My Journey With Weight Loss – Needing Motivation

Yesterday I took my Corgi out for our morning walk. It was raining so I had on my rain slicker and was all set to go. Now normally the Corgi loves being out in the rain as she has never been able to pass a puddle without swimming in it. Not this time though, she did not want to walk in the rain. I could get her to walk a few steps and then she would just stop. I tried treats to get her to keep moving but she is a stubborn little thing and she just dug in her paws. After a couple blocks I thought to hell with this and took her home. I have no idea why she was suddenly acting this way.

But that just seems to be on par with the fact that my motivation level seems to have gone down as I was on my healing break. While I have worked out everyday this week I’ve got that voice in my head saying hey, your toe still hurts (seriously it is so much better that what is was even a week ago), your quads are sore from running 2 consecutive days, you got too much to get done in the next few days. Not doing the full walk with the dog played perfectly into all the reasons for me not to push things.

Having said that, I have found my motivation. Yesterday after 3 surgeries (including a leg amputation) and 154 days in hospital my brother came home. I was pretty impressed at how adept he has become in the last few months of getting himself around in his wheelchair as well as transferring onto the couch, his recliner or his bed. We realized which routes in the basement best allowed him access to everything and he got to inspect all the work we have been doing.

Right after my brother arrived home we had a visit from his local occupational therapist (OT) to check out if there was anything else we needed to do to make things fully accessible. Apparently we had covered everything off so we got into a discussion of what the next steps would look like. We learned that it might take as long as 4 weeks for my brother to get into his outpatient physio rehab which I found surprising. Then the OT said something that kind of hit me, in the meantime it is imperative that my brother do his exercises each day without fail. Doing this will keep his remaining leg strong and the exercises for the stump are to prepare it to be ready for the new leg.

This really put things in perspective for me. I workout in order to keep fit and make myself feel good, my brother needs to workout so that he may one day go back to some semblance of normal. I made a pact with my brother that I would let him know when I am doing my strength exercises and that is when he can do his exercises and that we can both make sure we are doing our workouts. I think by doing this we can keep each other motivated.

Today I did my interval training and yes, my toe still hurts a bit and my quads are angry with me but for the first time this week I was very determined to get this done. I figure if my brother can work as hard as he is, me doing 80 minutes of running is a piece of cake. Now that is motivation! I can’t wait to try my 10 km on Friday because I know if I can get through that we’ll be ramping things up again.