It’s has been so long since I’ve writ­ten here. Longer than I would have liked.  So let me catch you up.

I men­tioned in my last post that I would con­tinue work­ing out as much as my knees could han­dle. Unfor­tu­nately, as soon as I pub­lished that entry an old enemy sneaked up on me and caused my work­outs to halt. I suf­fer from the resid­ual injuries of hav­ing been an ath­lete in my younger years. I played var­i­ous sports includ­ing, bas­ket­ball, vol­ley­ball, and soft­ball, all of which are very hard on the knees. In my junior year of high school I suf­fered Patel­lar dis­lo­ca­tion in which my kneecap was pushed to the side. For years it would pop in and out of posi­tion and caused me to give up on my dream of mak­ing it to the [W]NBA.  I also shat­tered my other kneecap about a year later and had to have frag­ments removed. Need­less to say, the added weight has not helped my knees one bit. And so, after a pretty decent work­out in May, I hurt my knee so badly that even sit­ting was painful. No surgery needed, but was required to stop with the cardio/aerobic exer­cises until my knees were no longer swollen.

It was awful. I had focused on main­tain­ing this rou­tine that would help me shed the weight and now I was no longer able to do it. I tried to stay pos­i­tive, but being prone to depres­sion and self-destructive behav­iors like bing­ing and then not eat­ing at all, I relapsed gain­ing back 6 pounds. now I know that doesn’t seem like a lot, but los­ing the 22.4 pounds was such an accom­plish­ment for me that gain­ing 6 back seemed like such a big defeat.

This past month was an exer­cise in per­sonal com­bat. I have been fight­ing the voice that tells me to pack it in and give up. The voice that urges me to reward myself for sim­ple things like not eat­ing all of the Ben & Jerry’s in one sit­ting by eat­ing the rest of it. And while at times it seemed tough, I have to admit that since June 20thm I am doing alright.

I have been snack­ing on health­ier food. I have been eat­ing a large salad with that slice of pizza when we order it. I have beaten back my binge-buddies and refused to give into the same rou­tine that has got­ten me here. I am con­tin­u­ing to take my thy­roid meds and ensur­ing that I awake the same time every morn­ing so that I can find other ways of being active. I have been doing strength train­ing when I can and have been research­ing how to live a cleaner life.

I also got a new job. I am a social media man­ager for a major restau­rant chain. And the funny thing is that doing this has made me hate eat­ing food that is not home­made. It’s not that their food is that bad but talk­ing about it all day is def­i­nitely a turn off. I have also been ridicu­lously busy now between the job and ensur­ing that my fam­ily is more active.  I have cut back on blog­ging and on tweet­ing so that I could stop talk­ing about what I want to do and actu­ally do it. This means I am no longer an active mem­ber of Mama­va­tion (and no it’s not because I did not win). It is because sit­ting on the com­puter or on my phone required me to take time away from doing the things that I need to do to keep myself on the right path. I will be bet­ter at sup­port­ing the sis­ters because I know how much it works, but I can­not com­mit to writ­ing post every week until I can get back on my schedule.

Today I was given the OK to start exer­cis­ing again and I did so with a vengeance. I used EA Sports Active for Wii an cus­tomized a box­ing pro­gram that ran for 54:13 sec­onds. I burned approx­i­mately 1026.4 calo­ries. I was sweaty and smelly and feel­ing bet­ter than I had in a while. I can;t wait until my next box­ing work­out on Sun­day. I am going to do some strength train­ing tomor­row to give my knees a rest.

I am still here and focused. and deter­mined to lose the weight.