Teleidoscope

Thu, Aug 28, 2008

Abs

Posted at 10:19 am MDT to Exercise

I still have abs, under the fat! I did the AM Yoga routine again today, and most of the 12 minute, shortened Abs yoga routine I used to do, and they both worked!

I can lay flat on my yoga mat and do a straight leg lift. The result is kind of sloppy, but that's because of my usual problems with tight hamstrings, not weakness through the abs. And twists work as well as they ever did, allowing for the extra belly volume.

Marti said that the core muscles along my spine were still in petty good shape -- probably why having my hip out last winter didn't take the illiosacral joint with it, the way it would have 10 years ago.

Things are still a bit sore from the aftermath of the fall so I didn't push the abs work too hard. I expect it will be at least a week before the muscle patch that was locked stops being tender (I suspect it's getting more blood than it's had in ages), and the other areas that were stressed in the fall really settle down.

Once I can't feel the stressed patches any more, I'll break out the free weights and try to build back some upper body strength. With the muscles actually moving agross the ribs the way they are supposed to, lifting should work again too.

It's nice to have a body that mostly does what I tell it to again, instead of stalling. Having that patch along the lower ribs be just sore, instead of locked rigid, makes an amazing difference.

If there are places that are still stiff in a week or two, I may look into myofascial therapy to break loose any places that are still locked in the aftermath of the radiation. I really can't tell at this point how much of what I'm feeling is remaining long-term problems, and how much is the aftermath of the fall. I think a lot of it is from the fall: I mostly feel the tight and tender spots when I happen to lean my weight on my right hand.

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Wed, Aug 27, 2008

Accidental Therapy

Posted at 7:46 am MDT to Exercise

Last night I kind of got tangled in myself and fell in my living room. I managed to avoid smashing my face open on the metal frame of the coffee table by pushing away from the floor with my right arm -- not quite straightarming it -- and I felt something rip along my lower ribs.

This is actually a good thing. The sore spot corresponds to a patch of muscle that has been locked immobile since the radiation treatment 3 years ago, and the force of the fall seems to have broken it loose. It was kind of weird: I could feel the surrounding muscles stretching and contracting to absorb the shock of the fall, while that patch just sort of exploded.

I just did a little yoga this morning and had equal range of motion for spinal twists on both sides for the first time in ages. Not a lot of range of motion because of the overweight, but there was no more pain or stiffness on one side than the other. This is wonderful.

There is another stiff place up near the collar bone, but I can attack that with yoga and free weights now that the second anchor point is gone. I can already feel that the strain patterns are different.

The second spot is in a place where a massage therapist can make better progress, too. I wish Marty had not left town. I should find another massage therapist.

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Mon, Jul 07, 2008

Rest

Posted at 11:24 pm MDT to Exercise

I spent most of the four-day weekend resting and relaxing, but it doesn't seem to have done me much good. Today I felt like I was coming down with something again, though I don't know where I would have caught it.

No walking today.

I hope I can edge back a little way toward a more normal diet after my appointment with the allergist on Wednesday. It's nice to be able to swallow most of the time, but the rest of my digestive system does not seem to like the new dietary balance, even after a full month.

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Sat, Jul 05, 2008

Annoying

Posted at 11:11 am MDT to Exercise

For the past few days, my weight has been up and my daily mileage has been down.

My left shin and ankle are getting sore very quickly, so I'm only doing a mile a day. But the pattern of the soreness is like what I felt in the right shin the first week I started walking, so I hope it is a sign that the left leg is beginning to function more normally. That foot and ankle are still thicker than the right one, but they are showing more definition, so they may be flexing more now.

Walking a mile doesn't make the right leg sore at all now, which is a good sign. Once the left leg muscles get used to actually working, I'll increase the milage again.

The weight re-gain of the few pounds I had lost is annoying, but may be partly due to an increase of muscle mass. Body fat percentage is down slightly, rather than going up. This would be good in the long run: muscle burns calories better than fat. My ring fits a little better than it did at this weight previously -- another sign that I may be swapping bloat for muscle. There are a couple of pairs of jeans that are fine through the thighs and hips now, but I'll still need to lose or rearrange a few pounds of belly fat to button them.

I was trying to taper off the St. John's Wort dosage this weekend, since I'm on a mini-vacation and should be less stressed. But I'm going to put the dosage back up in case that is interacting with the weight loss and energy for exercise. Weight gain is a known side effect of depression. And the restlessness that led to the beginning of the walking happened when I was on the higher dose. If the higher dose lets me lose weight and gain muscle, I'll stay on the higher dose. St. John's Wort is cheaper than buying clothes, and much cheaper than the prescription alternatives, with fewer side effects.

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Wed, Jul 02, 2008

Birthday

Posted at 7:34 am MDT to Exercise

I have survived another year.

It's a good thing I din't make any bets about the powerline work being finished before my birthday, but I think everything is done now except patching the hole in the porch roof. The pole and the backhoe are gone. The house looks strangely detached, from a distance, without the dark lines of the powerlines connecting it to anything.

1. mile today, beginning the second day of Bilbo's journey. My legs were sore, but I think that was from tension because I had a dental appointment yesterday

I stopped at the big King Soopers on the way home and spent quite a while reading labels, looking for things I can eat. I really hope it turns out I can have goat cheese, when I see the allergist again next week.

At least, between the dietary change and the walking, my weight is trending downward slowly. I'm actually tracking the sum of my body-fat percentage and my weight. This tends to compensate for weight fluctuations due to hydration differences.

My brother Larry called last night, and I'm having a birthday dinner with Nanette.

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Thu, Jun 26, 2008

Farewell Massage

Posted at 7:23 am MDT to Exercise

Marti, my massage therapist, is unexpectedly moving to Oklahoma next week to deal with a family medical situation, so last night was our last session. (At least for the foreseeable future.) It was a good session.

I can feel some soreness in my left butt, but Marti didn't feel heat in there, which is a very good sign. The soreness is probably not my hip trying to go out again. What I'm feeling is probably the workout soreness that accompanies muscle tissue growth.

The rest of the leg is also doing very well: there is a small patch at the front of my ankle and top of the foot that is still tender and swollen, but the rest of the leg is now a good match for the other one.

My arms were also in much better shape last night than 4 weeks ago, when they were such a mess that I could hardly let Marti work on them.

Marti gave me the name and number of another massage therapist. I'll need to make some appointments.

5 miles from Bag End on the road to Rivendell. I've met the dwarves at the inn. 392 miles to go.

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Sun, Jun 22, 2008

Walking to Rivendell

Posted at 11:22 am MDT to Exercise

On this date in 2001 I weighed 40 pounds less than I do today, and my body fat percentage (I have a smart scale) was about 10 points lower.

Some of the reasons for the weight gain are medical: they took Propulsid off the market and my Synthroid dosage was lowered. Some of the weight gain was due to travelling, though my exercise journal indicates I kept up with my weight lifting and yoga pretty steadily for at least the first 20 pounds of the gain.

My weight has been pretty stable for the past year even without any exercise to speak of. I think it would start to drop if I added some exercise to my routine, especially with these diet changes.

In the past, walking has been what got my weight down to the ranges where yoga worked and weightlifting was... feasible. I need to do a lot more walking, but walking without a goal is boring.

In college I used to walk an extra mile or two most days, over and above the walking that was needed to go to classes and the library and the dining hall (the campus was quite hilly). I had a loop that went across campus, then down the hill to the public library, then farther down the hill to Main Street. Along Main Street there were two stops: a used book store and a news stand that sold comic books. Then back up the hill, but at the other end of campus, with a stop half-way up the hill at the University book store.

Now there is nowhere useful or interesting to walk to. I have a treadmill but that is the essence of goalless walking, though it decreases my exposure to heat and hayfever.

On the Eowyn's Challenge website, they have the travel mileages for the journeys in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Some people use them to track their exercise progress. I heard about it on Elizabeth Bear's LiveJournal matociquala. She's currently somewhere in the mines of Moria.

I decided to do the Hobbit routes first. Bilbo and the dwarves only travelled about 12 miles a day. As of this morning I'm one mile on the way from Bag End to Rivendell. I have crossed the bridge across the Water, and I am on the road to The Green Dragon in Bywater to meet the dwarves. 396 miles to go to Rivendell.

I may do some more walking later today. I need to do more than 1 mile a day if I'm going to get to Rivendell in less than a year.

And if I'm stiff tomorrow morning, it will give me the incentive to do some yoga.

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Mon, May 19, 2008

Pop

Posted at 6:40 am MDT to Exercise

On Friday I managed to put my bad hip out pretty thoroughly. I could feel the lump of soreness in my butt where it was in the wrong place. I did some yoga and my PT exercises, which at least kept it from getting worse.

Saturday, other than the time I spent a Farmers' Market, I spent a lot of time asleep. I took a nap in the afternoon and went to bed early.

I took some ibuprofin before the second time I went to bed, to knock down the swelling that might be holding the hip out of position, and it worked.

I woke up in the middle of the night and stretched my leg through the heel, and I could feel the joint move back into position and pop back into its socket.

That is the weirdest sensation.

In the morning I did more PT exercises and yoga to help seat it firmly.

I need to do more yoga and start free weights again to try to stabilize it. (I've been takig it easy because exercise give me coughing fits.)

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Wed, Mar 05, 2008

Pecs

Posted at 8:52 pm MST to Exercise

Yesterday morning I lifted weights for the first time in about a month. I didn't intend to be aggressive about it, but by mid-afternoon yesterday I was getting sore.

Yoga this morning stretched out some of the kinks but not all of them. I guess I was more enthusiastic than I realized. I think I will hold off on doing weights again until Friday, to let things recover.

This evening I had my first massage session in 6 weeks.

The bad leg is much better than it was at the beginning of the yearmwhen my hip was out. It is still a little puffy and tender at the ankle but otherwise... it's nice to have a leg instead of a lump.

Marti said that she could feel toned muscle under the fat on the good leg, which is amazing since I have not done much other than sit for months. Maybe tomorrow I will walk for a while on my treadmill after doing my yoga, to remind both legs what their job is. I need to get in training for spending a few hours on my feet when Farmers' Market starts up again in a few weeks.

She also thinks I am less dehydrated than when she worked on me in January. This is encouraging because my weight is down a little: more retained water and less total weight is the right direction for things to be going.

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Sat, Feb 16, 2008

Coughing as Exercise

Posted at 5:34 pm MST to Exercise

Strange.

I've been a slug for what seems like days and days. I expected that either my weight or my bodyfat percentage would be up. I was just getting showered and washing my hair prior to an evening at the Philharmonic and decided to check.

My weight seems to be carved in stone, but my bodyfat percentage is down almost another percent: I got readings of 39.0 and 38.8 at the same weight as the previous 39.9 reading.

During intermission at the concert, I'm going to try visiting something called the Circle Bar, which is reserved for major donors. This is going to feel very odd: it isn't the kind of thing I normally do. But, dammit, I'm a 53 year old business owner (and a major donor) and I shouldn't feel like an impostor in a formal, adult environment.

Some of the not-being-a-grownup feeling is because I have not had a grownup pattern of life (at least by my parents' standards). No kids. No spouse. Also, no parents to provide feedback, since they died when I was 27.

I suspect another part of the impostor thing is actually a class and socialization problem. My father was a watchmaker and my mother drove a school bus part-time, and they never did any formal entertaining at home. Very little entertaining at all that didn't involve relatives, actually.

Socializing among adults is something people did on TV. Or maybe something my parents did only when the kids weren't around. When I was very small, my Dad was a member of the Elks, and my Mom was in some kind of women's group at church. Later, after we moved to Montville, Dad joined the VFW and Mom eventually ended up in the VFW Auxiliary, and the vast majority of their interactions with adults from outside our household happened elsewhere.

Realistically, I suspect if any of the Circle Bar regulars notices me they will try to get me to join some committee or other.

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Sat, Jan 26, 2008

39.9 Percent

Posted at 11:30 am MST to Exercise

According to my weight-and-body-fat-percentage scale, my body fat percentage is below 40 for the first time in ages. That's with the measurement taken after my shower, per directions, so the skin on my feet was properly hydrated for the measurement.

I did several measurements. One was above 40, and two others were slightly lower, so I feel safe in claiming 39.9. (How you stand on the scale can make a big difference.)

I wonder if getting rid of most of the heel callouses -- so the sensor contact was with something approaching living flesh -- made a difference?

In any case, this is encouraging, since I haven't really been exercising much for the past week or so because of giving my hip time to heal. And I had (probably too much) pizza for dinner the last two nights in a row.

My weight is staying pretty stable, but that is OK if some of the fat is being replaced by muscle. I've noticed my belts are being a bit ambiguous about which notch they want to be on, which is also encouraging. Once the hip has stabilized a bit more, I'll start up the Abs Yoga again, which should also help on the belt-notch and fitting-into-jeans front.

Exercise for the past two days has been PT exercises followed by AM Yoga in the morning and PT exercises in the evening. I think even after the prescribed week, I'm going to keep doing the PT exercises before the AM Yoga and other workouts. Giving my hip a little extra encouragement to stay where it belongs is probably not a bad idea before I go stretching it in all sorts of directions.

Despite the fat, I'm not in too bad shape even compared with some times in my life when I was a lot thinner: I was just (after loosening up with yoga and a hot shower) able to come within about an inch of touching my toes. That is VERY good for me: the times in my life when I have been able to touch my toes at all have been few and far between. Having a petite body and tall arms and legs doesn't help.

Having very tight hamstrings doesn't help either the toe touching or the hip stability or the yoga. (My downward dog is pitiful at the moment -- good thing Rodney Yee can't see me out of the TV.) But I have figured out a place where I can do the legs-up-the-wall thing to stretch my hamstrings without causing a book avalanche. When my treadmill is folded up, it bottom will provide a nice stable surface to lean my heels against. And the treadmill is on the part of the floor that is over the basement, not the unheated crawlspace, which makes a big difference for these restorative poses where you are holding still and letting gravity work instead of warming yourself by moving.

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Thu, Jan 24, 2008

Second PT Appointment

Posted at 11:39 pm MST to Exercise

Anne was amazed by how much my hip has improved in just a week. She said last time she had to do 5 major adjustments and this time only 2 minor ones. It seems really strange for my overweight, couch-potato body to be described as "very healthy" by a health professional who means it.

I think I actually have a trick hip the way some people have trick shoulders. Once it gets put back into place everything else pretty much falls into line like a row of dominoes.

From the comments of Marti, my massage therapist, and Anne, the physical therapist, I get the impression that most people don't pay atttention to what is going on inside their bodies, and a lot of people's bodies reject change.

Anne gave me a couple of exercises to do to help the hip finish healing and keep it from going out again. Morning and evening for a week, then as needed. Time to go do them...

Tomorrow morning I'll do the PT exercises, then start working my way back into the 'AM Yoga' routine

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Pedegg

Posted at 9:38 am MST to Exercise

I don't often buy gadgets from TV commercials. I think the last one was a pair of strap wrenches for the kitchen use (opening jars, etc.) back in 2002, which were actually purchased at an "As seen on TV" store in a mall.

But a few weeks ago an advertisement for a gadget called the Pedegg showed up on one of the channels I watch, and it looked like something that was exactly what I had been wanting.

My heels had gotten very calloused, and the callouses were cracked and gnarly and peeling. Ordinary heel files didn't make much of a dent in the problem in reasonable amounts of time, and spread skin shavings around.

I kept wishing there was a microplane style thing that would take off the callous more effectively, and a way to keep the shavings from going all over the place.

The Pedegg (mine arrived yesterday) does exactly what I wanted. It uses microplane-like cutters to take down the callous quickly, and catches the shavings inside itself to be discarded later.

In just a few minutes, callouses I had been struggling to control for months -- unsuccessfully -- were almost completely gone. If I wanted to wear pantyhose, I could do it without destroying them on the callouses.

And some sore spots on my left heel are gone. That heel had been in very bad shape. I think it calloused worse because the circulation was messed up on that side. And because the leg has been swollen and less flexible, it was hard to work on the callouses long enough with the ordinary heel file.

Now I have the Pedegg, and the flexibility and circulation of the left leg are improving since the PT session last week. It's still visibly different from the right one, but not as bad as it was. I can see some definition in the foot and ankle, and fold the leg underneath me in a way I haven't done in a while.

I had a massage session yesterday evening and Marti was amazed by the improvement. My legs are about the same length now, and the thigh and hips have lost most of their knots. The calf is improving, too, but still has lots of sore spots.

I have another PT session later this morning. I don't expect a lot more improvement, but I want to get some exercises that will help prevent the hip from getting out of whack again, and permission to get back into my routine of yoga and weightlifting. I've been being very careful for the past week.

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Sun, Jan 20, 2008

Knots (misposted -- originally Jan 2, 2008, 7:04pm)

Posted at 8:49 pm MST to Exercise

I awakened this morning feeling knots in my left calf and hip. I did some stretching while I was still in bed, before I got up to do my yoga and weights, and I could feel the tightness from my heel to the lower ribs on that side. I'm not sure whether the knots are a reaction to the changes I've been trying to make, or are just more noticeable because the stuff around them is shifting.

I was able to get a little farther in the abs tape today, but still not very far. But progress is progress.

Weights today: 10# each hand upward rowing and bench press, 5# each hand butterflies, 5# overhead pulls to work on the range of motion. 10 reps of everything. Those weights and rep counts are still very light for the rowing and pressing, but with everything unbalanced I need to take it slow.

If my legs are different lengths, it means my illeosacral joint is out of allignment again. Too much strain anywhere will pop my lower back, which I do NOT need. The current weights will be fine for butterflies and overhead pulls for a while, but if I'm not too stiff tomorrow I'll increase the weights for the bench presses and rowing to 15# for each hand on Thursday (because I work alone without a spotter, I use dumb-bells for almost everything.)

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Thu, Jan 17, 2008

First PT Appointment

Posted at 8:09 pm MST to Exercise

Anne Hanks does PT, not chiropractic, which is nice: slow subtle adjustments instead of the 'wham' 'crunch' you get with a chiropractor. She said she adjusted my third lumbar vertebra slightly, and adjusted my pelvis. I can tell it made a difference: my leg felt too long when I walked on it doing some shopping, and the pattern of sore spots in my hip and leg have changed.

I'm ordered to let the hip flexors have tinme to heal before I stretch them with the yoga or free weights. Maybe I'll try the treadmill tomorrow.

And I'm supposed to spend about 15 minutes a day with m feet up a wall. 45 degree angle to start. I'm going to go do that now.

I have a followup appointment next Thursday.

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Tue, Jan 15, 2008

Hip

Posted at 11:00 pm MST to Exercise

I wish I could figure out when my hip went out. I suspect that the length of time it has been out will affect how difficult it is to put it back into place.

I can clearly feel that it is wrong when I try to do yoga or lift weights, but it isn't particularly painful in general, so I didn't realize it was out until I noticed the swelliing in that leg a week or so before Christmas.

The chiropractor appointment is thursday morning. I hope she can fix things.

1. pounds for the bench press today, still taking it easy because my balance is off and I don't want to stress the hip. I did neck stretches, too, for the first time in ages. And several reps each of three or four different moves with the five-pound hand weights, exploring the range of motion. The scar tissue is gradually stretching. If the hip wasn't complicating matters, I'd be making pretty good progress, I think.

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Sun, Jan 06, 2008

Futon Flip

Posted at 10:32 am MST to Exercise

Yesterday my exercise was mostly the little bit of snow shovelling I did (good thing I got the path cut through that drift: it's snowing again this morning).

Today my exercise, other than the AM Yoga, was reorganizing my living room sofa, which is a futon. Because the futon is mostly stuffed with cotton, it tends to get packed down over time. The end where I always sit, next to the reading lamp, had become very hollowed out.

This morning I laid the futon frame flat and flipped the futon end for end, so I would be sitting on a part of the mattress that is still puffy. Then the frame didn't want to go back into sofa mode, so I had to drag the mattress off it anyway, reformat it, and drag the mattress back on. I think the problem was partly that the frame was stiff from never being exercised, and partly that I was asking the futon to bend the opposite way from what it was used to.

My hip is complaining a bit at the new state of things, which is probably a good sign. My pelvis is being held at a different angle than it is used to.

I should probably think about buying a new futon mattress and cover some time this year. The frame is metal and only a couple of years old, but the mattress is much older. According to GnuCash, the futon with the original frame was paid for at the end of June 2001, the new frame was at the end of December 2005. (I like having all of my financial records on-line.) One funny thing about the purchases: they were made in the same building, but to two different futon companies.

The original frame, which was wood, literally fell apart one day when I sat down on the sofa. The glue had dried out over the years and when some of the joints fell apart and the platform fell, some of the wooden members broke. Ordinary wood glue is really not designed for this climate.

Another change I made to my environment this weekend was putting another blanket on the waterbed. This tends to make it a little warm for the rest of me (even when I'm not having hot flashes), but this morning I could feel that the left leg was liking the extra warmth. I could feel the knots in my calf and hip, but they didn't tighten into painful cramps as they sometimes have done recently. They almost seemed to be relaxing a little.

I'm beginning to suspect that the one-leg-shorter-than-the-other business is a sign that I should visit a chiropractor. I think that hip needs a more drastic adjustment than Marti can perform. And I suspect the circulation in that leg is not really going to improve while the hip joint if out of position. The odd thing is, I'm not really having any lower back pain, which I would expect if the illeosacral joint was out of whack. Lower back pain usually accompanies the left-leg-too-short symptom and provides the signal that I need one of my rare visits to a chiropractor or physical therapist. I wonder what's going on this time that's different.

The sun's out again, but there are still clouds around the horizon. I think I'm going to do a little shopping before the weather closes in.

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Sun, Dec 30, 2007

Weight Bench

Posted at 10:38 am MST to Exercise

I got the weight bench cleared off yesterday. I still need to make more open floor space by moving the tubs of manga down to the basement.

Today's exercise:

AM Yoga for Beginners: 20 minutes. The twists went a lot better: Marti's work made a noticeable difference. My hamstrings are horribly tight (they always are unless I work on them regularly).

Whatever the arm equivalents of hamstrings are, are also horribly tight. Lying on the floor with my arms straight out to the sides, I feel a lot of pull in a strip just below my collar bones (worse on the right, where the surgery and radiation tightened things up, to the point of being painful) that goes away if I bend my arms at the elbows.

Lifting my arms over my head works OK when I'm standing, but not when I'm laying flat. But that's due to a different set of things being stiff.

Abs Yoga for Beginners: about a quarter of the 20 minute tape. I did more of it on Friday, but I'm still sore from then. Strengthening my abs is good for my back and bad hip, but I need to take it slow so I don't throw something out while the joints are relatively unsupported. Being as overweight as I am adds to the danger (my scale says I'm more than 40% body fat) because the weight distribution is off, and it pulls on my spine in the wrong ways.

Free weights: I just used 5 pound weights in each hand, more to check the range of motion than to really stress things. But I'm sure I'll be stiff in the morning, which will give me some incentive to do my AM Yoga.

I can't do a decent butterfly, due to the tightness mentioned above. But at least that means I know something to use to work on that tightness below my collar bones. There's another weight move (I'll have to look up the name) that should help the overhead stretches, too.

I didn't try any squats or lunges, even without weights. I think I want my abs and lower back a little more stable before I try those. I really don't trust the left leg and hip at the moment. I need to find a place in this cluttered house to do leg-up-the-wall stretches and get my hamstrings to extend a bit before I try squats.

My weight has been stable lately: I might have gained a pound over the holidays, but my weight is still within the range where it has been hovering for the past several months. I don't really eat very much, and my diet is fairly healthy since I do most of my own cooking. I'm not going to try to lose weight while I ramp up this exercise program. I mostly want to reorganize the weight I've got. But if some of it wants to go away completely, I won't complain.

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Fri, Dec 28, 2007

Ankle

Posted at 3:19 pm MST to Exercise

I had a session with my massage therapist this morning for the first time in far too long. When she moved from working on my left leg to the right one, Marti said "Hey, you have an ankle on this side."

It's true. My left leg is stiff and bloated compared to the right one. And, Marti says it is shorter, too, which it didn't used to be -- which is partly the result of the muscles being all clenchednon that side, but partly a sign that my hip is going wonky again. Which will mess up my lower back.

My hip and left arm (which is also a mess compared to the right one, though even the right arm isn't in great shape) are both sore now, but that's partly because the blood is getting into places that had beenlocked tight.

I was in good shape in 2001, before I started travelling so much and had my exercise routines disrupted, and before the surgery and radiation treatments.

It's a good thing I started the yoga again. And I haven't been doing much computing this week: I can imagine what Marti would say about the shape my arms were in last weekend.

This weekend I'm going to excavate my weight bench, which turned into an auxiliary bookshelf during the years I was travelling, like every other horizontal surface in the house. I'm going to have have to start slowly or the range of motion problems will mess up my form enough that I may do more harm than good.

I've also prepaid for a series of bi-weekly massage sessions. With Marti working on my circulation and range of motion from the outside every two weeks, and the weights and yoga working on the inside, maybe I can get my limbs working properly again before I end up crippled.

I also need to contemplate furniture: working from home, I need to pay more attention to ergonomics.

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Wed, Dec 26, 2007

Yoga and Other Exercise

Posted at 4:25 pm MST to Exercise

For several years I exercised regularly: yoga, walking and free weights. Even when I started living in corporate housing in far away places (and gaining weight) I tried to keep up with the yoga and free weights. Then I had some surgery and radiation treatments, and between the loss of range of motion and the weight gain, the exercises I was used to became too awkward and painful.

In the year I've been home, my weight seems to have stabilized: I haven't lost any weight, but I haven't gained any either. I haven't been trying to limit my intake particularly, either, and my exercise patterns have been about as minimal as they can get for someone who isn't bedridden.

I've noticed in the past that scars seem to take about two years to settle down: my throat looked like Frankensteins's monster for about two years after my thyroid surgery, and then the scar faded and flattened out. It's now over two years since the end of the radiation treatments.

I've been trying to use my right arm to stretch and reach for things (high shelf in the baking cabinet for example), and I think the range of motion coming back.

Today I got out my favorite yoga DVD and a strap and mat, and the result was very encouraging. I was stiff, especially where the scars are, and the fat that wasn't there 6 years ago still got in the way, but I was mostly able to attempt the abdominal twists. And my right arm was able to do its share in downward-dog, unlike the last time I tried.

I'm going to try to get back in the habit of starting my day with yoga stretches or some other exercise. If I exercise at least as often as I update this blog, my over-all health should improve and I may have fewer problems with arms pain and leg cramps. I'm adding a new blog category for exercise data.

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