Before I touch on weight loss, this is just an update on my knee.
Went to the physical therapist a little bit after my last blog post, and things are doing well. They can tell that my knees and hips are much more superior to just a month ago, and things are really improving. My hips and quads are strong enough to start supporting my femur better, and now the only thing I need to really work on is form/technique. By that, I mean that when I do a squat, for instance, I need to make sure my knee is bending in the right way and that it's aligned properly, as well as how I walk and run. I need to focus on pointing my toes forward, and keeping my knee pointing straight towards my toes, rather than inwards. Now, I'm still working on my hip/quad strength, but I'm a lot stronger than I was. My knees are feeling better, and at my last appointment, I actually got on to a treadmill and did a bit of running to see how I could improve my form in order to help my knees. I need to work on keeping my knees straight of course, but also I should increase my cadence. Meaning that I need to increase my steps per minute. I run at around 140-144 steps per minute, and if I increase to 160-180 eventually, then there's less time I spend putting pressure on my legs because there's more contact between my foot and the ground per step when I run at a slower cadence. This doesn't mean that I need to run at a faster pace, but that my legs shouldn't be taking such long strides, I guess. Anyways, as I increase my pace, it will be easier to increase my steps per minute.
I actually did go for a run on Monday, and it was tough. Not on my knees, but tough because I haven't run in a while. It also was a bit harder because as I was trying to increase my steps per minute to a bit above 150, it was hard to run even a 10 minute pace (as in I was running faster than that, and it was hard to slow down my pace but keeping up my cadence). I'll be hoping to make it out and run tomorrow, we'll see how that goes. But it felt good to finally run. My knees are a bit sore today, which is why I didn't run today, but they weren't bad yesterday. Hopefully this is just a one time deal with knee pain. I should be icing them more... Sorry, I'm just rambling now. Went for a run, went poorly, but it was great to be out again. Things are looking up for my knees.
On to losing weight. As I got back to Corvallis in early January, I decided I needed to start counting calories again in order to control what I was eating. Plus, by counting calories, it also has helped keep up my motivation to eat healthy. Well, in just the first two weeks, I lost any weight that I gained during winter break. I had gained some weight because I wasn't staying active, due to keeping off my knees. At that point, I was back to about 212 pounds, which as you might remember, is 12 more than I weight back in June. For most of the summer, I weighed 205-210 just because I was focused more on work rather than losing any weight. Nonetheless, I'm now about 205 or 206 pounds. I was hoping to hit 200 again by March, but I'm having problems getting past 205 right now. Hopefully running will help. One problem is that I've only been doing my hip exercises, and other than that, just a bit of walking. So not much cardio or intensive workouts. But I'm working on it, and it's all a work in progress. One of these days, I'll finally be at a comfortable weight, but until then, just have to keep pressing on to meet my goals.
One thing that set me back was the Super Bowl. I decided to basically go all out and eat a bunch of junk food for a few days (leftovers after Sunday) and I definitely gained a couple pounds back, plus had a lot of sodium in my body, which retained a lot of water. So this week, I've actually been doing sort of a cleanse. Essentially, I limited all sodium, and reduced consumption of fats and sugars, as well as fake sugars (minus stevia in oatmeal). For the first two days, I didn't eat any meat, and focused all my attention on fruits and vegetables, as well as beans (not canned), edamame, and almonds. After that, I incorporated a little bit of meat, but also tried some tempeh, which was interesting. I've also been drinking lots of water, having green tea daily, and making sure to not eat after a certain time of night to prevent overeating before going to bed. Just reducing the sodium made me lose at least 3 pounds, so now I'm at a solid 205/206 weight. Luckily, this cleanse is helping my transition back into watching what I eat, since Super Bowl weekend threw me off a bit.
Speaking of food, I made some steelhead trout last night that was pretty good. I marinaded it for about 3 hours prior to cooking in 1/3 cup water, 1/3 cup teriyaki and soy sauce mixture (soy sauce was fine, but I wanted to use a bit of the teriyaki), 1/3 cup brown sugar, 3 minced garlic cloves, and a tad bit of honey. Also, threw in a few lemon slices as well. Then baked it with a bit of diced onion and more lemon slices, and sprinkled a bit more brown sugar on top of it. Was pretty darn good. But it was quite rich because of the brown sugar. Very tasty, and the first time I've ever cooked fish before.
And with that, I'm going to end this, because I'm not sure what else to say off the top of my head. So until next time, I'd enjoy it if you stayed fancy.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Friday, February 1, 2013
My Hips Don't Lie
Sorry for pulling a Shakira on you, but it's true, they don't lie.
I apologize for not updating my blog at all recently. I didn't really feel like posting anything throughout December, and then in January, I kept forgetting to write up anything. Well, it's time to change that.
I last left off in early December, just shortly before I had a doctor's appointment. It was simple physical/check up exam to see how everything was going. I NEEDED to raise a question about my knee, because nothing was getting better, and it's necessary to have healthy legs if I ever want to run again. Currently, I am not running, as my knee(s) just can't handle it. Now, I feel discomfort every single day. I put up with it, but when it does hurt, my knee can hurt pretty badly. So anyways, everything is good in the health department. I got a blood test to see how things have improved after losing so much weight, and things are looking really good. It was amazing to see my test results only improve. But I also asked about my knee. He said that it appeared that there was some sort of alignment issue with my femur and kneecap, and that I should go to Physical Therapy to get a better idea on what's wrong and what I should do to fix it. He also recommended to check out a chiropractor to see if that could help at all. Needless to say, I did both.
About two weeks ago, I finally made the appointments for PT and a chiropractor. I kept putting it off due to working during the break, and that I just didn't feel like calling to make an appointment. However, the day I moved back to Corvallis, I spent a lot of time walking up and down stairs, and it really got to me knee. That night was the worst pain my knee has endured. I had to get a brace the next day, and I quickly called to set up the appointments. I went to the chiropractor first, and she said that she agreed with my doctor - there was an alignment issue with my femur and kneecap, and because of that, it was causing a lot of inflammation behind my kneecap, which prevented it from healing, even while resting for long periods of time (for example, an entire month, i.e. winter break, of doing no physical exercise). She wanted to see me a few times for some adjustments to help quicken the pace of my recovery. No complaint there, the adjustments are nice. Relieves some pressure, and just makes my legs feel a bit better in general. So I've now had 3 appointments with her, and she says that she can notice the different in how she adjusts my tibia or fibula, I forget which she said), and has noticed some looseness (that's good) in my hips. Well, the reason things have gotten a bit better is due to my PT.
I got the complete news at my first PT appointment. My femur is malaligned with my kneecap, meaning that when it bends, my femur is bending inwards. It's not something I have ever noticed, but when I do a squat, my knees bend inwards very slightly. But the fact that I've always been a heavy guy, and that slight alignment issue has caused some serious pain issues. The reason why my femur is doing that? My hips. That is why my hips, in fact, do not lie. Apparently, I have, well, in proportion to my body size and the rest of my leg muscles, week hips. In reality, they're about average for someone smaller than me. But this means that my hips aren't able to support my femur properly, thus, causing me knee issues. This isn't an uncommon problem, and in fact the common name for it is runner's knee. It's exactly what I thought the problem was prior to seeing the doctor, so it was nice to know that I was at least correct on my self-diagnosis.
A part of me almost wished that I needed surgery or something, just for a quick fix, some recovery time, and voila. The main reasoning was because of the fact that I could rest for an entire month and my knee would get worse. But, I'm on the right track. I need to strengthen my hips. I started off with a few basic exercises for my hips/upper legs and after two weeks, felt no difference. I had another PT appointment yesterday for a check up. Firstly, they didn't expect much of an improvement after two weeks, considering that it should take 4-6 weeks before I could think about running again. Secondly, I found out that I wasn't really working my muscles as well as I should have been. I needed to really emphasize a few muscles while holding a certain exercise. So now I'm doing those properly, and they added two more exercises to my repertoire - two different kinds of squats. I hadn't realized that when I was doing squats previously, that my knees were bending in slightly, and now I'm supposed to make sure that when my legs bend, that my knee is pointed straight. So in order to do that, I have to purposefully feel as if I'm pointing them outwards. It feels slightly abnormal, since it's just slightly different than what I'm used to. But I can notice the difference. It's working my muscles differently, and it puts less strain on my knees, WHICH IS SO NICE. I can still feel the slight discomfort in my knees today that I always feel, but everytime my knees bend, I'm conscious about keeping them aligned properly (straight, to my middle toe or so) and I can tell that there isn't as much pressure on my bad knees. Also, the grinding noise that I've had for over a year now, is diminished when I bend my knees properly. So it looks like I should be seeing some real improvement over the next two weeks. I'm sure hopeful to see improvement. I need it.
That's all I will talk about for now. Basically, my knees are still screwed up, and it's all because of my stupid hips. Strengthening them should fix the problem, but it'll take some time and a lot of effort. Each workout takes around 45-60 minutes, just for my hips. But it's all for the better. I hope to be running by March. It should really help with weight loss. Speaking of which, I have gotten back into losing weight successfully, and I'll touch on that topic in my next post. But until then, stay fancy.
I apologize for not updating my blog at all recently. I didn't really feel like posting anything throughout December, and then in January, I kept forgetting to write up anything. Well, it's time to change that.
I last left off in early December, just shortly before I had a doctor's appointment. It was simple physical/check up exam to see how everything was going. I NEEDED to raise a question about my knee, because nothing was getting better, and it's necessary to have healthy legs if I ever want to run again. Currently, I am not running, as my knee(s) just can't handle it. Now, I feel discomfort every single day. I put up with it, but when it does hurt, my knee can hurt pretty badly. So anyways, everything is good in the health department. I got a blood test to see how things have improved after losing so much weight, and things are looking really good. It was amazing to see my test results only improve. But I also asked about my knee. He said that it appeared that there was some sort of alignment issue with my femur and kneecap, and that I should go to Physical Therapy to get a better idea on what's wrong and what I should do to fix it. He also recommended to check out a chiropractor to see if that could help at all. Needless to say, I did both.
About two weeks ago, I finally made the appointments for PT and a chiropractor. I kept putting it off due to working during the break, and that I just didn't feel like calling to make an appointment. However, the day I moved back to Corvallis, I spent a lot of time walking up and down stairs, and it really got to me knee. That night was the worst pain my knee has endured. I had to get a brace the next day, and I quickly called to set up the appointments. I went to the chiropractor first, and she said that she agreed with my doctor - there was an alignment issue with my femur and kneecap, and because of that, it was causing a lot of inflammation behind my kneecap, which prevented it from healing, even while resting for long periods of time (for example, an entire month, i.e. winter break, of doing no physical exercise). She wanted to see me a few times for some adjustments to help quicken the pace of my recovery. No complaint there, the adjustments are nice. Relieves some pressure, and just makes my legs feel a bit better in general. So I've now had 3 appointments with her, and she says that she can notice the different in how she adjusts my tibia or fibula, I forget which she said), and has noticed some looseness (that's good) in my hips. Well, the reason things have gotten a bit better is due to my PT.
I got the complete news at my first PT appointment. My femur is malaligned with my kneecap, meaning that when it bends, my femur is bending inwards. It's not something I have ever noticed, but when I do a squat, my knees bend inwards very slightly. But the fact that I've always been a heavy guy, and that slight alignment issue has caused some serious pain issues. The reason why my femur is doing that? My hips. That is why my hips, in fact, do not lie. Apparently, I have, well, in proportion to my body size and the rest of my leg muscles, week hips. In reality, they're about average for someone smaller than me. But this means that my hips aren't able to support my femur properly, thus, causing me knee issues. This isn't an uncommon problem, and in fact the common name for it is runner's knee. It's exactly what I thought the problem was prior to seeing the doctor, so it was nice to know that I was at least correct on my self-diagnosis.
A part of me almost wished that I needed surgery or something, just for a quick fix, some recovery time, and voila. The main reasoning was because of the fact that I could rest for an entire month and my knee would get worse. But, I'm on the right track. I need to strengthen my hips. I started off with a few basic exercises for my hips/upper legs and after two weeks, felt no difference. I had another PT appointment yesterday for a check up. Firstly, they didn't expect much of an improvement after two weeks, considering that it should take 4-6 weeks before I could think about running again. Secondly, I found out that I wasn't really working my muscles as well as I should have been. I needed to really emphasize a few muscles while holding a certain exercise. So now I'm doing those properly, and they added two more exercises to my repertoire - two different kinds of squats. I hadn't realized that when I was doing squats previously, that my knees were bending in slightly, and now I'm supposed to make sure that when my legs bend, that my knee is pointed straight. So in order to do that, I have to purposefully feel as if I'm pointing them outwards. It feels slightly abnormal, since it's just slightly different than what I'm used to. But I can notice the difference. It's working my muscles differently, and it puts less strain on my knees, WHICH IS SO NICE. I can still feel the slight discomfort in my knees today that I always feel, but everytime my knees bend, I'm conscious about keeping them aligned properly (straight, to my middle toe or so) and I can tell that there isn't as much pressure on my bad knees. Also, the grinding noise that I've had for over a year now, is diminished when I bend my knees properly. So it looks like I should be seeing some real improvement over the next two weeks. I'm sure hopeful to see improvement. I need it.
That's all I will talk about for now. Basically, my knees are still screwed up, and it's all because of my stupid hips. Strengthening them should fix the problem, but it'll take some time and a lot of effort. Each workout takes around 45-60 minutes, just for my hips. But it's all for the better. I hope to be running by March. It should really help with weight loss. Speaking of which, I have gotten back into losing weight successfully, and I'll touch on that topic in my next post. But until then, stay fancy.
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