Day 28: "Impatient"

Today is a good day, but as I've mentioned in my previous blog entries -- time seems to be standing still and I'm having to learn the art of patience and distraction. My weight loss has not happened as quickly as I'd hoped, but I'm still loosing 4-5 pounds per week. Nothing to sneeze at. So long as the numbers are going down, I'm stoked. Can't wait until the next drop in clothing size. My tops are loser for sure in the waist and arms, but I can't go down yet due to my bra size. If anyone has any good exercises for making the "girls" smaller, please let me know!

So I now know what dehydration is all about, and it sucks. It's bittersweet because I had to learn it during two of my early NSV moments. First, on Friday I walked 2.5 miles in an hour. The furthest I've gone in years! And I felt great during the first 2 miles, very little pain in the usual places, good heartbeat. Then I bonked at the end, and even worse a few hours after I got home. I had a low-grade headache, some nausea, and muscle spasms. Not to mention I was as weak as a bird. I knew it was dehydration, but I was perplexed because I'd been drinking plenty of fluids and had water with me on the walk. So I upped the intake even more, to nearly 100oz of fluids! When I wasn't urinating very much, I got worried. Went to bed, hoped I felt better then next day. And I did. Saturday was a little better, I drank more, and seemed to be getting better. My husband and I went for an 8.5 mile bike ride over 1.5 hours and I FELT GREAT! I can't remember the last time I felt that good on the bike. Considering my history is heavily cycling related, it was a little overwhelming emotionally. My husband commented about how great I looked, my balance was better, and our pace was much faster than it had been in the past few years. What a difference taking a small, 30+ pound monkey off your back will do for your endurance!

Then I bonked, again. A few hours later, I was weak, headache-y, twitchy, yadda, yadda, yadda. I had a full 22oz bottle before riding (along with breakfast food and shake) and finished the same 22oz second bottle while riding, and drank like crazy after. WHAT WAS GOING ON!?

I take a potassium pill from my doctor that is the size of a horse pill. Don't worry, I dissolve it in water and drink it down. But my sodium and magnesium levels were low. I looked at my food journal and somehow the foods I was taking in were much lower in sodium and magnesium than previous days. Not sure how what happened. So I took some magnesium citrate as well (powder form in water), and drank and rested yesterday. Just a 45 minute, slower pace walk. Today I'm feeling much better, and I talked to my NUT. She wasn't too concerned, said to continue with the potassium, magnesium, and work in more sodium where I can without taking too much.

It's amazing how fragile my body still feels. It takes so little to change the chemistry and throw everything off! It makes me a little sad, that I will forever have to watch every single thing that goes into my body. I'm OK with it so long as the scale is going in the right direction, but when it's not moving very fast -- it's not as easy.

I knew there would be up's and down's, as I talked about in my first blog entry. This was both. A great victory for my physical endurance, but a slippery slope in my health. Let's see how the next week plays out!