By Jess

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted here, huh? Not because I’ve had any kind of setback or major life event or anything. No, it’s the opposite… I’ve just been chugging along, doing my thing, not much break from the norm. Walking and going to the gym, losing a pound or two a week. Really, really enjoying this new warmer weather we’re having. Hoping to go for a proper hike this weekend, not a walk but a HIKE, on a mountain or AT LEAST a foothill.

Also, I’ve still been charting my cycle. After that first normal cycle, I had another one. And right now I’m in the middle of a third. Textbook period, textbook cervical fluid, textbook thermal shift, textbook luteal phase. Three times in a row.
I’ve made no secret on my personal blog of the fact that I am dying to get pregnant, but that we are waiting because my husband recently quit his job to start his own company, and so now wouldn’t be the best time for a baby. And that first month off the pill, I was so relieved to see

a nice, regular cycle, but I also worried that maybe we were wasting a rare and precious ovulatory cycle. I felt that way, to a lesser extent, during the second month.

But now, the third month, I’m starting to see that hey, maybe it wasn’t a one-off, maybe this is my cycle, really, and it will be this way again next month, and the month after that. And so I don’t have to panic that we’re wasting all my good cycles now, and they will be gone by the time we’re ready to start trying. That maybe this is just my body.

How awesome is that? That maybe my body is just doing something right, something healthy, all on its own?

Also, I’ve lost so much weight that my endocrinologist had to lower my dose of Synthroid. My TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) had been going down steadily (the lower the TSH, the more active the thyroid), but it had still been within the normal range (according to her, 0.4 to 4), so she had left my dose as it was. But a few weeks ago I went in for a blood test and my TSH was 0.03. I didn’t even know it could get that low. But she said that was why I had started feeling dizzy upon standing up on and off over the previous few weeks… and it turns out she was right. A couple weeks into the lower dose and the dizziness is gone.

AND, at the gym, remember how I was working out at resistance level 10 until I got a heart rate monitor and had to go back to level 1? Well, now I’m back up to level 10. And not in intervals, either. (Before I got the monitor, I worked out in intervals of levels 4 and 10.) Now I can do level 10 the

whole time, sometimes slower and sometimes faster, and keep my heart rate right in the target zone.

The point of all this is that I’m feeling really healthy these days, and motivated to keep going. And now I’m really excited for the next test–to head out for the first proper hike of the season and see how my fitness has improved since our last hike, last fall. I have high hopes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Not a Diet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.