Day Six

I’m nearly a week into what I call in my head the “Eight-Week Shoulder Healing Extravaganza,” and it’s off to a good start. My shoulders feel great, for one thing—but I was warned that that is not a reason to stop taking tons of Advil. Apparently it has to be a minimum of EIGHT WEEKS of rest and anti-inflammatories unless I want this to come back.

I emailed my yoga teacher to let her know I was taking eight weeks off, because I’m a regular and I didn’t want her to worry that I had died. She responded with an offer to create and demonstrate a “no-shoulders” yoga practice I could do at home. Isn’t that the nicest thing ever? I wasn’t sure how to respond at first, but now I’m thinking I’ll probably a) take her up on it, b) take her out for tea afterward, and c) write a note to the gym managers telling them what a treasure they have and that she deserves a huge raise.

Another part of the plan (there are actually many parts, and a spreadsheet) was to be very strict about getting back on the ultra-low-carb wagon. It is really pretty easy when you don’t have to eat outside the house, and I have lost eight pounds since Monday. That would be almost entirely water weight, of course, and it has happened exactly like this before, but it is still really fun to watch the scale plunge steadily.

I know my New Life Plans have a tendency to fizzle out, but the good thing about this one is that I have to stay the course for eight full weeks or it won’t really do me any good. And I stuck Advil in there amid a bunch of good habits to trick myself into staying with them as well.

P.S. My husband’s book Legitimacy is free on the Kindle for the rest of the day, and if you’re at all inclined to download it, you should! Even free downloads are a huge help to self-published authors, because they can temporarily put the book on Amazon’s top-100 lists, which gets them noticed by millions of people.