Category Archives: health & fitness

A narrative of my journeys with diet, exercise, and various healthcare professionals

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Pre-Christmas Weigh-In

Non-Scale Victories:

  • A couple different WW members used tips of mine to keep themselves on track!
  • I’m on the short list of people who regularly attend fitness classes! Got a mass email asking what classes people would attend over the holidays, with a note to forward it on to anyone who attends classes that she had missed in the list.

Stopped tracking for a few days. Gained a few pounds. Went back to tracking. Lost it again. Overall, I’ve edged up about 3½ pounds since my lowest weigh-in back at the end of October, but I’ve been in that same 3½ to 4-pound range since August.

My overall goal for the holidays (i.e., Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s) is to continue to maintain my weight. I’m OK with gaining a few pounds, as long as I can rein myself back in after a few days of debauchery.

I find that if I gain a few pounds for a few days of overindulgence, those pounds tend to come off quickly. The kind of weight that doesn’t come off quickly is the kind that creeps on over time, unwatched, and that’s not the kind of weight I intend to put on ever again.

I’m going to enjoy my Mom’s butterball cookies, and Tom’s fudge, and the Lofthouse cookies we bought from the store, and the zucchini chocolate cake I’ll be making tonight or tomorrow. I’m going to enjoy the maple-glazed ham and the sweet potatoes and the green bean casserole and the chicken paprikash and the rolls and everything else. And I’m not going to feel guilty about it.

But I’m also not going to make an excuse out of it.

I might not track over the holiday weekend, but I also won’t wait until after New Year’s to get back to my normal habits. Once the Christmas leftovers are gone from the fridge, weight loss begins in earnest once more. This plateau has gone on long enough, and I have ten pounds yet to lose.

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Cervical Kyphosis

Early last week, I visited the Toledo Clinic for some neck X-rays, as ordered by my chiropractor.

Now, I’d like to deviate from the story before I even start, because I need to express how much I love my chiropractor. Her name is Connie Smith, her practice is First Choice Chiropractic in Toledo, and if you live in the area and need a chiropractor, I highly recommend you go see her. She is not one of the sheisty ambulance-chasers that many people think about when they think “chiropractor.” She’s what some call a “mixer,” as in she mixes traditional chiropractic practices with mainstream medicine. She orders up X-rays as needed, knows her business, and doesn’t push any of the hippie-dippy stuff (although, if you’re into holistic medicine or acupuncture, I understand that those services are available).

So, now that we have that out of the way, on with our story.

I went to see Dr. Smith the Friday after my x-rays were taken, to review with her what the radiologist had found regarding my now-chronic neck pain. I had assumed that it was directly related to the whiplash accident back in April — turns out that it may be indirectly related, but isn’t necessarily attributable to whiplash.

First off, my neck doesn’t curve backwards like a “normal” neck. It’s straight. If it were curving forward, that would be assumed to be whiplash-related. (I wish I had an x-ray of my neck prior to the accident, though.)

Second, C5 is slightly out of alignment — what chiropractors apparently call a subluxation, but what the radiologist identified as a “mild kyphosis at C5-6.” Dr. Smith ordered me to do neck retractions (sticking my head back like a turtle) multiple times a day, and she gave me a pamphlet on subluxation.

She also noted that my facet /fuh-’SET/ joints are deteriorating, as evidenced by the white areas inside the vertebrae, and that basically means I’m in the early stages of arthritis. Welcome to middle age.

When I got home, being the researching fool that I am, I Googled subluxation and discovered that this concept is one reason why chiropractors are typically seen as more hippie-dippy and less medical. The radiology report refers to a “straightening of cervical lordosis” and “mild kyphosis,” but never once mentions subluxation. There’s a reason for that: the medical term has a different definition than the chiropractic term, which is interesting.

She didn’t mention anything about the bits in her pamphlet about what other bodily systems my C5 subluxation could be affecting; I understood her to use the term to mean that my C5 was out of alignment. I’m not going to concern myself with the idea that my C5 may be affecting my esophagus, coronary arteries, or lungs. Instead, I’ll just trust that she’ll keep me in alignment as best she can, and send me to another specialist if need be.

Weird chiropractic jargon aside, I find it interesting that I didn’t have an issue with cervical kyphosis or my C5 until the accident. Even though whiplash isn’t indicated as a cause of the problems, I’m inclined to think it was a major factor.

Tack one on to my list of minor physical complaints. Oh, well.