Well, what can I say? I haven’t exactly got off to a flying start on this one. The first day was, in fact, a shocker. I woke up in absolute screaming pain from the arthritis in my shoulder and neck. I went straight to the heavy duty painkillers which, unfortunately, knocked me out. I was pretty much out for the count for the entire day. By the middle of the first week, I was getting into the rhythm a little bit more, achieving my daily target. By the end of the first week, my back had packed up and I was back on the heavy duty painkillers.
Week 2 saw my birthday get in the way, although I did try and get out and about as much as possible. So, by the end of Week 2, I’m way behind schedule and need to come up with a cunning plan. I had been absolutely killing myself on the treadmill, walking for nearly an hour at a time. So, at the beginning of Week 3, I tested out “walking around the block” at my house. I worked out that if I do two laps, it takes about 15 minutes and it’s about 600 steps. Whilst that doesn’t sound like much, if I do that regularly throughout the day, it will seriously reduce the amount of time I have to spend on the treadmill in one hit. I’m hoping that this will be the key to my success and allow me to play catch up on my missed steps and put me back on track to reach the one million. I do have some time on my side so I’m glad that I’ve come up with a potential solution to get back on the right track.
At the end of Week 2, I was getting really disheartened with my utter lack of progress and really ready to give up. That is when I had to put my thinking cap on and try to work out a better solution. Clearly, forcing myself to do an hour at a time on the treadmill is too much for me. The BPD and Bipolar kick my backside on that one. That’s when I came up with the idea of going around the block at home. Little and often looks like the way forward for me. It means less stress on my back, less likelihood of triggering the arthritis in my neck and shoulder and easier for me to overcome when the BPD and Bipolar are trying to beat me. Also, quite frankly, I’m carrying a shed load of extra weight so little and often will be easier with regards to lugging that extra weight than trying to go full throttle for an hour at a time.
I am a member of the Challenge’s Facebook Page and for the most part, that has been quite disheartening too. People are posting that they’re doing 20,000 steps per day. They’re already at over 250,000 steps which is more than a quarter of the way through the challenge. I haven’t even got to 100,000 steps yet. However, more and more people are getting brave enough to post that they are struggling and the support that they are receiving from other members of the Facebook Page has actually encouraged me to rethink my options of how to achieve this target.
I seriously underestimated how much of a challenge this was going to be for me. However, I am not giving up. I will find a way through it and get to one million steps by 30 September 2019. Oh and due to my lack of coming out of the blocks all guns blazing, I haven’t dared step on the scales. No point right now. I’ll do that at the end of the month to see if I’ve lost any weight. Obviously, not helped by a shed load of birthday cake last week!!
Living The BPD Life 