Thursday, 4th of March 2010 at 11:36:43 PM 
This isn't me. Imagine about 300% more bedhead, and 500% more whininess.
“Write about that,” he said, ever helpful.
Well, fine. I will. Hello! I am no longer sick, but I really was sick as a dog for almost a solid week. I haven’t exercised. I haven’t paid attention to my diet. In fact, I have discovered several truisms of sickness that I think are important to note when one is stricken with The Ickies whilst trying to be all healthy and stuff.
Truism the First: Comfort food is bad for you. Just last week I was marveling at how my new diet regimen has come to feel like normal eating, for the most part, and I don’t miss the foods I no longer eat. Then my cold morphed into Secondary Infections: This Time, It’s Mucousy and—as generally happens to me when I’m unwell—I stopped wanting to eat anything at all. But after a couple of days of sipping tea I realized I was only going to continue feeling worse if I didn’t eat some food, so I tried to rally my body for some sustenance. What do you suppose I wanted to eat, then, to tempt my feverish palate?
1) Saltines. Sickness is synonymous with Saltines, in my mind. I crave them. I’ve also yet to meet a wheat-free Saltine, which means I can’t have them. I tried eating some wheat-free crackers I have, but it was not the same. Alas.
2) Soup. Sickness also calls for soup from a can, because I’m sure as heck not making homemade soup when I’m sick. Soup from a can is salty, even if you buy the supposed low-sodium kinds. So I ate soup for a couple of days and then (like a loon) decided to weigh myself, sure that at the very least this horrible virus had surely taken some weight off of me! Well, the scale said I’d gained half a pound. Also, I couldn’t get my rings off. Clearly I was retaining four cans of soup thanks to all the salt. Awesome.
3) Soda. I more or less gave up diet soda on this challenge, and I’ve never been a huge fan of regular soda. But when I’m sick, I want high-octane soda. I had some root beer I found in the back of the fridge and thoroughly enjoyed it, and then nearly went into sugar shock. Hooboy.
Truism the Second: Doctors’ office scales are lying liars and also mean. Was it bad enough that I was so sick I finally relented and went to the doctor, and sat in the “Sick Waiting Room” with people who probably had the flu and ebola and who knows what else? No? I also had to go step on their stupid lying scale that put me at a full four pounds over what I weigh at home. Now, at home I’m minus two pounds for clothing, but the other two pounds? I BLAME MY HMO. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Truism the Third: Being sick ruins everything. I had just gotten into a groove with my exercise. Remember how I hate exercise? I had worked it into my routine. I was almost (not quite) enjoying it. I was staying the course, man. But it’s awfully hard to do the elliptical when you’re dying, and so for a solid week, no exercise. Now I’m better, but still weak, and I feel like I’m starting back at square one, and that sucks. I feel crappy because I haven’t exercised, but I haven’t exercised because I feel crappy. Also, as hard as it was to get that regular exercise into my schedule in a way that worked, it sure didn’t take much time to drop it, huh?
Part of this is that I’m an asthmatic and I have this aversion to not being able to breathe (go figure). I get sick, the asthma flares up, I get on the elliptical, and within 60 seconds I’m wheezing and ready to go back to my life of couch-potato-ism. The other part of this is simply that I don’t like things that are hard, and I’m annoyed that I built up my tolerance and developed a new routine and in the space of one week seem to have shot it all to hell. Hmph.
Truism the Fourth: Sickness comes to an end, and life goes on. I’m almost back to normal, and there’s no way I’m trashing eight weeks of hard work just because I had a cruddy week. Maybe I can’t jump right back into my full routine, but I can get back to it as best I can, even with a fistful of Kleenex.
A very small part of me actually suspects I will bounce back a little more quickly once I get more active again. But another, larger part of me wants to believe that’s a myth that endorphin junkies are perpetuating. We’ll see.
Eggggzackly. I got this whatever-it-is TWO WEEKS ago (wait… three!!) and have been ever so slowly getting back into exercising and whining vigorously the entire time (whining! 30 minutes burns an additional 200 calories!). I am lucky to sustain 20 minutes on the bike trainer (with ONE measly sprint), or seven sets of stairs and this weekend we’re going to find out just how far I can’t hike and how impossible I’ll find it to boulder. This should be FUN!
What’s worse, I’ve discovered that although one can get laughs for claiming one was sent home from work on suspicion of being dead, one does not get to use that for more than three days as a reason why one needs to loll about on the couch eating crackers and watching Holmes on Homes on infinite loop. Bronchitis is sad, but life is much, much sadder.
OMG, so true, all of it. At my doctor’s, the scale is SIX POUNDS HEAVIER than my scale at home. And then at my other doctor’s, it’s EIGHT! Good Lord in heaven! That is insane. I can’t stand it. Also, you totally need comfort food when you’re sick.
Again, a testament to the unfairness of doctors’ scales. I had the croup a couple of weeks ago and went to the doctor. Their scale was just a regular bathroom scale and it wasn’t even set to zero. I hopped on fully clothed and it was about 8 pounds heavier than my home scale. I complained to the nurse and she said “I’ll just reduce your weight by 3 pounds”. So wrong when I was already feeling like death!
Mir, hope you continue to recover and get back in the game soon.
You won’t be back at square one. Take it from someone who has yet to “exercise regularly” for more than a couple of weeks at a time.
The first time I heard Jillian say (and I’m probably paraphrasing accidentally) “those of you who are on day 5, 6, 7 – I bet you’re seeing a HUGE difference in your endurance right about now”, I wanted to die. No way anything would change by day FIVE you crazy lady – my heart is EXPLODING over here!
That was… erm… a year ago? And now? Now when I go three months without doing anything more than walking to the bathroom and then put in The Shred? No explosions! No so-sore-I-can’t-walk feelings the next day. It’s not FUN, mind you, but I Make It Through, and I just smile when she talks about Day Five Endurance.
Oh, and my ex-Army husband who took 10 years off from exercise? He is light-years ahead of me in fitness, despite smoking for half his life. So I don’t think you ever actually go back to square one once you’ve made a little progress.
And certainly not from a week of sick!
Yes, what Rini said. And I’m so glad to hear someone else validate my negative reaction to what Jillian says. Day 5? No difference. Except, perhaps, that only PARTS of my body were hurting, and not the whole thing.
I can tell you that about 5/6 years ago, I was really in an exercise groove and was felled by a VICIOUS flu that had me sick and weak for a month. When I tried to get back into exercising after about two weeks of the flu, I felt like I was going to die what with the wheezing and the coughing. But once I was TRULY better, then I was able to get right back into it. Yeah, it wasn’t easy, but even a month of being sick didn’t put me back where I was before I started working out. So don’t worry about, just listen to your body and take it slow. Maybe just walk for now, until you feel like you’re back up to speed.
And FWIW, the woman in that picture looks pretty whiny to me.
I won’t get on ANY doctor’s scale. I offer to tell them my weight from home and if they refuse, too bad on them, they can wonder. I try to do it with humor — “I am sad to tell you this, but your scale looks like a liar — he has shifty eyes. Want me to tell you what my TRUTHFUL sacale told me this morning for your chart?”
But if they give me any flack I flack back.
I. Am. Not. Going. To. Stand. On. That.
Okay so I totally relate – and here’s the kicker. So on Monday, home with cold and feeling miserable and wanting soup – I ate soup – from a can. (Amy’s split pea) Then got something that rather seemed like food poisoning, albiet mild for the next 24 hours. Today I hear they found salmonella in lots of soup products. Um could they not have done that last week? Before I ate soup? I only eat soup from a can like twice a year! No wonder I felt bad on Tuesday. And – didn’t lose weight because all I did eat was breadsticks. Its the soups fault.
Do you guys do this thing that I do? It goes like this:
1. I realize that I am very very sick.
2. I tell my husband, “I AM SO SICK!” *swoon*.
3. Half an hour later, I SHOCKINGLY realize that I am DEVASTATINGLY ILL, as though this was something I just learned that very second. It’s news that I must share immediately with my husband.
4. Repeat steps two through four until well.
Nope. I just whinge every time I see him. None of this business of shutting up about it for half an hour.
Fortunately, I’m not sick very often.