This was a bit of a concern.
You see, I got a lot heavier since last year. I'm not normally a very physically active person because of my weight and by inclination. To make things worse, a few years ago I became self-employed, which means I didn't have to get out of the house very much. That alone caused some weight gain, which was shocking at the time because I hadn't realized that going to work was so much exercise.
But apparently my level of physical activity still hadn't hit bottom , as I found out about 9 months ago. That was when I injured my back. Not a spinal injury, but some muscle was complaining very emphatically whenever I moved the wrong way. I was in a lot of pain, so I spent about a month lying down on the couch watching television. When it got better, I spent perhaps another month lying down as much as I could to encourage it to heal completely.
(This, by the way, is probably not the right way to heal your back because it allows the deep muscles to relax too much. However, my back is fine now, so no harm done...to my back.)
After that, I spent a few more months lying down whenever I could because, well, it had become a habit, I guess. Also, although I didn't realize it at the time, I was gaining weight. For the first time in my life, I started to feel regular pain in my legs, especially my knee joints. Naturally, when my knees were hurting a lot, I'd lie down some more to rest them. You can see where this is going:
It took me a really long time to figure out what was happening. Oh, sure, my pants seemed tighter, but it happened slowly enough that I just didn't put it all together until about November. By that time I had gained 50 pounds.
This was some sort of wake-up call. If the weight gain continued, I realized, I was in danger of becoming immobilized, trapped in my home. Very scary. That's what ultimately led me to resolve to lose weight when the new year came.
So anyway, this was the first time I would be doing the hard work of shoveling snow since I started having joint pain. I was afraid that I would either injure myself or be unable to complete the task. I should have shoveled out yesterday, but I was a little afraid of what would happen, so I stayed home instead. Of course, this leads right back to the idea of being trapped in my own home again. So today I went out and gave it a try, not sure what to expect.
Turns out, no problem. Just a little joint pain, no worse than after an hour of grocery shopping.
Onward.
