Hello readers! I am super sorry how long my post challenge update has taken me, and you would certainly be forgiven for thinking that I had passed out somewhere along the line and was forgotten about.

However, good news! Not only did I make it through the challenge, I did the majority of the classes on intermediate springs and/or took intermediate classes. DO NOT SAY ADVANCED. I am emotionally not ready to take on the advanced classes yet. But, back to the point of this update: I FINISHED THE CHALLENGE! I also figured out how I injured my knee, and in between my last update and this one, have managed to injure my knee again. So how did I injure it? At pilates, of course. One of the exercises that my Thursday morning trainer favours is the single arm cable row with a 90/90 lunge. Sounds easy doesn’t it? For those who want a little more of a challenge with the exercise, we were offered the option to tap the rear bent leg to the ground with every lunge. Simple, right? Well, yes. For a normal person. However, enter me with my lack of depth perception and a little too more eagerness to challenge myself with these somewhat easier exercises and it becomes an issue of patella instability. Essentially, I crashed my knee into the ground lunging and even the trainers and my physio are laughing at me. Add to that an angry meniscus and you are looking at someone who is one bad knee twist away from an arthroscope.

How am I feeling after the challenge? A sense of accomplishment and I have noticed my leg muscles starting to firm up and develop the tiniest bit of tone. Like, super tiny. You’d have to look pretty hard for it, but I am certainly feeling stronger and I can almost use my right shoulder fairly normally, although reaching around my back is still a challenge hence why I still put my bra on the way I did when I was wearing training bras – clasp it frontwards then spin! I have also been very pleased with my progress in that I can actually do a full standing split (see here: https://www.facebook.com/kxpilatessurryhills/videos/1657310944487796) and have almost managed to properly complete a monster, which looks a little something like this:

Amongst all this, I was finally able to get my consult with the neurosurgeon at the hospital after my suspected stroke admission late last year. He is quite convinced that I didn’t have a stroke (yay) but concluded that I suffer from vestibular migraines, which is a condition that tends to affect more women than men, and is possibly developed from chronic migraines. Vestibular migraines affect your inner ear and occurs alongside a migraine headache in the form of dizziness, vertigo and imbalance. So, think about the worst headache ever, then add to that a spinning sensation, nausea and motion sickness and you should be close. This was of course made worse by the doc running tests on the inner ear crystals which made me feel a whole lot worse and might have been the reason why I couldn’t even pass a basic balance test. There’s a few suspected causes as to why my health has deteriorated so much over the last few years, but the main one that keeps cropping up is stress. Stress stress stress. So despite my protests, doc decided that medication would be the best way to tackle things. A low dose antidepressant taken once a day would provide enough pain relief and allow me to get on with the day to day activities with less stress, and eventually condition the body into a more health efficient manner of operations. I am happy to report that 7 weeks down the track, I have improved to the point where docs are happy to start weaning me off the meds, but it hasn’t all been sunshine and rainbows. The side effects have been pretty catastrophic, from the excessive sweating (I needed to bring a t shirt to work to change), loss of cardio fitness, brain fog, exhaustion and the attention span of a gnat to mention a few. It’s also done a number on my gut but that’s no different to taking any other meds that a bout of probiotics won’t fix. On the bright side, I have found myself more zen, less bothered by people and sleeping a lot more and a lot more regularly. I must admit though, the decision to get off the meds (correctly, I might add) was partly pushed by me too. My body had decided enough was enough and I was dreading taking them more and more everyday. So we have set a target of taking the 10mg dose this week (down from 12.5mg) and then next week 5mg and then nothing, which just overlaps slightly with the return of the Aston RX program!

Yes, I have decided to get back onto the program. Mainly to lose weight and to be held accountable as I do it, but also because the weight gain through my year of medications (ha ha ha not) has left me feeling sluggish and not myself. It’s also part of the reason behind the ongoing knee issues – increased weight results in more pressure on joints etc etc. One thing that really surprised me in the pre-program prep was the pathology results. Whilst there was an increase on my fasting glucose and insulin levels, resulting in a slightly higher HOMA score, it is nowhere near where I started with when I did the program last year. In fact, I’d say my results obtained today are actually closer to the ones I had at the end of the program last time round. However, this time, I will be sticking to the program for approximately 20 weeks instead of the 28 days as that has been projected to get me to the target weight I both need and want to be at. Program starts on Monday May 3rd, so I have a few more days to get in any celebrations I need to (like my anniversary with my partner except neither of us know what the right day is and I’m pretty sure he and I have to count backwards to work out how many years) and to have a drink or two (I haven’t been able to drink on the meds) before skipping drinks for the 20 weeks.

As usual, I will try to post and update here. The long silence between posting was due to the medication’s side effects and basically not wanting to do anything, but I’m starting to feel a return to normality, which includes writing more often. In the meantime, I am going to have ice cream and count down to the end of 20 weeks!

Stay safe, be happy and speak soon.
B