IUD Pain

I feel pretty beat up today. Like every part of my body aches. I am thinking this has something to do with the reality that I did in fact get an IUD put in me yesterday. I am very happy that this happened, but somehow over the course of 5 years I had forgotten how incredibly painful, jarring and invasive the whole process was.  In the grand scheme of things it’s like 15 minutes of uncomfortableness for 5 years of peace of mind, well worth it, but it does leave your body a bit in the ringer for a little while.

Here’s the thing, when I got to the office I had to pee and silly me, thinking how uncomfortable it would be to have someone digging around inside me with a full bladder, literally 5 minutes before I was called back I went to the bathroom. And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I walk back the nurse was like we need a pee sample from you. EPIC fail. I did not have to pee. They have one of those magical little 2 sided doors from the bathroom into the medical room. She kept opening her side to see if my pee sample was in there. It was not. I could not pee. I drank little tiny cup of water after little tiny cup of water. No pee. Then the nerves set in. The panic. I can’t pee. And they are all sitting around waiting for me to pee. The door opens again; my stress level rises and I can’t pee. I am in the bathroom for 25 minutes, door checked a million times and there is just no way I’m peeing. I finally come out and am like, I am so sorry, I can’t pee. I knew it was totally stress as this point. So she says okay, and takes me to another room to try and calm me down, go over some stuff and hopefully induce pee. Apparently I have to pee before they will actually give me the new IUD.

Everything is going well and then it’s time to try and pee again. Despite drinking tons of little cups of water, the nerves were definitely preventing me from having to go. I tried to force something out. I mean, normally I can pee no matter the situation.  Apparently not today for some stupid reason. I literally squeeze out a tiny bit in the cup. I was hoping that more would come, it would not. She started checking the door again and my nerves were shot. I should mention I had a moment where I wanted to fake it the first time I was in there, where I literally was going to just put water in the cup but then realized water doesn’t look like pee and they’d know. I was that desperate. Alas, the tiny amount of my pee in the cup was going to have to be enough. To get the show on the road I decided to just put that little cup in the door and pray there was enough to do whatever they needed to do. It really wasn’t a lot, but I guess it was enough. Thankfully! This entire process of trying to get me to pee took like 50 minutes. No joke. Retarded.  The whole time wishing I had not peed right before I went it, because at that moment I really had to pee.

So I go in and see the doctor, get undressed, etc. I don’t care how many times you ever go to a gyno in your life, it is still one of the weirdest things you will ever do. I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or anything but it’s just a crazy situation a complete stranger sticking their fingers inside you while narrating what they are doing. I got a shot on my inside to numb the pain I was told. It didn’t numb the pain let me tell you.  As soon as she was in measuring things and feeling around the cramps were instant and fierce and entirely body wrenching. I felt it from my toes to my head. It was epic.  And I’m a pretty tough chick. At least that’s what my brain kept repeating as I endured the pain, you are tough, you got this. I tried to not let my body twitch on the table to badly.

This is the 3^rd IUD I’ve had inserted in my life, the first two times the doctor had a hard time getting it positioned correctly and had to take longer than normal so I was prepared for a similar outcome. It happened. She tried to go in the normal way, and couldn’t get it in. She said she was so sorry but she was going to have to completely move things around and try a different angle.  The sharp pain returned and I clenched my teeth and a few seconds later she had inserted it. In all honestly it doesn’t take that long to do, but it just feels epically horrific. Of course this process also causes some bleeding which is always nice as well. Once I saw the doctor it was only about 15 minutes and I was out of there. An hour to pee, 15 minutes to get my IUD.

I had moments afterwards where I was like I’m totally cool, no problems. Then I’d get this horrific shooting cramp throughout my body. Excellent times. I went home afterwards and just decided to stay home with my doggies and forget about the gym for a night. I think this really was the wisest decision. I was sure I’d feel better this morning, but honesty I woke up exhausted and sore. Part of the sore I am sure is from the gym. But I am for some reason still cramping and I don’t like it. It’s not unbearable by any means; it’s just a random shooting pain. I am sure it will go away, but it’s just annoying.

Things definitely hurt more than they should. My energy level is depleted and I’m ready for this Friday to be done. Of course it’s almost half way thru the day and my bosses are not in town so it defiantly could be worse.  Also as a result of being home all afternoon/evening and feeling not great, I way overate yesterday. Granted, nothing too terrible and it was good stuff. Meaning I indulged in a few extra handfuls of almonds. The horror I know!  But I ate like 1800 calories which mentally doesn’t make me feel all that good. I am sure a day of 1800 calories is not really that critical but it throws off the mind a bit.

I am seriously fighting with myself about what to do tonight. There is a strong part of me that wants to go to the gym. Just go do something to make myself sweat to feel better mentally and physically and then there is another part of me that is like please just rest and let it go for one more day. Not sure who is going to win out in the end. I am running a half marathon in the morning and that is weighing on my mind as well. 8 AM I will be running 13.1 miles tomorrow so that is leading me towards taking one more rest day so I’m recuperated enough to run properly in the morning. But we will see. I also don’t think it would actually kill me to do some upper body strength training tonight. Nothing too crazy mind you, but again, we are just going to have to wait and see.

I seriously had forgotten how invasive the IUD is and how it might take a day or two for my body to rebound. I did not consider this at all when scheduling the appointment. There is a part of me that actually believes the endorphins from exercise will actually help with the cramps and that I’d probably feel better after working out in some strange way. Is that seriously crazy? Possibly, I mean, I know I’m crazy sometimes.  Regardless, I am glad it’s Friday and I get a weekend and I’m glad I’m running a half tomorrow. It’s been far too long since I’ve run one and I really want that high again.

Have a fabulous weekend, whatever you are choosing to do!

Appointment Time

Apparently my body has found a pretty consistent pace for losing weight, this morning I was down another 1.7 pounds. Week 1 was 1.7, Week 2 was 1.6 and Week 3 is 1.7 for a total of 5 pounds in 3 weeks. I am very happy with this. Sometimes you don’t realize that a 1.6 or a 1.7 are as important as they really are. In the end, 5 pounds in 3 weeks’ time is beyond what I was expecting, so I am more than happy. But mostly I am happy  because I just feel much better. I know it’s only 5 pounds but I swear I feel it. I notice the reality that I am 5 pounds lighter. I think that sounds crazy but it’s actually true. 5 pounds CAN make a difference.  Just for the record that means I weighed in at 154.5 this morning. Slowly, slowly inching my way back into the 140’s… which is where I truly do prefer to live my life, but weighing 154.5 pounds, with a muscular frame isn’t all that bad. I will live with it!

Last night I got to the gym and warmed up before personal training with a 1.5 mile run. Nothing fancy, just a way to get the blood pumping and the heart rate up. I wasn’t crazy pushing myself or going for extremes, just nice and easy. Personal training was chest and triceps. It was a bunch of new interesting things and when I say interesting I usually mean terrible hard. HA. I guess that is why you pay someone else to torture you because I sure shit would not ever do that crazy crap on my own.  After  training I went to Iron Power class and honestly by the end of the night I was completely spent.  700 calories burned and I was just tired and ready to go home.

Today at 2 PM I have my appointment for an IUD, although part of me is not 100% sure if they are going to actually give me the IUD today. Meaning, I haven’t been in for a regular exam in a while so it’s quite possible they will just want me to do a regular old exam first and then reschedule for the IUD. Either way, I am going today and prepared for whatever outcome happens.  I certainly just want them to put the IUD in, because I am going and I want to get it done and over with. I am not sure how I will feel afterwards. The very first time I was very crampy and hurt. 5 years ago it wasn’t that bad. I really hope that 1. I get my IUD and 2. I feel okay.  If I feel all right I’d really like to head to the gym tonight afterwards. But I also am going to listen to my body and if it is in pain then I won’t go. Of course there is the reality that I might not even get the IUD at all and therefore it’s a moot point. We are just going to have to play it by ear. I guess that is literally in like 3 hours. WOW, time does go. I’m a little scared and nervous honestly. I am not sure anyone likes this kind of stuff, but it’s the reality of life. Scratch that, it’s the reality of being a woman.

My bosses are gone tomorrow so that means it should be a nice and easy day for me, so at least I have that to look forward to. I have a half marathon on Saturday morning and I’m both excited and scared about that as well. Funny how I can still manage to get scared from time to time. I should mention that my knee is totally scraped up from a new exercise I had to do last night in personal training. It hurts, like in a scratch kind of way. Yucky.

I guess we are just going to have to wait and see how the rest of my day goes. I am sure I will be more nervous as 2 PM approaches. NOT fun.

Kicking my own ass

I’d say it’s truly a mixed blessing when you are sore from kicking your own ass. My legs hurt today, like a lot, and that is all my own fault. I have no one to blame but me. I guess that’s good.  I’d say yeah me for working so hard if my legs weren’t throbbing just sitting here at my desk. But I guess I am going to say yeah me anyway.  I wasn’t sure last night if I was really going to reach this point so I suppose I work harder than I think.

This is what happened, I went to the gym and ran. I just wanted to run a whole 5k, 3.1 miles in less than 30 minutes. I haven’t done that in a while. This requires running at a speed greater than 6 miles per hour. But since it’s a shorter distance I thought lets just push myself and see. So I set the machine at 6.3 miles per hour and ran. Of course I plugged my headphones in and just went for it. That euphoric  high kicked in and I felt good. I felt like I was actually accomplishing something of value and that is always nice. With a few minutes left I wanted to quit but I made myself finish strong, I actually clocked in 3.1 miles at like 29 minutes 40 seconds and I was happy. Of course the machine kicks into cool down after 30 minutes so I just ran the extra 20 seconds and let it go to cool down. I walked for a minute and then was like I have a little bit left in the tank, lets just finish up 3.5 miles so I bumped up the speed and sprinted out the last bit. 3.5 mile run and I felt alive, sweaty and accomplished.

Walking away from the treadmill to go do legs I wasn’t sure what I had in me, but let me tell you, already being pumped up and energized from running really does help me with my strength training workouts. I left my headphones in and shoved my phone into my bra strap and went for it. I felt crazy high and decided that I was going to kill this leg day. Of course hearing awesome heart pumping music in my ears didn’t hurt. When Katy Perry’s Roar came thru my earbuds I not only smiled but felt myself push just a little more, I am a freaking champion! And I pushed with all my might that heavy weight with my leg.

I did leg exercise after leg exercise enthralled and pumped from a good run and good music and before I knew it, I was truly exhausted, an additional hour and passed (90 minutes total) and I had burned 900 calories total. I was ready to call it quits for the day. Again, in the moment I wasn’t sure how effective my leg workout was actually going to be. Today I am 100% certain it was effective. My quads are throbbing, my ass hurts and I know I worked it.  All crazy excellent signs that apparently I really do know how to kick my own ass. So now, my dirty little plan of yesterday appears to have worked. My legs are honestly quite too fried to actually do a leg work out today so there is just no way that I can handle that in personal training tonight. Plus Amanda saw me doing legs last night so hopefully she won’t go ahead and think that I would do them again tonight. She’s smarter than that so I’m not worried.

Hopefully since its only Tuesday I will have enough time to recover by Saturday to run a half marathon, which I am feeling much better about thanks to my extra running this week. All good things. I feel really proud of my efforts this week and more importantly feel great.  Physical wellness lead to emotional wellness. I feel more in control of things than I have felt in a while. It’s really the process of getting control of the things that you feel like have been spiraling out of control. This is the feeling of satisfaction above all else.

Tonight is personal training and then an hour of Iron Power class. I won’t burn 900 calories tonight by any means, but that is okay. I think I am going to refrain from trying to run tonight as I’ve done some running the past couple days and I think it would be more than fine to give myself a break tonight. Let the personal training kick my ass a little and then let class do the trick. It will most likely be about a 400-500 calorie burn kind of night and that is perfectly fine in my book. That is a totally acceptable amount of calories. Honestly that is a GREAT amount of calories to burn in an evening. I will never complain about burning 400 calories in a workout session.

Overall I just woke up with a smile on my face and that is a great thing! I feel driven and motivated to succeed and I am just never happier than when I have clear goals, my health is in check and I feel this much love and positivity in my life. My heart is bursting with happiness once again.

Just a short run

I have been feeling so good lately. It’s like with the return of caring about my health and wellness and pushing myself comes happiness. Go figure.  According to MyFitness Pal, I have logged in for 18 days in a row now. Has it REALLY been that long already? It seriously doesn’t feel like it, which is further proof that time has a way of going by so quickly no matter what you are doing, so you might as well make it healthy and happy. I still feel like it was yesterday I was deciding that I was going to do this 10 in 10 thing and I guess I’m 18 days in already. That actually seems like a significant amount of time in all honesty.

I realize by my efforts the past couple days that I really had been cheating myself and slacking the last couple months. It is okay, we are all entitled to periods of time where it doesn’t matter as much or we don’t want to put out as much effort so I’m not mad at myself. But it is nice to find some of my missing motivation again. Every day that goes by, I find a little bit more of the motivation. It’s such a process that the farther down the rabbit hole you go, the more you want to keep going.

Honestly I think the biggest thing that has helped was getting a new heart rate monitor finally. It really was showing me how little I had actually been working previously. Seeing the lack of calories burned became motivating to push myself again. I’m starting to warm up my workouts with a 15-25 minute run and honestly that is helping with the calorie burning and feeling good. It’s like, despite running on the weekends, I had forgotten how rewarding it was just to run every day or two for my own health and wellness. It doesn’t have to be crazy 6-13 mile runs, just a simple 2 mile run can be effective. That is a nice feeling. I’m really loving this run 2 miles or so and then go do strength training. The best of both worlds.

Last night before class I decided I should start out with some treadmill time, and low and behold it actually became enjoyable and therapeutic. I only had enough time to get in 2.25 miles before class started but that was more than enough to keep me feeling great. After that I did 30 minutes of Butts and Guts class and then I did an hour of Iron Power. I swear I felt better and worked harder in both classes because of my warm up run. Whenever possible I am going to try and go with this tactic in the future. As a result of my efforts in almost 2 hours I burned 900 calories last night. This was really impressive to me. I mean, I did work really hard for it, and therefore it felt really rewarding.

My plan tonight is to hit a 20-30 minute run and then I am going to do leg strength training. Legs are not my favorite thing to work, but I am hoping by doing them tonight this means that I can avoid having to do them in personal training tomorrow night. It’s purely strategic you see. I am running a half marathon on Saturday morning and I’d really rather get legs over and done with tonight in hopes that I will be recovered and not sore by then.  I am hoping this strategy is going to work for me, but we will see.

Basically, in a nutshell, I just feel proud of my efforts as of late and especially of my ability to not cave into peer pressures or food choices that I am certain a month ago would have gotten the better of me. I feel like I am solidly back on the road that I want to be going down, which is a pretty nice feeling considering where I was at a month or so ago. It’s all about progress in the right direction, not utter perfection by any means. At this point I know I am going to hit my goal by October 5, or at least the 10 pound goal mark I had set or myself. I just believe it in my heart and that is kind of the key to keeping on track sometimes. Simply believing in your goals and yourself enough to follow thru.

I am feeling that happy positive energy around me again and genuine excitement for what I’m doing and where I am heading. Life is not perfect and you are not promised a single thing or a single day please by all means make the most of what you’ve got. I have lived some pretty rough times and I have had some really happy moments as well, it is always worth fighting for the good ones.

Enjoy the moment and enjoy today!  

Monday Heat

And another weekend is officially in the books. Somehow they just go by so much quicker than one would really ever want. Not shocking. Friday night Chris and I ended up going out to Mexican food for dinner. I tried to eat healthier. I am not sure I was 100% successful at that, but I wasn’t terrible either. It’s that life balance that we all try to achieve. At least when I was trying, I only ate a little worse than I probably should whereas if I were not trying I would have ordered the fried caked in cheese burrito with one or who am I kidding 2 large margaritas. I did not do that. Still ate too may tortilla chips with bean dip and of course too much fried cheese stuff, but overall it so could have been worse.

After dinner my sister texted me and wanted me to go over to my mom’s house because all my sisters were going to be there and they wanted to meet Bella in person. We went home, got Bella and hung out for a few hours. It was good.  Saturday morning I woke up and ended up spending a few hours cleaning off my back patio. It hasn’t been done all summer. I’ve been a bad slacker honestly, but now with Bella we have to spend a little more time outside so we really needed to clean it up and clean off the cushions so that I actually want to sit out there. It honestly took me a few hours, but it was good, just listening to music and cleaning things up, playing with my dogs.

I intentionally get dressed to run in the mornings because for some reason I think just having my workout clothes on makes me more likely to really work out.  I had a 7k run on Saturday night with my mom and sister but I also knew that meant I would not really be running and wanted to do at least a little run. I was not feeling motivated at all. By the time the afternoon hit I really had to force myself, but I did. I got on the treadmill and made myself run a 5k. 3.1 miles, and I felt good and relaxed and those endorphins kicked in and I felt much better about the day overall. So about 3 PM I went over to my mom’s so that we could get ready to go to our event.

I drove the hour to the location and it was HOT. The run was at 6 PM and honestly I’m glad I wasn’t running because it was way to hot. But it was a nice event and I was happy with the results and with my mom and sister. Had a cosmo which was amazing and another memory in the books. Good times.

Yesterday I woke up and decided that if I didn’t go to the gym I would regret it and feel off so I just put on workout clothes and texted my friend Amanda to see if she was working out. I won’t back out on her. That’s a solid life strategy. If you think you might waiver on your own, call in reinforcements. We made plans to meet at the gym at Noon. Works just fine for me. So I got to hang out at the house a little bit and then headed out to meet her for some back and bicep work. It was good, hard, intense and exactly what I needed. I felt great afterwards.

I went to Petsmart and spent way to much money on a whole slew of new toys for my babies. Then I went home and played with them for a while. Eventually I went over to my mom’s house for a few hours and then came home, had an awesome chicken burger/avocado sandwich for dinner and called it quits for the day.

Today I am back at the work thing. Fun times, but my sister is in town for one more day with my niece and nephew (they have been with their father camping this last week, which is my sister’s first time being away from them for a long period of time), this is the reality of getting a divorce!  Anyhow, they are here today and my sister went and picked up Bella from my house so she could have a play date with my niece and nephew. So much fun! If only I were actually there to see it, but she sent me these adorable photos of my kids with my Bella. SOOO adorable.

Tonight I am back at it at the gym for 2 classes and then I am going to stop by my mom’s house to see my kids before they leave early tomorrow morning. I should also note that my husband is 1000% in love with  Bella. He is such a dog guy. And I adore this photo of the two of them.

So with that, I need to crank out a few more things at work and get back at it.  Have a good Monday!