27 June 2014
Knee Pain
My right knee is a mess. I have no cartilage in it and apparently I've developed arthritis. For months now it has been bothering me. Months. It gets slightly swollen, just enough so I have a hard time straightening it out. It feels unstable and hyperextends. And it's super stiff whenever I get up from a chair. I can't squat properly, so I'm relegated to doing box squats. I can't jump or run. I understand getting old, I really do. This body has been around for 55 years and has taken a lot of abuse over the years. I understand that it is wearing down some. I get it, I really, really do. But this knee is freaking annoying. I'm over it. I have seen an ortho a number of times and I've gotten cortisone shots, they don't really do anything anymore. Also, it's not really painful. I don't have much pain, sometimes I do, but it just doesn't work right. But I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to need surgery to fix it. UGH!!!!
So the other night I was sitting thinking about my knee. And I got to thinking about how tight my quad was a couple of months ago. It was so tight, I could hardly bend it completely. Weird. Then I started thinking about the knee. Hmmmmm, could there be a connection???? So I got out my foam roller and started rolling my quad. Not bad,it didn't feel that tight. Then I rolled over the inner thigh. Holy Carp!!! I almost went through the roof. It was so incredibly painful. Hmmmm. The pain seems to be in the lower part of the sartorius muscle and the gracilis muscle. We are talking real, tear inducing pain. So naturally I continued to roll it, for as much as I could take - it was painful. So I got to thinking about this. If that area is really tight, it's going to pull on my knee on the inside. This would apply pressure to the opposite, or outside, of my knee. Guess where the majority of the pain is? On the outside, lower leg. Well....this puts a whole new spin on things. Could it be something as simple as a super tight muscle? I don't know for sure, but I do know that I am going to roll it out every single night until it stops hurting. It makes a whole lot of sense. It's pulling things out of whack from the inside causing pressure on the outside. This will cause the knee to swell because things aren't lined up properly. It all comes clear. I'm also considering a deep tissue massage to focus on the leg. We shall see. At this point I'm willing to work on it. As I said, the knee is not painful but it is very, very annoying. Also, being without health insurance until next month, there is not much I can do about it :)
In other news, today is a rest day. I have to get the costumes finished for the box jump tomorrow and I want to be rested for tomorrow. So I'll be sewing most of the day. I also have some assignments due on Sunday, I need to work on those at some point. Tomorrow I will be out all day so tomorrow is out completely. Okay, off to get the day started.
26 June 2014
Frozen by fear
I got an email the other day from the school where I am getting my Ph.D. from. It is time to submit my premise for my dissertation and start forming a committee that will guide me through the process. Yikes. Yikes. Yikes. In order for that to happen I have to do a number of things first and I am literally frozen by fear. As soon I start to think about the things I have to do I feel like I get completely overwhelmed and just don't know where to start. UGH!!! I hate that feeling. But I have to face it, the premise it due in 3 weeks. Yikes.
In other news of the day, yesterday was pretty good. I felt really tired and draggy all day and I'm not really sure why. I ended up eating a bologna sandwich - on bread - around 1pm and shortly after started feeling much, much better. I'm not sure if I was hungry or needed some carbs. It was a kind of foggy feeling that may well have been my body switching over to fat burning, but I'm not positive and we had plans last night so I couldn't be like that. So I had bread. Then for dinner I had noodles. Oh, and a drink :) But it was totally worth it and fun to see family.
I did WOD yesterday and it was brutal. We didn't get home until 11pm last night but I am still going to the WOD this morning. I figure I can nap later. I also need to retool my eating a little. Maybe I need to eat more. Maybe I need to include a little more good carbs. Not sure, but I definitely need to tweak it a bit. Maybe I just need to get through that fuzzy, lethargic phase. I don't know. I'm eating, I just think I need to eat a little more.
Interesting how the pendulum has swung. Used to be that overeating was my chief problem. I would just eat too much of the bad stuff. Now I struggle to get enough calories in. Ugh!!! Why can't life be simple????
25 June 2014
Day 2
Another pretty darn good day. Not perfect, but I'm not shooting for perfect, I'm shooting for liveable. So let's reveiw:
Food: had a hard boiled egg before Crossfit. Then eggs and hot links after. Lunch was a steak salad. Snack was cherries and a slice of sourdough bread. Dinner was broccoli, bacon, and sausage. That was it. Not bad. Could have done without the bread, but what is is.
Activity: Crossfit in the morning and by afternoon I was getting sore. Tried to work on my school work after breakfast but was so tired from a crappy night's sleep. Headed out to run a couple of errands. Tried to take a little nap but not so much. Worked on the costumes all afternoon. Did not walk the dogs because I was exhausted and it was raining on and off. Had dinner, watched some TV and went to bed.
Last night when I went to bed I started coughing, so as a preemptive strike I took some Nyquil. This stopped my cough and guaranteed a good night's sleep. Winner.
Going to have another great day today. Having dinner with some family that is in town and I bought a new dress at Ross's. Have to see how it fits and if I need to make any adjustments to it. I also have to finish some school work, it is due today. I can not put it off. Ugh, I hate this. With all this free time I have, why can I not get ahead of the school work?????
Okay, off to grab some string cheese and get ready for Crossfit.
24 June 2014
Day one
Yesterday went pretty well. I ate every 3 hours. I did Crossfit in the morning and then kept busy all day. I got done things I needed to get done. I felt pretty darn good about the day and ended up tired. Nice. Let's look at what I ate:
Early morning: string cheese and coffee with heavy cream
Breakfast: 2 slices of bacon, 2 eggs, avocado
Lunch: Huge salad with poppy seed dressing, pumpkins seeds, craisins
Snack: couple of slices of uncured salami and string cheese
Dinner: steak, baked potato with butter and sour cream, bacon wrapped scallops, broccoli and beans.
That was it. I did not eat after dinner. Yeah me!!! Dinner looks like a lot but it really wasn't. I didn't finish my steak or potato and left the table satisfied but not stuffed in any way. Between the snack and dinner I walked the dogs and got hungry. I might need to make that snack a little more substantial in order to not get hungry when walking the dogs. But I don't want it to be too large and then I'm not hungry for dinner. Balance, balance.
As for my activity yesterday. I went to Crossfit in the morning and it almost killed me - but then it always does. Then I worked on a paper that was due and got that turned in by noon. After lunch, instead of laying down which is what I normally do, I headed into the spare room to work on some costumes I'm making. When Hubby came home we hiked up the hill and picked some avocados from across the street, then it was time to walk the dogs. So not bad.
I like that routine. Crossfit then schoolwork for a little while, then projects. After Crossfit some rest is good, so that's a good time to do schoolwork. But after lunch is my danger time for napping, so that is a good time to work on projects. I like it.
I did however have the worst night's sleep I've had in a long, long time and I'm not sure why. I went to bed around 9:45 after taking a shower because it was so freaking hot. Bella was in bed and was panting up a storm. I'm not sure why, it was miserably hot but I kept worrying that something was wrong with her. She finally stopped panting for a while around 10:30 and I may have dozed off then, I'm not really sure. But she started panting again not too long later. Finally, around midnight, she got up from the bed and went into the hallway - her usual sleeping spot - and after panting and moving around, settled down and finally went to sleep. Not long after that I fell asleep. I got up at my usual 6am, so I got a whopping 5 hours sleep. Today should be awesome. Right now she is laying on the floor at my feet sleeping away. I would be angry but she's too cute to stay mad at.
So except for a loss of sleep, yesterday was pretty darn successful. I am going to follow the same template and try to make today just as successful. Wish me luck.
22 June 2014
One more time
I used to get really angry at myself for having to start over. I would get really upset and could not understand why I couldn't just stick to something. Well, I've learned over the years, that is pretty much what life is all about. Making mistakes, moving on, starting over. I no longer get angry at myself but try to learn from my non-successes. I've been trying to get things started again these past few weeks, but I kept running into walls. Depression. Lethargy. Illness. I think I've gotten over all the walls and I'm ready to give it another go. So I need some goals that are not so lofty I fail, but things to start moving me towards feeling better. There are two components to this thing; food and activity. Both of which I've been doing poorly at. So let's look at them individually.
Food: My eating in the recent past has been horrendous. I don't eat breakfast until 10am. Sometimes I don't eat lunch at all other times it's something I grab and stuff in my face. Then I have dinner and pig out. Enough of that. I don't like eating that way and never have, so time to change it up. Breakfast is intricately tied to my workouts. I go to Crossfit from 8-9am. After Crossfit I usually can't eat for 30-45 minutes. Also, I'm usually a little hungry when I get to Crossfit. I'm up before 6am so there is no reason I can't have a little something around 6-6:30. It has to be small though so I can digest it before I workout. Something like a hard boiled egg or a banana with a little almond butter. It's hard for me to eat that early in the morning, but I can learn. Then when I come home I can have a little lighter breakfast at 9:30-10:00ish. Maybe an egg and a slice or two of bacon. Then I should be ready to have lunch by 12 or 12:30. Waiting to eat until 2pm is just stupid and skipping is absolutely ridiculous. Wait. Maybe initially I will eat every 3 hours. Oh, that would totally work to get me back into a regular eating schedule. I could eat something at 6:30 - within a half hour of getting up; something at 9:30 - after the WOD; something at 12:30 - lunch; something at 3:30 - right before I walk the dogs; then generally we have dinner around 6:30. This would work. I'm not a huge fan of the every three hour thing, but sometimes it is a good tool to get back on track. I am going to focus on low carb too, I just feel better when I eat low carb. But I'm not going extreme. I'm going to try carb cycling, low carb for 3 days, high carb 1 day. But not this week. This week I want to go low carb all week just to kind of reset things. My first high carb day will be on Saturday when we have a Crossfit thing. So the eating goals this week are low carb and eat something every three hours. Got it.
Activity: I have going to Crossfit down. I do that every morning and love it so that is not the issue. The issue is the rest of the day. I spend far, far too much time on my ass at this computer or laying on the couch watching TV or napping. That has got to end. I need to structure my day so I'm not spending so much time inactive. I have some pretty big projects for this week, so that should. I have to make our costumes for the Crossfit thing next Saturday and I want to paint and redo the bathroom. Those thing will keep me pretty busy. I also need to work on school work. So I want to develop a bit of schedule for myself. When I get up in the mornings at 6, I will look over the day and see what needs to be done. At 8 I go to Crossfit. After breakfast I will work on either my project or some school work. After lunch I will then switch and work on the other thing. Then at 4ish I walk the dogs. This one is a little harder to plan out exactly because things change. Something will come up and I need to run out. Redoing the bathroom I want to in one day, so that will take up the whole day. So I need to be a little flexible but I need to not let that lead to doing nothing. Why do I need to do the bathroom in one day? Why can't I prep and paint it one day and then put it back together the next? See, these are the things I need to watch for. Okay, I will clearly have to work on this on a day by day basis. I'm up for the challenge. I also want to go to the beach one day. I want to do that at least once a week.
Alright, I have a plan for the week and I have new determination and drive. I will take it one day at a time and work my hardest to be successful.
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