Tag Archives: illness

Illness and fitness

In the year before Emily was born, I was ill approximately zero times. I was in fairly rigorous training for the half marathon, running between 15 and 40 km per week for about 6 months of the year and I’d managed a reasonably healthy diet throughout the period as well.

In the 15 months since she’s arrived, the commute, working hours, and general apathy has seen all that fall to one side – I haven’t been on a run since June and my diet’s been all over the place. In the last six months or so, this has started to hit me from a cold/flu perspective, and whilst some of this is no doubt exposure to a Nursery-going toddler, I can’t help but think that there’s been a direct correlation between my fitness level and how often I’ve gotten ill.

With my recent NY resolutions, the diet (and some) fitness training has resumed, but I’ve already gotten ill  (not sure where from!) and am self-pityingly recovering from it now. At least I’ve maintained the diet (as it happens, the constant ingestion of strepsils makes most other food taste somewhat unappealing, so it actually helped!), but the 100 push-up / 200 sit-up programme may need to be restarted next week…

Hopefully a more determined, consistent fitness effort will see me steer clear of the sniffles in 2012!

Ill

I was ill from Thursday through Saturday last week, a thoroughly depressing experience. In addition to the sheer unpleasantness of it, there’s the tedium of not being able to work productively (did a few bits from home but head was pounding too much), there’s a general feeling of apathy and sloth that makes you feel persistently less good than you are.

Fortunately, I’m through it now. Blogging and other normalcy has resumed!

Ill children

I remember being a bit ill quite often as a kid. Well, sometimes actually ill, often of the total hypochondriac school, I was "ill". It probably didn’t help that allergies and intolerances weren’t well understood in that day and in that place, so I spent most of my formative years experiencing discomfort from dust allergies and lactose intolerance (my father used to tell me off for sniffing constantly).

However, I only remember being properly ill a few times. High fevers, properly miserably ill, needing constant brow-mopping, syrup-swallowing care. How did my parents cope?

Em was recently teething and had a couple of days of feverishness, and my panic mode went from 0-60. I started being paranoid about brain damage, wanting to bring the temp down by cooling her brow, wanting to do something. But beyond the occasional calpol dose, it really needed to just run its course, and naturally there was nothing too much to be concerned with (at least insofar as her current bouncy smileyness is something to go by).

Maybe I’ll get used to this, but given that my parents still get paranoid if I have a sniffle or even a lesser malady, I think its something I have for life now. And another bit of insight I have into quite how much my parents care about me, and what it means to be Dad.

Self-pity doesn’t burn calories

(no, this isn’t the seven songs meme I owe on. That’ll come. Be patient my child.).

I’ve spent most of the last week in bed, in pain cause by a bunch of malignant viruses (and I believe this is the technical term for what they were doing) running up and down the length of my body setting off miniature shotguns with precise aim and intent. These nefarious negligible entities kept my eating very, very modest — my most attentive readers will remember that I have been attempting in some way to reduce my weight and improve my fitness — but, I’ve discovered, despite not really eating for a week Wii Fit tells me I’ve only lost about one pound. One pound!

This is going to take approximately forever, even once my activity consists of more than lying around, groaning melodramatically occasionally to impress the empty room, feeling sorry for myself and making occasional trips to Boots and The Doctor to obtain more magical pharmaceuticals*.

Ah well. Onwards and upwards. Hopefully be well enough for squash next week, and am back to work on Monday too so calorific burn rates will doubtless shoot through the roof.

*For reference: anti-nausea medication == awesome. Industrial grade cough mixture == awesome. Nurofen == magic. Rehydration sachets == taste of ground up dirt.