Should you exercise if your sick?

Should you exercise if your sick? It depends on how sick! I'm not by any means an expert on this topic, but this is my rule of thumb for determining.. should I, or shouldn't I.. and what works for me. 

If I just have a cold, it all depends on my head. If my head hurts or if I also have a fever, I take a full rest day. If I'm feeling somewhat okay.. I just see how I'm feeling and give myself permission to quit running at any point that I'm not up to it. Yesterday morning I had a sinus headache from a cold that was pounding my head something awful. I did go run because after-all its just a cold, but cut it short after 30 minutes. No need to wear myself down and my head wasn't feeling any better like I'd hoped. 

A trip to the doctor, antibiotic for a sinus infection and some Mucinex to help relieve my symptoms. It did the trick and I was feeling so much better by the afternoon. No more headache! I'm still not symptom free but feeling somewhat back to normal. Because I'm not 100% and I want to play soccer tonight, I'm skipping my morning run. Soccer speed work is hard enough on me, I don't need to add more in the mix until I am 100% feeling better. I'd totally skip soccer if I didn't feel well enough. I might still take it a bit easy with soccer. 

Lucky for us, we had some more snow yesterday and last night. Just enough to cover up all the brown grass with 2 to 3". That is enough snow to start cross country skiing again later on this week. I'm doing the whole take it easy thing with this cold. No need to rush out there to ski and wear myself ragged. 

I cut up more veggies yesterday and pan cooked them up to make my chili lunch a lot lower in calories. I need to start adding more veggies with every meal to save on calories. 

Seeing the scale weight at the doctor office was not good. It's not the same as my home scale. I also need to remember that I had on a jacket, shoes and all my clothes which I'm guessing adds at least 2 pounds. I'm trying not to think about the doctor scale since all my weight loss was from our home scale. I'm going with that! 

My ACE Personal Trainer renewal certificate came in the mail. Framed and on the wall... 

Look what's blooming in our window. A tiny purple flower from the herb pots we brought inside for the winter. It's not an herb, but just a plant I added for color with the parsley. 

Celina played her flute last night in the Pep band for the basket ball game. Guess they have to attend 3 games for their band grade. Better late then never. She has one more to do next week. I think we'll go watch! 

She is somewhere in the front row.. Guess a lot of kids waited till the end to make up their requirements for band. There were a lot of Pep Band players!