How A Fitness Injury Began To Derail My Life

For several months I have been dealing with pretty severe Plantar Fasciitis.  The injury occurred about 6 months ago, while running.  At first it was minor, not bothering me at all in the morning but gradually increasing in pain as the day went on.  Some days, by the end of the day I felt like I needed to be on crutches.  Eventually it got to where it hurt all of the time.  After toughing it out for a couple of months on my own I finally went to my doctor, who sent me to an orthopedic specialist, and ultimately wound up having to go through several weeks of physical therapy. 

Because of this I haven’t worked out in a while, and my strength, endurance, and stamina are showing it.  As I look back over the last six months, I have begun to realize that this injury affected me in a few different ways, several of which I never would have expected to happen. In fact, I noticed a progression where my life was really starting to go downhill.

First, I stopped working out

Obviously, with a hurt foot I was not able to work out as I usually would.  On the days that I would try, I would usually end up exasperating my injury.  As my physical therapist encouraged me to “stop doing stupid stuff” and let my injury heal, I decided to take his advice and hold off on working out. 

So I stopped getting up early

Since I was not going to my 5:30 workouts, there was no need to get up at 4:45 every morning.  I began sometimes staying up later at night, which meant that I started sleeping later in the mornings.  It eventually got to the point that I was occasionally barely even getting up in time to get the kids to school.

I started eating more junk

I’ve never been as strict on my diet as I should, but I genuinely try to eat healthy-ish.  But looking back over the last several months I see where I have definitely started eating way more fast food (McDonald’s, Zaxby’s, etc…), and I’ve also developed a bad habit of snacking on cookies and ice cream around the house.

I started drinking more

For the last few years I have had 2 rules that I abide by when it comes to alcohol:

1) I do not drink if I am working out the next day.
2) When I do drink I limit myself to no more than 2 beers.

Since I regularly worked out six days a week, that meant that I would typically only have 2 beers on a Saturday night (if at all), and that was it for the week. Occasionally I may drink during the week, if I was going out with friends or on vacation, but it was not often. However once I hurt my foot and couldn’t work out, over time I began to drink more during the week. Even after I got to the point I could start trying to work out again, I was getting in the mindset of “I’m not working out tomorrow because I drank tonight” instead of “I’m not drinking because I want to work out tomorrow.” Certainly having one beer with dinner wouldn’t matter either way for my workout, but I did not like my shift in thinking around this.

I got depressed

As I stopped working out with my F3 Group, I also stopped being around people. I work from home, my kids are in school and my wife is at work, so most days I was the only human I had to talk to. But it’s more than that. We are going through some pretty hard stuff right now as a family, and there just seems to be this perpetual cloud of darkness over our lives. Having no one around to talk to about it, no one to check up on you, it begins to weigh on you and eventually loneliness and depression set in, at least it did for me.

So, where am I now?

Over the last 6 months of dealing with this injury I gained 15 pounds. Eventually I looked around and realized that I was hurt, out of shape, overweight, depressed, lonely, and drinking more than I should. This is pretty much the definition of what we refer to as a Sad Clown in F3.

So I decided to take action to get back on track. Looking back at the list above, I can clearly see how it was a steady progression downhill. But I also see it as an ordered list of how to get back to where I was. I just have to take the first step at the beginning and work my way down the list.

Now I am to the point that I am starting to get active again.  I am not doing full-blown workouts yet, but I do take my puppy to the park and go for a walk/jog and let him play in the creek most every morning.  I can’t run much yet, but I’m trying to build back up to it.

And since I am starting to be more active, I am getting up early again.

I am also not eating as much junk and cutting the drinking back to abide by my 2 rules again.

And the combination of those items is starting to help alleviate the depression.