Hello readers, and thanks for coming back to check out my progress as I move along the HMR program.
Well, what a couple of weeks it has been! I wish I could say they have been a good couple of weeks, but unfortunately my health took a big hit in the last couple of weeks. Back on February 13th, I started experiencing major abdominal pain. Pain like I had never felt before that prompted me to need to get an ambulance and get me to the emergency room. After an ultrasound of my abdomen, it was determined that my gall-bladder was the culprit and needed to come out immediately. So I experienced my first surgery since I had my tonsils out as a child.
Now, generally, modern laparoscopic gall-bladder surgeries are out-patient procedures where the patient can leave the same day as their surgery. Unfortunately for me, my gall-bladder was in such bad shape that the doctors wanted to keep me in the hospital for a couple extra days for observation to make sure there were no complications with my liver or any other issues.
As for how this relates to my HMR diet, well…it’s tough to stay on a regiment of diet and exercise when you are in a hospital room for nearly 4 days and then recovering from surgery for the next week and a half. I haven’t been back to the gym yet (though I do plan to get back to a mild workout routine by the end of this week) and I was eating off the diet while I was in the hospital. But hey, I figure if there is any high point about recovering from surgery, it’s getting to indulge in some ice cream and maybe some bacon and eggs for breakfast (which I was very happy to be able enjoy for the first time in over a year).
But now I am on the mend. The incisions are healing nicely. The pain, soreness and stiffness is almost completely gone. And I am back fully onto my HMR routine. This whole situation has put me off of transitioning into the maintenance phase for a little bit and sticking with the phase one weight-loss regiment for the time being. Just until I get fully healed and can get back to a reliable work out schedule and my body fully recovers from the surgery and the loss of my gall-bladder.
But the upside is that I’m almost all the way recovered, back to work, back to being pain-free, and back to the HMR diet. And, as far as this whole gall-bladder situation goes, I have been trying to look at the silver lining. At least it didn’t happen at the beginning of March, because that is when I am departing to head to Disneyworld for 5 days! That’s right, it will be my first ever trip to Disneyworld! And I should be totally recovered and ready to have a great time when I depart on the 5th. So at least this surgery happened early enough to not negatively impact my trip.
Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for reading and I’ll update you all next week on how my return to working out went.
–Tim
