The fight continues. The show must go on. Never give up. Blah blah blah Just words. Maybe a poster one of your co-workers has up in their cubicle. My personal favorite is the one of the frog refusing to be eaten. It really does embody the thought of “never give up”. I’ll google it and put it at the start of the next paragraph. Pictures come last if you didn’t know.
If you’ve been absent the last few months let me catch you up. I’m fat. There you go. Okay now the rest of the story, shout out to Paul Harvey. After dying and coming back to life in May 24’ I was almost 300 lbs. I see photos from back then and I’m amazed at how much weight I allowed myself to gain, but my health issues made life extremely hard. I am paralyzed so the extra lbs caused me a lot of problems. I had to make some changes so I did. I started exercising, changed my diet, and set goals. Setting goals is as important as the other two. It is foolish to start a journey with no concept of a destination.
My first goal was to lose 50 lbs, then 75, now 100, and eventually 125 which will put me around 175 total. I also decided that I wanted to be able to do a pull up. Strap my chair to me or me to it rather and get my chin above the bar. Not the bar you take Jame-O shots from. Ha. To reach this goal I have to lose weight and gain strength. Hello weight lifting. I started with some dumbbells at home. 10 lb curls. It is a lot when you come off of life support so 3 sets of 10 with those small bells were all I could do at the beginning. I stuck with it. This AM I did 5 sets of 21 with 20 lb dumbbells. Sometimes I do 5 sets of 12 with 25 lbs. That is a massive improvement for about 7 months.
Yesterday I decided to hit the gym at my apartment complex to work on my chest using one of the machines. After my second set I probably pushed a bit too hard, I lost my balance, and fell off the darn machine to the floor. I was the only one there and screwed. I looked around to see what I could use to get back up and saw nothing. To myself I said “Oh Shenanigans, this is a bummer!” I was surprised as well. It isn’t very often I use such language…… I decided to crawl to a machine nearby with a little lower seat and of course I had to drag my chair along with me. I bet you didn’t think about that did you…..
Once there it became clear that plan was not going to cut it so I started to search again. I saw a treadmill and thought if I can get on that, scoot to the other end, I could be high enough to transfer back into my chair. Then I thought about other people walking into the gym and seeing my crippled ass sitting on the treadmill. Let that sink in for a second. Plenty of one liners would be good for that. I could say:
“Never hurts to try right??”
“I didn’t think this thru!”
This is how my brain works. Even while laying on the cement in the gym completely eff’d, I thought of jokes and made myself laugh. I would love for you to comment what you think I should have said. Be creative and remember it is only cruel, if it isn’t funny.
On my way to the treadmill I saw a different option. There was a bosu ball and a bench. I thought I can get on the bosu ball, climb onto the bench, scoot to the top, and then back into my chair. I made it over and the planned worked out perfectly. I worked up a sweat and about three minutes later another resident walked into the gym completely unaware of the absolute carnage I had just been thru. She smiled at me kindly seeing how sweaty I was and must have thought “Wow, that super insanely handsome wheelchair guy is really getting after it!” I’m not mind reader, but I’m pretty sure that is what she was thinking.
I was worried about using the machines in the gym because I might fall off one. It held me back. Was that fear justified?? Of course, but something beautiful happened yesterday. I learned that I have nothing to be afraid of. The worst happened and I over came it. Alone. I also know why I fell so I won’t make that mistake again, but if I do, I know how to handle it. We don’t overcome our fears by avoiding the things we are afraid of, we become stronger by facing those things head on and then making them our “beach”.
Know what else I learned?? How to spell Bosu Ball. Hmmmm. It was a really informative day.
FknBucky
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FknBucky 