Darn

I'm currently healing up my left knee from a meniscus injury. (update: turns out to not be the meniscus, it's chondromalacia). I don't know yet whether it's torn or not, since the approval for the MRI is still winding its way through my health insurance bureaucracy. This little problem happened when I got over-enthusiastic about going up an escalator and missed or bobbled or something and twisted my knee. That was two weeks ago, and I've been limping ever since, although I must admit, feeling much improved the last few days.

As you can imagine, my brain sort of exploded a little at the lack of activity the first several days, but I've been finding ways around it that don't aggravate the injury or cause pain and I've been able now to get back to the gym for some upper body weights workouts, which feels great.
Although I would really like to get back to heavy lifting, it appears that it's going to be a while, so I'm playing the waiting game now while I let my sad little left knee recuperate. (I refuse to call it my bad knee - I have a sad knee and a happy knee - disgustingly perky, I know.) At any rate, I am constrained from doing knee bending at the moment, both doctor's orders and also frankly, just the thought of it makes me cringe. So squats and lunges are out.

I've been working on a pretty good substitute upper body program into which I'm incorporating some unweighted and prone or seated leg exercises. Quad sets: contract and hold the quads while prone; hamstring sets: seated upright, knee slightly bent, activate the hamstring by pressing the heel into the floor, hold. Straight leg raises, various varieties. Single leg balancing. Calf raises. The only weighted leg exercise I feel comfortable with just now are RDLs - oh I did some yesterday with a pretty light barbell and feeling that hamstring stretch and work felt great. The mighty deadlift! And I'm thinking that by the end of this recovery period, my upper body should be killer, even if my legs will have to catch up later.

Collier Canyon Project

I've worked at the same job now for 8 years. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, I just this last week passed that anniversary date. As is true with all jobs, it's really awful and really great. I must say that just now I'm grateful for being gainfully employed, so I'm not griping, believe me. I have two possible driving routes to work, one on a piece of freeway that consistently makes the top 3 worst congested commutes in the Bay Area, the other using a scenic backroad. Guess which one I take?

I have seen so many interesting things on my little backroad, the aforementioned Collier Canyon. The bird life is wonderful, although a little difficult to see sometimes from a moving car, but I consistently see red-tailed hawks on the power poles, scrub jays making a racket that can be heard through rolled-up windows, killdeer swooping across the road and loggerhead shrikes sitting on their catbird seats. (I recently read a blurb somewhere that the phrase "catbird seat" was actually in reference to shrikes.) The residents of the houses along the road keep horses, several breeds of cattle including some longhorn numbers, llama, sheep and goats. I've seen lots of wildlife: deer, wild pigs, coyotes, skunks, the everpresent and numerous ground squirrels and the remains of opossum and raccoon.

Toward one end of the road is an absolutely magnificent view of Mt. Diablo.

All in all, this drive makes the extra few minutes it takes worth it and can anyone argue with avoiding the freeway?

I've started taking my camera along some days to record it. Here is something from the start of this project. This is a ewe from the sheep pen.

Yes, But Why Does It Have To Be So Invasive

A week ago last Friday, I finally gritted my teeth and went and got the recommended screening colonoscopy that "they" want everyone to get when we turn 50. Yes, I procrastinated a couple of years. And of course everything went well and I got a clean bill of health.

I have to admit that I was more apprehensive about the day of fasting that's required beforehand than I was about the actual procedure or other prep. I have convinced myself that I go a little nuts when really hungry but it seemed to go just fine. Maybe just knowing that I couldn't and that it just had to be done made it easier. Also it's just a day.

The other thing that I have noticed in the last week since then is that I get fuller faster - or I notice my fullness more. Or I don't enjoy being really full the way I have in the past. Now, I've been just eating an extra bowl of salad to achieve this lately but still there's a marked preference for fullness, which is a leftover from the old stuffer days of eating. I haven't really been working on eradicating that preference but now I'm thinking that there's a little crack in the armor. We'll see. I don't know if that happened because that day of required fasting flipped a switch somewhere (I'm NOT recommending fasting by the way unless you have to do it for something like this, mostly I think the fasting craze a BS weight loss fad.) Maybe it's just because it took a while for my digestion to get back to normal and I'll go back to it? I think what I'll do, as an experiment, is to see if I can hold off on satisfying the urge for getting very full, even if it is just with lettuce and cucumbers that I do it with.

Ladybug Butts and Hunger

I've moved on from New Rules of Lifting for Women and am now working the original New Rules of Lifting programs, by the same authors. Anyway, I'm in one of the fat loss programs, which boils down to doing relatively high reps and short rest periods during the workouts. Also, keeping a slight calorie deficit, because really, if you don't do that there is no fat loss. So I'm feeling a little hungrier the last couple of weeks, the prospect of which caused my husband, the Dinosaur, when I told him about it and said we'll see if I can stand it, to inquire whether he would be able to. Ha! There are only four more weeks, she said through gritted teeth.

But of course, with being somewhat more peckish on a daily basis, comes the usual dealing with the mental and emotional issues of eating. Here is an example of some of the food-related BS my brain comes up with sometimes. After supper the other night, with a nicely full/satiated stomach, some needy part of me was insisting that I "had to have" a bowl of cereal. Not just a little bowl - a big full bowl of it. Excuse me? And where would that fit exactly into the aforementioned Full Stomach? Somehow the earth continued spinning on its axis when I passed on that suggestion and drank some tea instead.

The Days Do Tend to Follow One Another

I find that I'm not coming up with ideas for here much. Some periods of life are like that I suppose, the struggle isn't so "struggly" I suppose. I've been posting at my Dryad Ranch blog with all of our weekend walks and the beauty of the place. I have been enjoying taking photographs and sometimes they just don't fit for Dryad, so what the heck.

An aloe from the Lower Garden. This photo almost makes me want to get out my pencil set and some paper, but in spite of looking everywhere, even under the couch, I have not found the time to do it.

A Year Now Maintaining

It's been a year now since I hit my original weight loss goal and I am thrilled more than you can imagine that I've been maintaining that success. In fact, I'm actually about 13 pounds under that original goal now, depending on what end of the normal fluctuation I'm seeing on a given day.

I still feel kind of half crazy about food and eating. And yet, it's only half crazy, which feels OK. It's not a hidden craziness any more if that makes any sense; when my brain starts trying to trick me into the old ways, I'm almost always able to call bullshit on myself before the food gets forked into my mouth.

Some things I've learned or that I'm starting to notice now:

1. It's not a great idea for me to get too hungry. I get crabby and I start feeling desperate even though intellectually I know starvation is NOT right around the corner.
2. I still love food and eating pretty much more than anything else. I think only half of that is related to the physical setup of being hardwired to enjoy taking in nutrients.
3. I'm comfortable enough in my ability to choose what I eat during any given day that I can start playing with my percentages - fat, protein, carbs - to see what works better and makes me feel stronger.
4. I still have a distinct and strong preference for eating until I have a full feeling. I haven't even come close to breaking this habit, I have to say I'm not really trying. I just use vegetables to get to the full place. I don't stuff any more even though there's the occasional impulse to just keep eating. I do sometimes find myself feeling a little sad when a meal is done and it's time to stop eating. I combat this by remembering how amazingly wonderful everything just was and reminding myself that in a little while there will be more.
5. I don't find sweets compelling any more. This is a huge relief. I still like the occasional treat and when I decide to have one I make sure to savor. I like to have some dark chocolate once or twice a week, but if someone brings something to work or there's just some run of the mill candy around, I'm indifferent to it. I never though I would ever be able to say anything like that, seriously. Indifferent.
6. I love my exercise now. I love the challenge of seeing if I can work just a tiny bit harder today and then succeeding.
7. Learning to cope with the emotional aspects of eating has helped me to cope with the emotions of the rest of my life, not that it ever was separate really. It's just that not using food to soothe or damp down the emotional upset of the day forces me to look at my life differently. Not that it's all perfect or anything, it's just more in the open.

New Rules of Lifting for Women

This coming up Friday marks the one year anniversary of me having met my weight loss goal and maintaining a healthy weight. Wow, I never thought I would get here and stay here.

One of the things that I've taken up that has really helped me get to the goal and stay there has been weight lifting. It's not the first time I've tried it - unfortunately though I didn't stick with it and also didn't stick with the eating plan that time and gained all that weight, but I've found that now I've really come to enjoy it and look forward to hitting the gym, and hitting it hard.

At the moment, I'm following the program outlined in the book The New Rules of Lifting for Women, by Lou Shuler and Alwyn Cosgrove. The book lays out a well-structured program of building strength along with fat loss (not necessarily weight loss) strategies, specifically geared toward women. These workouts are almost all based on free weights exercises and are super-challenging. But I love it - I've seen my measurements improve even though my weight has not changed. And, my strength and ability has improved by leaps and bounds. Last but not least, my arms, which had been flabby, well er flappy if you know what I mean, are no longer so cringe-worthy, but are veritable works of art. Hyperbole aside, if it weren't so cold right now, I'd be going around showing them off.

I know that a lot of women are worried that they'll end up looking like hulking she-monsters but without the testosterone (and you don't want to be having any of that, right?) it just doesn't happen.

One of the things I love about doing this program is having found other women who are also working the program. There's a great online forum with lots of good advice, helpful videos and so on. I've also bonded with other women in the gym working in the "boys section" also known as the free weights area. Getting through this program - I'm starting the sixth stage out of seven - has also increased my mental toughness. Not that I thought I was soft before, but I did find that having to ask how to use equipment and how to do stuff and then making myself try it and push a little harder in an area that's maybe not so traditional has been a bit of a revelation for me.