Changing up the exercise plan

So the weekend was pretty rough, It took me three days to recover from my bought with dairy.  Lesson learned: don't eat it even if you accidentally order it, it's better to waste it than suffer for three days.  I ate way too much food on Monday.  We went to BJs and then I ate too many cookies and we had popcorn in the evening.  Although I wouldn't call it a binge, just overeating.  A binge is more of an emotional out of control eating and when I would binge in the past I wouldn't pay any attention to how my stomach felt, I just kept trying to shove more in.  On Monday, I quit eating when my stomach was full.  Probably a little fuller than was comfortable, but not so full that I made myself sick.  I didn't track my food on Monday which wasn't the best choice, but I'm okay with it.  The goal is progress not perfection. 

On Monday I weighed in at 177.6, which is .8 pounds down from last week, but .4 pounds up from my lowest weight last week.  According to my trackers I had a deficit of 6,370 calories which means I should have lost a little over a pound and a half.  A huge part of the discrepancy was my dairy fiasco.  It basically caused me to retain fluid and gas and stopped my digestive system.  So when I weighed in on Monday, I was really backed up.  I think that as long as I do a good job the rest of the week, all things will even out in the long term, and besides, I'm still going down.  It's hard when I'm are just starting out and I don't really have a lot of data to fall back on.  But I started at over 180 and I am not going to let the daily fluctuations bother me this time around.  It's a lot of worrying and stress that results in making life more miserable. 

So yesterday I noticed that the top of my left shin had started hurting when I was walking and especially when going up stairs.  At first I thought I had bruised it by smacking it against something but as the day wore on and the pain got worse I recognized it for what it truly was: shin splints.  Double crapola.  I have always been prone to getting shin splints whenever I start an exercise routine, and I guess I am really starting over from scratch because they have come back.  I thought I had vanquished that foe for good, but I suppose 6 months of doing nothing and gaining 30 pounds will bring them back.  Three years ago I suffered through the shin splints and kept working out even though it was really painful, until I injured myself so badly that I had to take several weeks off and they healed and went away.  That's probably not the best course of action.  I feel like the powers that be are against me right now.  Every few days some new problem arises.  But maybe that is just life.  So my foot is still healing from when I tweaked it, although it doesn't bother me too much, it might be good to rest it for a bit, and now I have shin splints that need resting and healing.  So I'm going to bite the bullet and start strength training.  Not my favorite activity, but it will probably be good to get some more muscle in my body to help me with my cardio workouts anyway.  It will hopefully help prevent me from injuring myself further.  I just did the first workout from my Chalean Extreme DVD, and I am going to be sore tomorrow!  Last time I did this, I was so sore the first two weeks I could hardly walk or move.  Not looking forward to that again.  So since lifting weights doesn't really give you the satisfaction of seeing the numbers on the scale go down I decided I better keep track of my other numbers as well, which will be more revealing in the coming months.  My body fat percentage is 37.9%  and I have 57.4 pounds of muscle.  Therefore if my weight stays the same, but my muscle goes up, I will know that I have actually lost fat and gained muscle.  Which will help with the psychological aspect of everything. 

I want to get back into mountain biking and having stronger legs is really going to help with that.  So, here we go again.

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