Just keep walking

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Even when I don't love my body, I love my body. If it can do anything consistent in my life, it can make me slow down (or stop) when I am trying to push beyond my limits. Now, this knowledge is not always good as I will continue to push, push, push, with the knowledge that I will either hit a brick wall or my body will just go into autopilot and put on the brakes. Yes, the common sense approach would be awareness of how I am doing and take the steps I need to before my body has to take over and knock me upside the head, yet where is the fun in that?

Today would be that day. I have not stopped to recover from the race Saturday and actually have continued to push myself when I should be resting. My body has already started it's warning cycle - chest pains, dizziness, numbness, and trying to pass out. As I continue to keep pushing forward at full speed, my body keeps telling me, "this is your last chance to stop before I stop you." It is like a game of cat and mouse. Oh, I completely know that in the end, my body will win - it is just a race to see if I let it win or if it knocks me down the stairs like a jealous potential runner-up in a beauty pageant.

I am happy to report that almost 8 hours have transpired between the previous paragraph and the remainder of this post. My afternoon meeting got cancelled, so I chose to meet my body halfway and came home and took a nap for a few hours. Happy to report no pageant girls were injured today. Still not 100%, yet was good enough that I knocked out a 41 minute/2.2 mile walk before addiction/recovery group.

As I was walking the last couple laps (was walking the perimeter of the parking lot) I remembered when I started exercising again when I started my weight loss journey. I would get up and walk around the halls (office is a big square) every hour or so. One lap is probably between 300-500 feet or just under 1-tenth of a mile. It would take me around 7 minutes to do two laps (that would calculate out to about a 35-40 minute mile) and I would be so winded. I remember by the time I got to the end of the first hall my legs would be burning and it would feel like I was being beat across the shins with a ball bat. I kept walking though. I knew I had to. If I was going to get healthy, I had to keep walking.

In the mission, after my first few days of walking for hours and miles, I ended up with such horrible blisters on my feet that they did not completely heal until I was back in the states over 9 months later. My trainer and I would laugh and say, "but I can still walk" whenever things got tough and the pain started getting bad. Months later when I had the back injury and my body physically just could not coordinate correctly from the injury fighting the nerve damage, I would just shuffle along, smiling and say, "but I can still walk." As tough as it was, I had to keep walking. I knew if I stopped, I may not start again.

I could have stopped at 1 mile tonight. I could have stopped at 30 minutes. I had the time so I just kept walking. I tried to put my unhealthy reasons for walking out of my mind and remember that this is just another health adventure where I just have to keep walking. I am using walking to negate the guilty feelings with eating. If I want to eat, I have to keep walking. If I keep walking, I keep away the guilt. I'm sure there is something not right with that, yet for right now, the absence of the guilt is worth the physical repercussions. It is my hope that there is a healthy middle ground in there - mentally and physically - so I am not doing more damage than good to myself on either side.

My "moderate pace" is about an 18.5 minute mile. Calculate that out and I would be doing two laps at the office in just under three minutes - quite the way from seven minutes. I have no clue what each new day will bring, I guess no one really does. We have ideas and hopes, heck it is not even a guarantee that we will wake up. Whatever it is that life throws at me tomorrow, I do know one thing...I have to keep walking.

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