Last year, I was the most fit I’ve ever been (besides that one sweet year in elementary school when I aced the Presidential Fitness test for the first – and last – time). I ate an almost perfectly clean, vegetarian diet; joined the bootcamps with  A Healthy Balance  normally twice a week; cardio 3-4 times a week plus kickboxing and yoga, and started to enjoy some serious weight training.

Then: my knee gave out, no reason given. It started to hurt when I drove, going up stairs, even standing for long periods of time. And being the stubborn idiot I am, I thought it would just go away if I stopped working out on it for a little while – especially so as not to exacerbate something potentially serious. That “little while” turned into an epic ten-month black hole of self-pity, eating terribly, and erasing all the hard work I’d done the year prior. When I finally realized last month that not one piece of my clothing fit  and that I was spending more than one night a week weeping into a pizza or pint of B&J’s about, ironically, how unhappy I was with my body, I finally went to the doctor to get my knee checked out. Then, I went to TJ Maxx and bought some ponchos…

Read the rest of my epic health adventure here on the A Healthy Balance blog, where I’ll be posting weekly!