Newgirl, I had to cut back on computer useage because of carpell tunnel, then I took a week vacation and since I got back I've been TRYING to get caught up at work and at home...not succeeding at either. Arghhhhh! I also have friends coming here from out of town on Thursday for a few days and I feel like there's no way I'm gonna get everything done by then. I'm sure my cramps and period will start just as their plane lands. It would be consistant with the way things have been going lately.
The cycle itself, I don't know what to think of it really! The first week I was fine and trained hard, during the second week I continued to train hard but developed bad joint and muscle pain, partially dislocated my elbow (due to arm wrestling but I didn't realize what I'd done until I went to a doctor a week later), had tendonitis in that arm (apparently caused from overtraining) and my carpell tunnel flaired up pretty badly (that's an old problem but it wasn't too bad until after I started the cycle). I tried to continue to train, but upon the advice of the board members here, I took two weeks off from lifting and continued the cycle to help aid in recovery. I started back lightly with bands and just simple stretching for upper body work, but legs I could still do with weights at the gym. Then I got hit with the flu pretty badly so any real excercise was out of the question. I stopped the cycle and within 4 days I felt like a new person and for the first night in weeks I slept through the night (that was the first night of my vacation, a trip to the Boston area to visit my best friend for a week...I was thrilled to finally be feeling better!).
I'm not sure how much of my illness was due to cycle and how much was due to overtraining and then getting the flu. I imagine I'd have lost more muscle and strength if I'd have stopped the cycle early. My leg strength is still fairly decent, but my upperbody strength is significantly down from where I was even before I started the cycle. The join pains are gone, the tendonitis is not bad now at all (although it was bothering me much more earlier today but I think that was due to the water retention...as soon as the diuretic kicked in, the tendonitis pain let up), and the carpell tunnel has almost gone away again. During the cycle I didn't develop any significant bloating, but someone suggested that I take dandelion root to help prevent it, so maybe that worked.
My husband was also doing a prop cycle along with me, and he developed joint pains and he had the flu as well. He didn't hurt himself, so he was able to continue to train fairly well up until the flu hit us. I'd question weather it was indeed the flu or just a reaction we both had to the prop, but my daughter also got the flu but not nearly as bad as us. My husband ran 102 fever for several days, I never had fever but I did have night sweats.
In hindsight, I think I was doing better naturally, but who knows if all of this would have happened and how I would have recovered if I wasn't on cycle. I really only felt good for the first 2 weeks.
Kini...that is my plan for tonight, although Stromba needs to take a shower first. LOL He spent the day cleaning out the garage and well...it was warm here today! LOL Get this...I complained about being fat and he said I need to do cardio since my diet is about as good as it can be. I suggested that we just increase sex since that's the only cardio I really enjoy. He threatened to cut me off from sex unless I do cardio! He's such a shit! With the PMS as bad as it is, tears welled up even though I know he was kidding. He should know better than to tease me like that when I'm PMS'ing!
B-Fold, unfortunately my water consumption has had to be lower than usual because I've been working more this week since I got back from my vacation and the bathroom is not close and I often can't leave to get there. Today I worked alone and couldn't leave for 4 hrs. Tonight I've been drinking water and the diuretic has helped greatly.
I'm very frustrated at the loss of upper body strength. As I started the cycle, I was doing lat pull downs of my body weight (145 lbs), 3 sets of 10-12 reps. Yesterday I did 3 sets, but I started at 110 lbs and went even lower. This is only the second time doing lat work since I started training again just over a week ago. I'm not pushing myself as hard as I was before because I'm still recovering from injury, but I know even if I wanted to, there's no way I could do much more than I did.
OK...back to getting my work done here. Good thing I'm a night person!
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