In which my back - and butt - are back

I've always enjoyed the remake of Oceans Eleven, and my favorite quote is a total throwaway line.

During the last act, one of the thieves is a Chinese acrobat who's folded himself into a cart in order to break into the casino vault. He has had no lines the entire movie.

The rest of the gang is late getting him out of the oxygen-less cart, and when he extricates himself and catches his breath he yells:

"WHERE FUCK YOU BEEN?"

Cracks me up every time.

Anyway, if you visit here regularly, you may be wondering the same thing.

When a weight loss blogger who normally posts frequently doesn't post for a while, it's rarely good news. Usually the person is off the grid, off the reservation, off plan. Something is wrong.

And that's what happened to me in December.

Everything is cool now but, hoo boy, December was rough, the worst month I have had since starting Weight Watchers in September 2010.

I posted earlier about tweaking my back, which lead to a gluteus medius strain and I spent pretty much the entire month in a pattern of resting it and then accidentally reinjuring it. I had to take two entire weeks off from working out and I'm still unable to run - now 2 months later.

I went from a person for whom "sedentary" was a generous description to one who loved to get up first thing in the morning to work out. Believe me, I was as surprised as anyone. And then, for that ability to be taken away - even temporarily - was devastating. Add to that loss the overall pressure of December and, man, I was so down, physically and emotionally in pain.

Few people in my life seemed to understand how personally difficult this was for me, which lead to real feelings of isolation. "Oh, you hurt your back? That sucks. It will get better. But you get a week off from exercise!"

Well, I don't want a week off. A couple days a week, yes. Two weeks? Hell, no. I need it for my physical health, for my mental health, for my overall well-being - it's like oxygen to me now.

And, then, my inability to stop reinjuring my glute and back when all I was trying to do was ease back in and, wow, so unhappy.

It made eating right hard, and for a week I just said, "Screw it" and ate whatever I wanted.

It was horrifying how quickly all my bad habits rushed back. It had been 15 months of clean living, muscle building. sound eating. And, then, whoosh, back to whatever I wanted, which was baked goods, carbs and sitting on the couch.

A few pounds piled on, and one of my main tools for combatting weight gain - exercise - was unavailable. It was like trying to do Weight Watchers with one hand tied behind your back and, let's face it, living that life is difficult with both hands fully functional.

More sad feelings. More eating. More wearing of pants with elastic waists that were getting tighter. More low self-esteem. All bad. Just bad, bad, bad.

Then I ended the pity party after Christmas. I was able to go back to bootcamp and the elliptical (still no running) and start getting back to being 100%. I gradually felt better and better and, finally, just a week or so ago I finally felt strong and fit, 100%.

I still haven't run - yet - more on that in a future post.

So, anyway, that's where I was. December: Crawling into a hole. January: Crawling out. I didn't especially feel like writing with either endeavor. Should I have? Yes. But, frankly, I just didn't want to.

However, we're behind that now and, wow, do I have a shit-ton to share. At least I have a lot to write about.