirror. It’s so weak. It’s not weak like before the floor exercises (which I have to keep remembering), but it’s so much weaker than my right. It’s the visual difference that gets to me. And my right ass cheek is weaker than my left because of the hip replacement!!! I have to do all the leg exercises separately on the machines so that I’m working out each side equally or one leg just takes over.

So after the complaining, mostly I wanted to say:

After you fix your diet and get healthier – that takes time, give yourself the time to adapt, go through sugar withdrawal, get into ketosis, and start to heal – start exercising. Start doing things again. It can seriously suck to begin with, especially if you have injuries or you haven’t done it for years, or you’re just permanently fucked in some way. It can seriously suck. Verge of tears frustration about life suck. I don’t get upset easily now that the depression is gone, but it still sucked. That’s not a reason to avoid it. If you’re healthy enough to exercise, force yourself to do it and you’ll get stronger slowly. And suck it up if it sucks. (Mostly talking to myself here). Suck it up because things could be much worse (you could be hallucinating soy demons). After you’re done feeling sorry for yourself (try and keep that to a minimum), turn that frustration and self-pity into determination and anger and tell the cards you were dealt to go fuck themselves.

My goal exercise-wise is to become one of those people with huge asses AND joints replaced. Stay tuned. Might take a while and will definitely be interrupted by a hopefully successful surgery.

🙂

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52 Comments

  1. “tell the cards you were dealt with to go fuck themselves.”
    if you don’t trade mark that and put it on a tee shirt I will!
    That’s so Goddam awesome on so many different levels

  2. Walking is good exercise too So long as your orthopedic or physical therapist says. I used to highly undervalue walking, being a former athletic meat head the concept of exercise was only variations of extreme back when my pain tolerance was high.

    There really isn’t a better exercise than walking. Swimming is a runner up. If I were forced to choose yoga vs pilates I would go with pilates, however, it is cheaper to simply do planks and similar core exercise on your own like you are in your picture.

    It is still difficult to believe you have a serious physical health problem by looking at your physique. I don’t mean that as an insult. I don’t doubt your story concerning depression, sometimes (but not always) listening to a person speak can indicate the likelihood.

    Whatever you are doing is courageous, especially if you happen not to be open-oriented to people exposure. Phobic of judgement, or whatever.

  3. I have a titanium left femur and hip. Running is out because most people don’t know your bones do bend some but titanium does not. When I ran every time my left foot hit the ground it felt like a brick. I listen to audio books and after listening to what Alexander Solzhenitsyn went through (your fathers recommendation) enduring pain has changed for me and makes working out much easier. Work throught the pain because the results are worth it. You’re a brave young lady to share your life both good and bad with others in the hopes it may help someone else.

  4. Congrats, that take such a huge amount of courage! Especially since you have such a serious and rare version of your disease. People can say what they want about your diet, but no one will know the kind of courage it takes for you to make these changes and even to attempt exercise in lieu of depression or stasis. I have also battled an infuriatingly elusive disease for most of my life; years of misdiagnosis and finally rare rapid gastric emptying, rapid intestinal transit (so no digestion), and severe (deathly) non-diabetic hypoglycemia. I am sure there is more. I can’t digest even a small amount of vegetables and live on protein (if I could afford to live on sashimi). Exercise has been my saving grace; you unlike me don’t have the skeletal resistance, me unlike you doesn’t have the digestive resistance. My weaknesses are cheese, chicken breast and wine — I also don’t like oil or butter so keto is haaard. I broke my knee in 2 places skiing and tore my ACL this year and it was hell, so I have only a tiny inkling of what you mean by instability, pain and fear for your ankle… Anyway, I just wanted to give a big hoorah to you, and tell you that like you there is someone else that has no support group, no one to talk to, and has to just wing it and do the best they can. You are so much stronger than me. No matter what anyone says (especially those healthy people who binge drink at family holidays and have unsolicited leftovers at 3 am and then criticise the healthiness of your diet..) you are a soldier, a mammoth will, and a beautiful soul. Stay strong and get stronger…

    all my well wishes!!

    1. She should still have her upcoming ankle surgery video archived, including herself waking up from general anesthesia and then blabbering about ridiculous, cute, and embarrassing things such as peans or whatever

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