Today I was doing a live ride with Jess King via the Peloton app. She said something that really spoke to me. “The real you can do anything you decide to do.” That is powerful it made me reflect on my progress over the past few months. She is right. I decided I was going to become more healthy, and I am really starting to make a lot of progress.
I posted the following on Instagram in response and I thought I’d add it here.
“A year ago I could barely walk up the stairs and I was in and out of the hospital.
6 months ago I could do barely 5 minutes on my recumbent bike.
Now I am stacking multiple workouts on the #pelotonapp to help me achieve my fitness goals. It amazing to me how fast things change when you decide to make your health a priority.”
The details of the health issues I had at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 are a story for another time. The following is the short version: a blood transfusion saved my life, an iron infusion nearly killed did me in, and several rounds of Prednisone helped my breathing but did a number on my already too high weight. I finally got my asthma back under control towards the end of 2020 but my Fibromyalgia was flared up and I was in a ton of pain. After a lot of self reflection I decided the best way to make sure I never had another year like the one I just lived through would be to get in shape.
Over the summer I bought a recumbent bike. At that point it really hit home how much my health had deteriorated. After a 5 minute ride on the lowest resistance I had to take a nap. I didn’t want to live like that anymore. I signed myself up for a Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD) weight loss program through Kaiser and committed to spending at least 5 minutes a day riding the bike on at least 3 days a week. I followed through that plan gradually increasing the lengths of my rides. In October 2020 I felt ready for a bigger challenge. I really wanted to buy a Peloton bike but there were two barriers: 1. the price and 2. the wait time before I would have the bike. So we bought a Echelon EX3 and I signed up for the Peloton app. I did my first ride on October 12, 2o2o.
At the beginning of November 2020, I started on the VLCD diet. As part of that program I have been consuming 5 160 calorie products a day. Yes, that is a total of 800 calories. I thought I would be very hungry all the time or very weak. The truth is my energy is higher than it has been in years and I am not hungry very often at all. On many days I am burning more calories through exercise than I consume. My energy levels have stayed high as long as I am well hydrated. On the few days I have felt dizzy or weak, I felt better after drinking a Gatorade Zero or a Smart Water. My sodium and potassium levels tend to be on the lower end of normal lately, so I just need to keep my electrolytes up and I feel great.
What impresses me is the amount of workout I am able to complete each day. I find the workouts energizing rather than exhausting. I have progressed far beyond my goal of 5 minutes a day, 3 days a week. My new goal is 60 minutes a day for 5 days a week. I recently added strength training to my workout routine and I am excited to where this will take me next.
So where do I plan to go from here. Our program facilitator for the VLCD program at Kaiser has suggested that blogging helps some people stay on track, so I would like to continue to document my progress in this way. I am getting ready to transition to regular food in a couple of weeks so I am thinking about posting recipes for that. My daughter has some cool hacks to make fun, low-calorie recipes, I may include. In the past 11 weeks, I have been making fun flavor combinations for my Optifast products and posting them on Instagram and Facebook. I am thinking about including some of those recipes to share with others doing the Optifast program. Mostly, I am going to keep trying to get healthy and I hope that my progress will help others believe in themselves to. Remember, “The real you can do anything you decide to do.”