Mixed Blessings

A couple of weeks ago I got the results of my adrenal hormone testing. It revealed that my cortisol levels are elevated for the majority of a 24 hour period, and at the highest at midnight. This would explain why I haven't been able to sleep through the night since last August!

Last week I got my new medical protocol to balance out my adrenal hormones. I take it twice a day - between 11-1 and at 5p.m. The goal is that it helps my cortisol and other adrenal hormones balance out so my circadian rhythm returns to normal.

Balancing between the fatigue and hair breakage and the hope/excitement of letting all of this go for good. I've been walking a lot because I want to keep up with increasing the fitness levels while I'm healing and yet I'm supposed to keep cardio to "moderate" because high exercise impacts cortisol levels.

Moving forward is sometimes two steps forward one step back - I wonder sometimes how I'm going to get from here to what I envision and where I need to be for my August adventure..... I figure if I just keep moving and resting, improving the diet, and trusting I'll keep healing....then I'll get there.

Day 15

Had a good workout yesterday, which felt great! Even though I am very fatigued today, I'm excited because tonight I got the results from the adrenal hormone test I did a couple of weeks ago. My sports doctor is going to let me know tonight what our plan needs to be after he has a chance to analyze the results tonight. The thing I'm really excited about though is that it clearly shows that my cortisol regulation is at the core of what I've been struggling with - sleep, fatigue at odd times, hair issues, etc.....So, what that means is that with rest, exercise and some support my adrenal system and cortisol levels will balance out, get restored, etc. This is great hope because that means this is it - the last "healing" thing to deal with.

So, I will persevere and continue to balance the fatigue and my training until the training is the focus (and fun!) and the fatigue fades away!

Well, that's everything today.... bright, strong, healthy days ahead!

Day 12

This week the fatigue won. I missed my Wednesday and Thursday workouts, but nonetheless I'm feeling good. This is a good sign because in the past I would have fatigue (and not really know it) and push myself to do all my workouts - which, with adrenal fatigue, makes everything worse. But now, it's Friday morning and I'm rested, feel pretty good and physically calm, and ready for a great workout tonight. In the past, a week like this would derail the training for close to three weeks. And, now, it's only two days..... maybe I'm finally learning how to balance rest and activity.  :)

Even with the way the week went I made progress on the food as fuel mission. Last week I saw an athlete talking about how they lost 30 lbs. He said that he realized he was eating an extra meal each day he didn't need. He stopped that and lost the weight. I'm all for simple and that sounded like an easy plan.

I know all the positives of eating five to six small meals a day, and I'm sure I'll end up there over time. But I'm a person who has to take one little baby step at a time when it comes to behavior change. So, this week I focused on eating breakfast, lunch and dinner. I simply eat too much - so this week's "practice" felt great! A simple way to right-sized portions. Then I realized that my sports doctor had recommended about 1300 calories a day for my training and weight loss goals.... so last night I wrote up a simple meal plan - 500, 400, 300 calories for each meal.

I like the idea of eating simple and small for dinner - I don't really like that meal much at the end of a busy day anyway. Plus, I love how a good, big breakfast powers me through the whole day. So, I'm going to move from 3 meals to 500,400,300 next week and see how it goes. Then, when I've been training for a few months and have lost some of the weight, I'll add a small snack in mid-afternoon to boast the metabolism and stabilize the weight.

Well, have to go to work! Looking forward to a long workout tonight!

Day 9

Well, today I'm getting creative.... I had to have a conversation with parents today that I hope to never have to do again....so, today is the day I drank a beer before working out. Now, I know that is not proper training protocol - but neither is pretty much anything I've gone through in the past. I think there is a time when you are too wound up to workout - or at least to enjoy working out - and today is one of those days.

Plus, it's rainy, cold, cloudy and March in Minnesota. This means that there is no joy and relaxation to be found outside. So, there you have it.

More good news....I've been almost sleeping through the night over the past week. This means I will wake up briefly sometime in the middle of the night, but then almost immediately go right back to sleep. I'm hoping that this is not from total exhaustion and fatigue....but I'm still going to consider it a good sign.

I think my hair has stopped falling out (stress induced adrenal response from last summer) but it's still breaking a lot. Patience is a virtue when it comes to this though. It takes a long time for hair to straighten itself out after something happens to it.

Off I go for the evening.....

Day 7

I'm deciding to be grateful for small victories. This past few days I've only woken up once each night and mostly been able to go back to sleep - at least until around 4 a.m. Who knew that a day would come that I would be excited to sleep UNTIL the alarm goes off! I've decided that I'm just going to be grateful everyday, even if I don't know what for. In the realm of health, I think it's impossible to be grateful for everything until it goes away.

This journey has taught me a lot about that, which is partly why I wanted to write it down. Chronic pain took my lifestyle and now I'm experiencing what it's like to slowly get it back. Some days it feels like I get to open a Christmas present but only one thing every day. First pull the ribbon and wait a day. Then pull another ribbon and wait another day. Break open one piece of tape and then wait a week....

Today I think it's important not to rush things and to let things happen naturally. While I was walking in the woods yesterday, I could experience the physical calm that being healthy may feel like. When you're in pain and/or running in fight/flight/freeze mode physically, you never feel calm in your body. I didn't know that I didn't feel calm in my body all those years - and that there was a difference between physical calm and mental or emotional calm. Of course they are all interdependent, but I would notice if I was upset or mentally tired and not realize that the caffeine/aspertame/sugar habit was really because my body was running on fumes most of the time.

At the same time, I was inwardly motivated to keep going and if I had really realized what was happening....well, I don't actually know the answer to that because the pain was all I could deal with. To get physically calm was impossible. To realize I wasn't able to be physically calm would've been too much.

I decided early on that the car accident was not going to define me - basically that it was not going to win. I simply was not going to stay living that way, was not going to get depressed, and was not going to get addicted to pain pills. I have to admit that being stubborn and overly optimistic helped.

At the same time, it can be overwhelming if you stop moving.

Still now, when the pain returns and becomes too much I end up laying on the couch or in bed just feeling the physical pain. Well, I can tell you that is an impossible life. The couple of years that I slept up to 16 hours in the day have showed me how exhausting chronic pain can be. Life was too overstimulating. Things you used to be interested in aren't interesting anymore because you learn to gauge what is fun by how much pain it's going to cause you. My brain, spirit, heart needed to rest but then you wonder if you're flirting with depression because all you want to do is lay around and sleep.

Mentally, I've had the vision of me "being me" doing "what I do" for years with no evidence that is was ever going to come back. I learned not to tell very many people about it because the hardest thing to deal with some days is other people's definitions of who they think you are - especially when you're working so hard to not succumb to that very definition.

I also stopped seeing myself in the mirror 10 years ago. Of course my body changed and my ability to get stronger was continually thwarted by injury caused by muscle atrophy and the impact of scar tissue, amongst other things.

It's a strange lifestyle. I wish I would have known that it was a lifestyle built for healing. I wish I would've known the difference between a road to depression and what was involved in healing and "fighting the fight". In some ways, it was my road to success and I never knew it. Some days pure instinct drove me to learn how to live.

So now I relearn what it means to be physically calm. It seems my body needs to do this slowly. If I change too much too quickly, the difference in how I feel, what I can do, etc. is too intense and overwhelming. My body will "forget" over time how to live injured and for this miracle I will be forever grateful - even if I forget that that's what I'm actually grateful for.

If someone is reading this with chronic pain, I hope it's helpful for you to hear my story.

Day 6

Not much to report today. Did do a 1.5 hour hike in a regional park today for my slow, long Saturday workout. It's been good because I changed my weight lifting to 4 days of upper or lower and 1 day of a full body lift. That way I have two days off a week and more variety in the workouts. So far it's been good to look forward to different types of workouts each day.

Trying to simply be patient about the fatigue factor - knowing that it's a temporary thing is helping. I'm guessing a maximum of two months......

Day 5

Today is a short, quick workout day, which is great because my body is telling me it's the middle of the night! You know that sort of hazy, confused feeling when you're up at 1a.m. knowing you should be sleeping but can't? Yeah, that's what having a confused Circadian Rhythm feels like from 3-5 p.m. 

Nonetheless, I've stayed with the workout plan for this week but was not able to clean up the food intake very much. The pain and fatigue from this week added an unexpected burden. Even so, I did notice I wasn't as hungry as I usually am considering the workouts I'm doing, so that means the stress level is better! I'm sure that changing the time I leave work and workout is starting to reap the benefit of the rest I'm able to have after the workouts. 

I did send in the adrenal hormone test on Tuesday and am waiting patiently for the results! 

So, the sleepy fog feeling is lifting and I'm off to my Friday training workout! 

Pre-training: Day 2/60

Today I ended up with the familiar chronic pain I lived with for nine years ...so it was a pretty rough day. Headache, every joint hurting, pain everywhere... think flu that isn't the flu. But it also reminds me how far I've come and the path I'm on now.

Stayed home and wasn't able to walk around until around 3pm, when I went outside to get some juice into the joints. That helped enough for me to get my cardio and lower lift in this evening - with a touch of caution and care. It's always a question whether or not exercise will further trigger the inflammation response or if it will release the tension in the muscles, which makes the pain worse.

Fortunately, tonight I am mostly pain-free and fatigued - so exercise was the right choice today.

I know where this came from though - seven weeks of an intense work schedule with little or no down time and not nearly enough exercise to maintain any program of healing.

So, in the end, it's the perfect start to my pre-training because it will continue to be a dance between chronic pain person and athlete. Excited for the athlete days to outnumber the chronic pain person days!!

Tomorrow is a new day!

Day -1

Did my "Rest Day" today instead of tomorrow because my schedule was packed full of other responsibilities.

Last day before pre-training begins!

The specific goals for this week are:
 - take the adrenal hormone test and look at forward to the results!
 - eat at home with a focus on whole, clean foods
 - get to the gym by 4:00 or 4:30 p.m.
 - detox from sugar and caffeine (huge factor in adrenal function!)

Excited to get going!!!

Day -2

Saturdays are for my slow, long cardio workout, so today I enjoyed a two hour hike at a regional park. It was inspiring because the combination of the snow, the frozen lakes, the sun, and the tree I saw with the largest, bulging, rotted out knot I've ever seen inspired me! Now I know the bulging sounds disgusting but actually trees are truly remarkable how they can have a whole section of themselves bulge and rot and still continue to grow. Beautiful! 

The fresh air also started to clear out the cobwebs and chronic pain from not working out as much as needed lately. I'm one week into the workout schedule and am headed into the first full week of pre-training. 

The key to pre-training is putting all the components together and maintaining that balance. In the past, I seem to always be able to get one or two things going together, but not everything. 

This is one reason the healing from chronic pain, specific muscle atrophy, adrenal fatigue and the drain of trauma on your cellular memory has taken so long....it's all about balance. When I can maintain balance on the outside, my body has an easier time staying in homeostatis (balance in body language). When the body has to do most of the "heavy lifting" in areas like stress, nutrients, hydration, and rest, then it's fighting against itself (figuratively speaking). As I consider the goals for the first week of pre-training, these are the key considerations.

For example, my adrenal system is directly related to my Circadian Rhythm. This means that, at times, my body thinks midnight is actually 10:00 AM, wakes me up and keeps me up like I'm in the middle of the day. It also thinks 7:00 PM is actually 2:00 AM and is screaming at me and wondering what am I doing up? Most days it's not that dramatic, but that's why the adrenal testing I'm going to do this week is going to make a big difference. It will tell us exactly what my adrenal system thinks it's supposed to do, support it with medicine while it gets stronger and adjusts my Circadian Rhythm back to "normal." 

Because of this, I started leaving work at 3:30 p.m. last week so I can exercise by 4:00 or 4:30 - before the "rush" at the gym makes it almost a mute point as a relaxing activity and before my adrenal system starts it's evening dip. The experience from the first week tempts me to believe that this may become one of my future keys to success. I'm hoping! 

I'm daydreaming a lot about the days when my blog is all about the trials and tribulations of training and not healing... which is exactly why I know this is the absolute right road for me. Off I go for my "daily rest"! 

Day -3...

This year I am headed off to an adventure I've been waiting 10 years for. Even though it's only going to last 9 short days, it is the tipping point of a very long journey. Even so, I'll save that story for a little bit further down the road...

SO, I have spent most of this year trying to heal from adrenal fatigue and starting to train at the same time - not an easy task, I tell you! But last week, my doctor and I decided we had narrowed everything down to the chemicals which control my adrenal system. At the same time, he told me I would need three months of training for my August adventure, which was great news because that gave me one week (this week) to turn things around from working way too much the last seven weeks, two months for "pre-training" and three months for real training.

So, the goals for pre-training are to heal adrenal system completely, maintain physical training plan, cleaning up the food intake, and....losing some of the 30 pounds I gained since the car accident (hint to original story :).

Because I am not sure which will be the bigger adventure - reclaiming my former active life, building my new "self" or heading off the August adventure - I decided to create a blog to document it!

I don't know what the months ahead will be like, but I'm ready to be "all in" to see what it's like to transform yourself, your life, and get back what was formerly lost.

Chronic pain over....healing the residual impact on my adrenals....and living a full-out athlete life....HERE I COME! Thanks for joining me!