Dec 18

Dec 18 Old Man...Weekly Weight Update

Tales From the Week – Old Man

Getting old is a difficult thing especially when you are working hard to lose weight or at least keep of the weight you have already lost. I learned the terrible lesson this week that I have been joking about for years. I used to joke that I have been a 60-year-old man stuck in a younger body since I was 16. Finally, my body has caught up with me and I’m a 36-year-old man living in a 60-year-old body.

You see, for the last few weeks I have had knee pain. Not while walking around living my day-to-day life, mind you, just when I’ve been working out. Not even while working out all the time but only doing very specific exercises. I’d go to the gym and each time I tried to do a squat I’d have a shooting pain in my right knee. I’d get the same result when doing lunges. Basically, anything that required me to bend at the knee and use weight to push up would send the feeling of hot fire poker stabbing me directly behind my knee cap. Probably something I should get checked out, right? How about you get off my case!

I didn’t worry too much about it because the same pains never happened when doing anything that was more focused on cardiovascular health. So, I never had any pain when I would go out for a run. I also didn’t feel the same pain when hitting the rowing machine. I just figured it was a temporary thing and I’d power through. No such luck because the stabbing, blinding, making me fall down in the middle of a workout, type pain in my knee whenever I did a squat or lunge continued. It was time to move on to the next step: fixing my knee on my own.

Luckily for me, I’m married to a woman who has a bad habit of tearing her anterior cruciate ligaments. The result is that I live in a house full of various sizes and shapes of knee braces (not to mention crutches, ankle braces, wrist braces, and high tech machines that will pump cold water through a tube to ice your various appendages). The only thing missing is a bacta tank from Star Wars that I could float around in for a few hours.

What I need to recover after a hard workout because I'm old.

I started wearing the knee brace to OrangeTheory and my problems seemed to be solved. I could perform the various squat movements without the pain. I figured I could live with this for the next 40 or 50 years so there is no need to get a doctor to check this out anymore. Thank you, Rizzo, for being clumsy enough to need various support apparatuses so that I may have some temporary relief.

I was in the clear and on my way to physical enlightenment. That was, of course, until this past Tuesday. I was going out for my regular Tuesday jog. It was a chilly day, with the high about 46 degrees, but not too overwhelmingly cold. I’ve run in much colder weather without issue. So, I threw on a long-sleeve t-shirt to give me some additional warmth and started on my way.

The first two miles went by without a hitch. I was lost in the world of early American history via the podcast in my headphones. I wasn’t running at a break-neck pace since, you know, listening to a couple of doctors discuss East India Trading Company’s influence over cultural and social norms in the mid- to late- 1700s isn’t exactly the kind of thing that gets the heat pumping. I was keeping a leisurely pace and just enjoying the day. That two-mile mark was, unfortunately, the point when my knee started to ache.

Then came the stabbing pain. OUCH! It felt like my knee had to pop a thousand times over but no matter what I did I couldn’t get it to pop. I slowed to a walk and the pain moved from the hot-poker level down to the “I worked out really hard and I’m sore” level. “Oh”, I thought, “it was just a passing thing so let’s get back to this jog”. “AWWWHHHHHHHH”. That was a stupid idea as the motion of running reinvigorated the knife twisting in my kneecap. I walked home like a wet puppy that was stuck outside in a rainstorm.

The result is that I now have to wear a silly knee brace for every workout, running or squatting. I also know what old people mean when they can feel weather in their bones. I know it isn’t really the rain but the change in pressure that accompanies certain types of weather that can affect the joints. When it rains, my right knee will ache. When it is cold my right knee will ache, and will be stabby-stabby if I go running in the cold without a knee brace. One of these days I’ll get to the doctor to get it checked out. I do have to make an appointment for my annual physical. I should probably get on that. Until then I’ll just suffer living in the body of a 93-year-old. Since my body reacts to weather like a 96-year-old does that mean I can go to dinner at 4:30pm and then go to bed by 9:00pm. Wait, I do that already.

Weekly (?) Weight Update

Ugh, it has been a while since I reported on this train wreck. The holiday season hit me hard and I haven’t weighed in since before Thanksgiving. I have been trying to avoid the inevitable because I know that the scale while climb higher than groupies at a Phish concert. I’ve been eating like I would have three-years ago, so there is no way that the results of Thanksgiving, vacationing in Minnesota, and holiday parties could be good. So, this morning I hopped on the scale and the results weren’t good but better than I expected. I had gained weight, which isn’t surprising, but I was only up 2.2 pounds to 209.2. I expected to be up weigh (see what I did there?) more than that so I wasn’t too upset. Sure, it does bring my total weight loss below 60 pounds down to 58.6 but I should be able to drop that back off. I hope being at home for the holidays will help to keep my weight at a reasonable level. Let’s see what next week brings.

To celebrate my victory in the November Bring It On! challenge I took the time to see Rogue One on opening day. The theater was packed, even at 10:00am on a Friday morning. It was totally worth it to see another great Star Wars story. They couldn’t have done much better for a prequel to the original Star Wars. It was totally worth it.

Rizzo and I were in a close race this week to see who would come out victorious. I’ll be honest, after fifty weeks of tracking our mileage it has been difficult to stay motivated. Not so much motivated to continue working out but motivated to keep tracking mileage. At the beginning of the year Rizzo and I were both putting up more mileage as most of our workouts were cardiovascular. As the year went on and we got in better shape we both added strength training which has resulted in fewer miles but continued improved health. Either way, I’m very proud of what we have both accomplished.

That being said, Rizzo could not stack up to me this week. My 38.2 miles gave me a slight edge for the week compared to Rizzo’s 377 miles. As we approach the end of the month, Rizzo holds a lead over me with 103.4 miles compared to 97.5 miles. Just two more weeks and we will see who will end up the ultimate champion this year (here is a hint: it’s not me).

P.S. Just a few more pictures from the week.