Well folks, its been a heck of a year. First COVID closed down gyms across the nation and I essentially took a break from this website so that people would not think I was “profiting” from the pandemic (even though I don’t make money on this, I do this because it’s my passion – it actually costs me money every year haha) and also to help out more at the hospital where I was needed. I tried the home workout thing and it went well for a few months, but then it got stale and I felt like I wasn’t really challenging myself anymore. I then developed some back pain and sciatica that was reminiscent of my first herniated disc so I quit working out in order to not aggravate anything (this was not related to working out – more on that later). I gained about 15 pounds over the course of a few months due to my decreased/absent workouts and stress eating because of COVID and my increased workload at the hospital. Then, right as I was getting back into things, my back took a turn for the worse. I suddenly couldn’t walk at work one day and had to be hospitalized with another large herniated disc, for which I ultimately had to have surgery on and could not really move from a couch for 3 months. I gained about 30 pounds during this time due to depression, EXTREME lack of exercise (I wasn’t allowed to) and again with stress eating.
In total, (COVID plus post-surgical weight gain) I am up about 45 pounds from my best pre-COVID weight. I have an obvious gut and I feel horrible and unhealthy. My repeated herniated discs are due to a genetic issue that my brother also obviously suffers from as well since we have each had two herniated disc surgeries, both within weeks of each other. My brother doesn’t lift/exercise regularly and I have done only back-safe exercises since my first surgery so you can’t/shouldn’t blame exercise or lifting for the herniated discs. Last week I finally got the green light from my neurosurgeon to start working out again, but I need to start low and go slow. After 12 weeks of not being able to do anything (such as pick up my daughter even) I was very excited about this news. I immediately made a plan to get back into my healthy eating habit and start exercising again.
The way I look at it currently is I am probably in a similar position as many of my readers who want to get in shape so this is a great opportunity to show my readers how it can be done (again). I will be basically eating the same weight loss/cutting diet I had disclosed way back when I opened this site (it has since been dubbed “The Taco Diet” haha). You can find it here. I am going to start with pretty light workouts, low impact, back-safe exercises. I am going to stick to roughly the same workout split as before (focused on a different body part every day), which you can find here. I am also going to be modifying some of the exercise so that I can complete them at home with my minimal equipment. I am going to stick to at home workouts for the following reasons;
- I am not ready to push around anything heavier than I have at home due to my recovery from surgery
- We are not yet comfortable enough to put our 2 year old in the gym’s childcare area due to COVID (although we are hopeful this is around the corner with the decreasing numbers)
- Why waste money on the gym before I am ready, or before I have “graduated” to pushing around enough weight to warrant a gym
- The gym is fine with keeping our (my wife and I) membership on hold since we both work in healthcare, we don’t want to take a chance at spreading this virus (despite us both being vaccinated) until we know more about the transmissibility of vaccinated adults to unvaccinated individuals.
So that’s it folks! I just wanted to let everyone know that I am back and doing well after surgery. I hope that you will follow along with me on my next fitness journey. I made sure to take progress pictures this time (which I strongly encourage you to do as well) and I have all intentions on posting them once I reach my goal. I will be posting my progress on my progress page soon as well so you can follow along with my weights, body fat % and just general descriptions.
On a side note, I was approached by a few companies during my time off that liked the site. They sent me some products to review (clothing this time) and I will be doing an unbiased review in the very near future with some links to their site. I little disclaimer, I do NOT make any money from these companies, this is just an unbiased product review. These companies knew ahead of time that I was going to write an UNBIASED review of their product and still had the confidence to send it to me, so I think that speaks volumes.