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.
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