Tequila | Week 75 Weight Loss

Day 535. 212.5 pounds lost.

I’ve had tough workouts before, but none that challenged me quite like the one I had last Friday. The assignment was to push this big metal sled across concrete for ½ mile. It didn’t seem so bad when I started but as I attempted the simple task of getting this big thing out of the parking lot, and up around this little hill I almost gave up before I started. This damn thing didn’t want to move, and here I am out there cussing at it. I almost felt like crying, and I hadn’t even started. Little did I know at the time that the sled didn’t have the plastic skids on it that made pushing on concrete easier. It felt like I was trying to move a ton of bricks. I would get a few yards and have to stop and rest.

By the time I made it to 400 yards I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to continue. I see this red SUV pull up alongside my coach and I. The lady in the front seat rolled her window down and asked if we needed help. After we both assured her we were okay; we couldn’t help but laugh. It was just the comedic relief that I needed {{laughing}} – Im not going to lie, I’m still laughing even as I write this.

I debated whether or not I wanted to push this thing another 400 meters back up a hill, but I’m not one to quit once I start something. That wasn’t me anymore, so I started back up the hill one meter at a time. I learned something quickly, and perhaps it was the biggest takeaway from the workout. If I put my head down and just leaned into it, I couldn’t tell I was pushing it up a hill. Talk about a mental game? It happens in workouts too, not just life.

I was fine Saturday, but Sunday rolled around, and it felt like I got hit by a bus. The throbbing in my right leg was incredibly severe. There are times when I want to cut the leg off. I’ve tried very hard to embrace the bowed leg and the pain associated with the bone on bone at times but some days are worse than others. My doctors have offered to “fix” the leg, but it would require breaking it, cutting 2 inches out of the femur, re-straitening it with braces and then replacing the knee. The best recovery time possible is a year, maybe two.  Considering where I’m at in CrossFit and this journey, I can’t fathom being out that long. So I made the decision a year ago to deal with it. I get shots every four months that help, but when it gets down to that last 30 days (where I’m at now), it becomes difficult to manage. No doubt getting the weight off has helped immensely, but there is still more that needs to come off. Every day I pray that every pound removed is six pounds of pressure gone.

Modifying my workouts and scaling is something I have gotten good at. It bothered me in the beginning because I wanted to do what everyone else was doing but over time I learned to accept what is.  Every rest day I take is a struggle because I want to be down at the gym killing it but some days my body screams, “Hey, I’ve had enough.” Sunday was one of those days.

I tried icing my knee, but nothing seemed to be working, and it was getting more uncomfortable as the day went on. I finally broke down and asked my mom for a pain pill.  Thank goodness I was at her house because I tossed all mine out.

It took about 2 hours or so, and the pain subsided, but it brought with it a “drunken” state I hadn’t felt in a long time. My vision became blurred, I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and everything felt like it was moving in slow motion.

There was another learning lesson for me, and maybe I needed this to happen because it was a reminder of where I was a little over a year ago. How in the hell did I live like this? WTF??? I don’t even understand as I write this how I did it. I use to pop 3-4 Hydrocodone a day for leg pain management. I don’t even remember how I was able to function. As I lay there on my parent’s sofa in a semi-zombie comatose, it took me back. No damn wonder I slept so much and took 11 naps a day. These painkillers had me completely knocked out. I can’t even imagine where I would be right now had I not decided that these daily pain meds were not going to be part of my typical day.

I was struggling with my writing because I couldn’t remember that feeling of “half dead.”  Maybe I needed Sunday because it took me back in one day –  “the memory hit me hard” (Dan + Shay 2018). All I needed was one taste of these things, and my world is spinning. I’ve never been a drinker, but it’s not that difficult to understand how a bottle of tequila could make the pain go away or just shut the world off because that’s what I did.  All the while, wondering what life could be like without it.

One pound gone is six pounds of pressure gone. This is what keeps me going.

Lovingly,

Bean