When to Power Through?

Didn’t sleep much last night. My back was killing me. Thought I’d just do stretching exercises and stuff instead of the elliptical, but when I got up I felt ok and decided to give it a try. Wasn’t bad. I “ran” for about ½ a mile then started to get that twinge in my knee. I never know when to power through the pain and when to take it as a warning sign. I powered through. I “ran” (so what do you call it when you work out on an elliptical anyway?) for the rest of the mile in the 20 minutes I get in the morning. The knee hurts a little but it’s not bad.

So…how do you know when to power through and when to stop? My husband had a pain in his gut for over three years. Our idiot doctor told him he needed to exercise more. He walked, he did lawn maintenance, he helped our kids move, he even laid a concrete patio. The whole time, he was in pain. I never really knew how much. He saw idiot at least 4 or 5 times during those three years, he said to power through the pain. “You’ll be fine,” idiot kept telling him. Turns out he wasn’t fine. He went to a different doctor for something else and this doctor looks at him like he’s insane and said, “Well…you’ve got a pretty good hernia going there. Why didn’t you have that taken care of?” Long story short when he did have the surgery, it took twice as long as they said it would and the surgeon put a little notch on his belt for “worst hernia I’ve ever seen.” It took twice as long to recover than it should have. Sometimes powering through, is not the best thing to do. So when do you know?

BTW neither one of us go to idiot anymore.

Tues. 20 min. 1 mile on elliptical

• Breakfast – orange, Hard boiled egg and cup of coffee.
• AM Snack – 2 little pita pockets and humus/guacamole spread.
• Lunch – ½ cup organic brown rice mixed with ½ cup Cajun style black beans & ½ a banana.
• Dinner – Spaghetti with TJs sausage-less sausage. Glass of white wine.