reality testing
Jan. 13th, 2005 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osodecanelaWell another day. It's been a month as of yesterday since I went back to the gym. To my surprise and pleasure, my stamina is much better than I had expected. I'm actually ablee to run as long as an hour and 45 minutes (which I did both last Sat. and Sun. and cover over 7 miles during the run. Frankly to be honest I'm not sure that run is the right word. My best time for covering a full mile is 13 & a half minutes; not a record for sure, but not bad for a fat boy pushing 50. I promised myself that I'd make it to the gym five days a week and I'm pretty much sticking to that. The plan was to have a longer run (i.e. greater than 5 miles) Saturday and Sunday and if possible on Thursday, with shorter runs on Tuesday and Wednesday (i.e. 3 miles). Well, it wasn't in the cards today to make it to the gym, as there were just too many of the things to attend to. So be it. I'll go tomorrow before work. What I hadn't expected, is I have a hard time getting off the machine, when I expected to get off. The three-mile runs on both Tuesday and Wednesday, were 5 1/2 & 5 miles respectively. Once the endorphins are going, I really don't wanna stop.
December 10 was a day of major importance. The trip to Sacramento for the medical conference, turned into an epiphany. I love PriMed. The quality of these lectures for primary care providers is generally excellent and often I get something I absolutely need to hear not just professionally, but often for my own well-being. The lecture by the cardiologist on the metabolic syndrome was at once entertaining, informative and scary as hell. But then again, I resemble that remark. Having the metabolic syndrome myself, and having stopped my exercise, I needed to hear what this man had to say. Can we say, "wake-up call"!?!? Two days later, I was back at the gym. And now, a month and a day later, I'm somewhere between 17 and 18 pounds lighter! (With, I suspect, at least another hundred pounds to go.) Oh, and I also once again have "calves of death". In fact at this point, I shouldn't be referring to them as calves. A much better term is cattle. I actually heard someone at the gym murmur, "geez, would you look at those things!", while looking at my calves.
Why I stopped going to the gym is sort of a mystery to me. I am at once mystified and pissed off. Why does one stop doing something one enjoys? After spraining my ankle in late October of 2003, I stopped going to the gym. When the thing was finally healed, I never went back. So instead of continuing with a weight loss, something I desperately needed to do both for health and for social reasons (who the hell wants to see an overweight doctor?), I gained weight instead. At one point, I was probably within 50 to 60 pounds of goal. Instead, I suspect I have at least 100 more pounds to get rid of, which has to go if I expect my pancreas to continue to function. I say suspect, because I'm really not sure how much fat there is to lose. Make no mistake, there's plenty of it, but there's also now a nice amount of muscle in my legs and butt. Muscle is heavy. I'll just have to see where things are once I down to say, 220.
If I'm sending scared, that's appropriate, because I'm scared as hell. I'd better be. My health and well-being is at stake. When I had forgotten in all this time though, is that I enjoy the run, or the act of running (or perhaps I should say the act of pedaling, since I'm doing this on an elliptical stepper in order not to hurt or destroy my joints). The endorphins that this stimulates are wonderful! Once they get started, I have to be careful not to do too much, so as not to injure myself, because frankly I don't want to get off the machine.
Now weightlifting is another story. That I have to push myself to do. Don't much enjoy it. Doesn't get the endorphins going and frankly, it just feels like work. I know there will be a physical reward down the line, but it just doesn't "speak" to me, the way running does.
As for food, my control is so different now that I'm running again. The exercise seems to serve as an anorectic. I'm just not as hungry. That was my experience last time and it sure as hell is my experience once again. Further, I have finally had the ability to say, "no, I don't think going to a buffet is a good idea." I had been telling my friend Don for months, that I needed to stay out of them, but some how that's always where we seemed to end up. A Chinese buffet, an Indian buffet, a salad bar buffet (you can do a lot of damage at a salad bar), or something else of that ilk. I love studies. Quote me supporting studies that demonstrate a point, and it will help me put something into practice. Well that wonderful cardiologist who gave the lecture last month, quoted a study in which subjects were handed dinner plates with meals. Half of the study group had 800 cal meals while the other have had 1200 cal meals. What did they find? No matter what size of the meal, roughly the same amount of food was left on the plate. It didn't matter how much food was put in front of most individuals; the same amount was left behind? It just confirmed for me how dangerous buffets are, at least for me, if not most people. In retrospect, I saw an awful lot of overweight people in those places. Have you seen the movie "Super Size Me"? The guy who made the film ate at McDonald's morning noon and night for a month, during which time he gained 30 pounds and sent his lipids through the roof. Well no more super sizing for me.
Anyway, so much for now. I need to sign off and go home, particularly if I intend to get up at six and had to the gym.
December 10 was a day of major importance. The trip to Sacramento for the medical conference, turned into an epiphany. I love PriMed. The quality of these lectures for primary care providers is generally excellent and often I get something I absolutely need to hear not just professionally, but often for my own well-being. The lecture by the cardiologist on the metabolic syndrome was at once entertaining, informative and scary as hell. But then again, I resemble that remark. Having the metabolic syndrome myself, and having stopped my exercise, I needed to hear what this man had to say. Can we say, "wake-up call"!?!? Two days later, I was back at the gym. And now, a month and a day later, I'm somewhere between 17 and 18 pounds lighter! (With, I suspect, at least another hundred pounds to go.) Oh, and I also once again have "calves of death". In fact at this point, I shouldn't be referring to them as calves. A much better term is cattle. I actually heard someone at the gym murmur, "geez, would you look at those things!", while looking at my calves.
Why I stopped going to the gym is sort of a mystery to me. I am at once mystified and pissed off. Why does one stop doing something one enjoys? After spraining my ankle in late October of 2003, I stopped going to the gym. When the thing was finally healed, I never went back. So instead of continuing with a weight loss, something I desperately needed to do both for health and for social reasons (who the hell wants to see an overweight doctor?), I gained weight instead. At one point, I was probably within 50 to 60 pounds of goal. Instead, I suspect I have at least 100 more pounds to get rid of, which has to go if I expect my pancreas to continue to function. I say suspect, because I'm really not sure how much fat there is to lose. Make no mistake, there's plenty of it, but there's also now a nice amount of muscle in my legs and butt. Muscle is heavy. I'll just have to see where things are once I down to say, 220.
If I'm sending scared, that's appropriate, because I'm scared as hell. I'd better be. My health and well-being is at stake. When I had forgotten in all this time though, is that I enjoy the run, or the act of running (or perhaps I should say the act of pedaling, since I'm doing this on an elliptical stepper in order not to hurt or destroy my joints). The endorphins that this stimulates are wonderful! Once they get started, I have to be careful not to do too much, so as not to injure myself, because frankly I don't want to get off the machine.
Now weightlifting is another story. That I have to push myself to do. Don't much enjoy it. Doesn't get the endorphins going and frankly, it just feels like work. I know there will be a physical reward down the line, but it just doesn't "speak" to me, the way running does.
As for food, my control is so different now that I'm running again. The exercise seems to serve as an anorectic. I'm just not as hungry. That was my experience last time and it sure as hell is my experience once again. Further, I have finally had the ability to say, "no, I don't think going to a buffet is a good idea." I had been telling my friend Don for months, that I needed to stay out of them, but some how that's always where we seemed to end up. A Chinese buffet, an Indian buffet, a salad bar buffet (you can do a lot of damage at a salad bar), or something else of that ilk. I love studies. Quote me supporting studies that demonstrate a point, and it will help me put something into practice. Well that wonderful cardiologist who gave the lecture last month, quoted a study in which subjects were handed dinner plates with meals. Half of the study group had 800 cal meals while the other have had 1200 cal meals. What did they find? No matter what size of the meal, roughly the same amount of food was left on the plate. It didn't matter how much food was put in front of most individuals; the same amount was left behind? It just confirmed for me how dangerous buffets are, at least for me, if not most people. In retrospect, I saw an awful lot of overweight people in those places. Have you seen the movie "Super Size Me"? The guy who made the film ate at McDonald's morning noon and night for a month, during which time he gained 30 pounds and sent his lipids through the roof. Well no more super sizing for me.
Anyway, so much for now. I need to sign off and go home, particularly if I intend to get up at six and had to the gym.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-14 01:19 pm (UTC)I had a condition some years ago where my right kneecap wouldn't "track" straight in its groove. Quite painful. The physical therapists were harsh Stairmaster taskmasters, and I got to the point of being able to do 65 storeys in 10 minutes. And then, like an idiot, I stopped again.
And what's worse, I sit on my butt in front of a computer all day.
Argh.
(Cattle of death...?!)