This week’s RTC for Biggest Loser is a tough one for me, because in reality, I don’t find that exercise is helping me at all. Let me re-phrase that . . . I think that it would help if I could some answers and get past the pain.

Now most people would say . . . she’s kidding herself. She just doesn’t get it . . . but I promise you that I do. At some point over the last year, I developed some muscular pain that is so far “undiagnosed.” For me personally, on a day I feel great I will exercise and pay for it the next two days. It’s not the regular pain that you should feel with exercise. My best description is that it is “flu-like.” And it is not limited to the body part that was exercised. It is something I have to be very careful to balance. When I exercise, it has to be in very small doses. If I do a little exercise, my symptoms are shorter. If I do a lot of exercise, the symptoms are on a larger scale, more intense and last much longer. My recent trip to New York City, which was on a Saturday and included hours and hours of walking did not come without punishment. I paid for it with flu-like symptoms the next two days . . . achy, headache, all over pain for two solid days. This was followed by lighter pain on Tuesday and Wednesday. But were I to exercise again during that time, those symptoms would only hang on longer.

So it’s been discouraging. This is still something that I’m pursuing with my doctor . . . and to be honest, I’ve taken a bit of a break of pushing the pursuit just out of frustration and to take care of some other things. Is it fibromyalgia? Arthritis? MS? What are we talking about here?

The hard thing is that I need to try to come up with a schedule that doesn’t take me out of the game for a day or two . . . and that’s been tough. It definitely holds my weight loss numbers back, so I won’t give it up completely. I just have to balance it better, that that is tough with a full time and part time job. You tend to have to fit the exercise in where you can.

So this week I will try to do things a bit differently. I am going to try to find some segments of time to space things out in the hope it won’t take me out of the game. I’m going to attempt to push through some of the pain, and if I feel it is getting worse, I will take a break. I also have decided to document what I’m doing and the results on a pain level to see if I can pinpoint some trends.

Quite a challenge . . . more daunting then the actual exercise itself, that’s for sure. The reality is that right now it's more of a hindrance than a help, so perhaps a better balance would help. Worth a try.