Pressing on, despite aches and pains

Boy, did I have a lot of rickety parts when I started the Fittest Loser Challenge.

I could hear my knees when I bent them. My right arm would sometimes go numb in the evening.

My previous weight-loss alleviated my back pain issues, but just a little overdoing it often can still leave me immobile. My youngest son would often run into me like a freight train, (I guess using me as the tackling sled for his future football career.) And, almost always I would get bumped off of one foot.

Now, five weeks into the Challenge, things are slowly improving. I am a bit stronger, I'm not as rickety and I have come to live with a multiplicity of surprise sore spots. Little aches and pains are all over: My husband offers a hug. Ouch! I breathe in deeply. Yikes! I stretch my arms and yawn. Oooo, that feels good and bad at the same time.

I now move my body in odd directions just to intentionally stretch out.

At the end of one challenging training session, my trainer, Joshua Steckler, introduced me to what appeared to be a simple, nonthreatening foam roller. Little did I know that once that roller came into contact with tender leg muscles that it felt more like rolling over a rough log.

"Ughhhhh," I sighed.

Yep, I still have some rickety parts. So when I lifted dumb bells, and Steckler asked what was that sound, I told him: My collarbone, elbow or something.

I only lost a single pound this week, but I count it a victory. I'm thinking that all of this soreness, all of this sweat (buckets at this point) and all of this activity (I exercise five, six, seven times a week) must be building muscle … deep down.

And with time, hopefully my body won't make as many crackling sounds or feel like one half is coming apart from the other when I stand up, bend or twist.

And maybe those budding muscles will begin to poke out.

But, for now, I am living with it. A little pain here, ricketiness there, is my new normal, and if this is what it takes for me to slide into a new spring ensemble from a store I've dreamed of shopping at, (but couldn't due to size), then so be it.

• Achy or not, freelance writer Lisa Jones Townsel is bent on becoming more limber and less rickety before this is all over.