Back to LJ

I've moved back to LiveJournal - you can follow me there, if you like!

minutiae

Physical therapy continues and I'm feeling better, for the most part. My lower back is much happier, and when it's not, I know how to fix it. I have exercises that I'm doing to strengthen everything connected to my back (which is... everything, pretty much). I am, however, still having neck issues and they're affecting my sleep. I have an appt with the doc on Friday, and I'm going to see what she recommends for that. If nothing else, I may have my therapist show Jeff the thing he does to make the neck pain go away, but I don't know if that will stand up to whatever's causing the pain in the first place.

I've returned to a vegetarian diet over the last week. I think I'm going to stay with it for awhile. For one thing, it just plain feels better in my gut. Like, literally. My body doesn't really like processing meat or meat-type foods. Small amounts of dairy (very small) are ok. Eggs are iffy. Nuts are great, so I think I'll be relying more on them for protein. Beans are ... iffy. Depends on the bean and the preparation, I guess. I am VERY sad to report that I'm having to cut back on super spicy foods, which means that unless I throw caution to the wind (and let's face it, I often do), my diet is kind of bland. But hey... no tummy pain and better energy, so, win.

Walking is going well, though it is still hard to feel like it's always only going to be walking. And maybe it won't. But I'm sure trying to make peace with it. I think it will help when I get out on the trails. Nature is a great peacemaker. 4 miles coming up this weekend. Between the PT and the walking, I'm down a few pounds. I expect this trend to continue as long as I can keep my focus on what feels good in the long term, and not the short term.

crushin'

My physical therapist is, by his own admission, 68 years old. He is amazingly spry, jumping up on the table next to me to demonstrate things, or show me something. Today he pulled the wooden therapy table across the room with me on it - that's not light. He has bright blue eyes and a wide, ready smile. He readily talks running with me, sharing his experience and knowledge. He's a happy guy. I kinda have a platonic crush on him.

Today we measured some hip flexor stuff and my calf muscles (the gastrocnemius and soleus). They're all, as I expected, tight. What's funny is that in each place, I'm more flexible than most on the connected muscles. So my toe point is beyond normal (he thought ballet, I said gymnastics). And my hamstrings are flexible beyond normal for pretty much the same reason (gymnastics when I was a kid and a love of stretching). We talked more about running.

Here's what he said: no matter whether I'm walking or running, I need to work on increasing flexibility in my hips and calves. I need to work on my core as well, but we didn't get to those exercises today. Friday, I suspect. Weight loss, increasing flexibility and strengthening muscles COULD help me run in the future, but it depends on whether there's degenerative disc action going on. I need to request an MRI from the doc so I know. I suspect I do, and will proceed as if running is off the table. For now. I won't try to sneak in a jog or anything else that might jar my back. No more mosh pits. Heh.

At the end of my visit today he made a strong pitch for a vegetarian diet. He wasn't proselytizing about it, he just talked about how studies show it helps a great deal with health issues. With Jeff's recent heart stuff (he has to watch his BP and his cholesterol) maybe the time is finally right to make it so in my family. He gave me a small cookbook and another book that's cool, but that Jeff will never read because there's a lot of God talk in it. That's cool. I can make the case based on science.

And seriously, if this dude is the poster child for vegetarian eating (leaning heavily towards vegan), and taking good care of the body (i.e. cardio AND strength AND flexibility), I'm sold. He's in much better shape than I am despite being 25 years older!

So if I do the half in March, it'll be at a walk. I'm cool with that. I walk a pretty good pace.

mama called the doctor and the doctor said...

Well, the physical therapist, anyway. So our starting point for correction in my back is the sacroiliac joint area. Reading about it makes perfect sense - it's where things hurt most of the time, my sacrum was a point of injury in jr high school, and I also deal with iliotibial band syndrome, which guess what? Also originates in this area.

The good news is that now I know more about what ails me. The bad news is that when I asked the physical therapist about running, he very gently told me that it wasn't likely I'd ever be able to run without pain because of my scoliosis and how it twists this area. He told me runner to runner, which helped, because he understood what he was telling me. So? So. This means I walk. I can walk pretty fast, and that's just as fast as it gets for me. I can still do trails (without running or jogging) and I can still participate in races, but I need to let go of the idea that I will ever run it. Weight loss may help, but probably not enough to make me a runner. The problem is in the structure. Weight loss WILL help all other things hurt less though, and that's good. It's still a goal.

On one hand, I feel relieved. It hasn't been my imagination and it hasn't been that I'm a quitter. The pain is real, and the limitation in my body is concrete and measurable. The PT says I should probably be checked for disc herniation as well. I'll have to talk to my doc about this. I wanted a concrete answer as to whether I should be trying to run. I got that.

And on the other hand, I'm mourning the loss of a certain type of movement that I once took for granted. I really wanted to sprint through the forest, to run fast, rather than jogging or walking. Now it's down to walking. I won't wallow in self-pity because at least I can walk, and the forest is beautiful at a slower pace. But there's a certain level of irritation and grief that I'm experiencing in relation to my body and my life decisions that exacerbated things.

I didn't realize how much getting into shape might be a team event with medical staff. I've spent most of my life ignoring the scoliosis because as a teenager I was so terrified of having to wear a brace. Now I kinda wish I'd gotten over that.

And it's crazy icy snowy outside right now, so I'm likely going to have to be okay with the 10 minutes of walking I got in this morning. I was scheduled to do 20. Hopefully the ice will be cleared by Wednesday!

what ails me

Internal measures of my health are consistently good. My blood pressure often warrants a double take because it's the kind of low that usually comes with a lot of cardio. My cholesterol is low. My resting pulse rate is great. Other than having crappy ventilators (i.e. asthma) and faulty wiring (i.e. migraines) and a little bit of rusty plumbing (i.e. IBS), I'm just as healthy as any person whose BMI is in the "healthy" range (which is generally a bullshit table created for insurance companies to justify fucking with consumers). What doesn't get measured, however, is the impact of my body size and shape on my joints. What doesn't get measured is how it hurts.

So, HAES is fantastic in the sense of throwing away a lot of faulty science and bad communications that mistake correlation for causation. But in those communities I find little support for a discussion of how my weight impacts my back, my knees and my ankles. Also, it impacts my lungs, though that happens even when all other things (i.e. skeletal things) are good. I've gained such a great appreciation of healthy skepticism when it comes to "fitness prescriptions" and ways to measure health from the HAES community, but when it comes to talking about how size impacts the way my body moves, they have literally left me out in the cold. As in, asked me to leave their forums. So. Here I am.

While walking this morning, I thought about the phrase, "if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything." I thought (as I walked by the lovely scenery of the Pacific NW, which includes abundant trees and water) about how in nature, things that stand rigidly are often the first things to break. I thought about all the exercises I've ever done with my body that involve standing rigidly and falling more easily, vs. standing relaxed and flexed, and flowing with pressures applied to my body - but never falling. I thought about how things that stand rigidly in the water are worn down more quickly than things that flow with the water. I thought that rather than believing that if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything, I'd rather gently flex in the flow, with deep roots. I'd rather be shaped by some things in the flow while others simply wash by.

And I thought about how I'd rather take this approach to my health. In the past, I've stood as various trees. The WW Tree. The South Beach Tree. The (this is embarrassing) Cleanse Tree. The Personal Trainer Tree. The HAES Tree. I'm stripping down to the reed now, letting what I've learned from being the trees (except that one, which I deeply regret) shape me. Also, I have a hell of a lot of questions for my physical therapist because...

...the other thing I thought about this morning (I was standing in the shower thinking...) (if you love Jane's Addiction, your brain just sang that), is how back in 2007, when I moved my body down to a weight (that still isn't good enough for the dumb chart, but whatevs) that felt good, that didn't hurt my joints, that let me MOVE, I ultimately rejected it because I didn't want to spend the 10 hours or so in the gym every week that would be required to maintain it. My shower epiphany - that wasn't the right thing. What if there was something I could do for 10 hours a week or so that I love? Like, y'know, hiking? Or walking? Or running? And what if whatever I do for those hours doesn't hurt my body? (That's where the physical therapist comes in.)

Because one thing I know very well is that I'd rather have freedom with what I eat, I'd rather think about food as fuel for what I do, than to restrict what I eat, which leads to all kinds of nasty disordered behaviors. I'm not suggesting that eating healthy isn't important - because duh, it is - but that I'd rather eat well and exercise well than not eat much so I don't have to exercise.

And that brings me back to fixing what ails me, which does require that I lose some weight. I'm not sure how much, and I'm going to consult with the PT on that, as long as s/he doesn't get all BMI on me. That's such a cop-out. I'm also going to get some honest feedback on the limitations of my body. I have scoliosis. I have back issues because of it, and most likely it's what's jacking with my legs. Losing weight will help, but I strongly suspect I still need to know some things about my body.

My appointment is on Monday.

I can't wait.

starting over

It's simple, really. On Sunday I'll re-start the Portland Fit program, which will get me ready for the Lake Sammamish Half on March 8th. I start PT on December 9th, which is a good damned thing. My right side is jacked from my neck to my ankle. I'll be walking again. Feels good to be setting up training schedules and playlists again.

oh fer chrissakes

"Do you still beat your wife?"

So this happened.

If you haven't heard about it, you can go here, or here, or here, or just Google "What's your excuse?"

And the problem here isn't that a woman is proud of her accomplishment. It's the question at the top of her picture, which is a nightmare of circular logic to try to answer. I'm not going to call this woman a bully, because I think that word is not only over-used, but really not the right one. What it should say is something more along the lines of "Why don't you look like me?" (and doesn't EVERY glossy image want us to ask that of ourselves?) or "Why aren't your priorities the same as mine?"

Here's the deal for me. I worked out for two hours a day for over six months. Ate 1200-ish calories each day. Ate well. Worked with a trainer. Maintained my full-time job and part-time college student status.I also had children, no nannies, and so on.  Didn't look a thing like that.  Couldn't look a thing like that. Whatever this woman has to say, genetics matter, methods of birth matter, lots of things matter, and they're NOT. EXCUSES.

I would like to unleash a tide of scathing sarcasm, but that's already been done ad nauseum, and besides, it's playing the same game and I'll pass.

Instead, I'll say this: A writer could stack some books up there and say "What's your excuse?" to all the people out there struggling to write. A business person or financial wiz might stack up their bank account and assets. A runner, their race times. On and on, but the point is, it's about priorities. And frankly, there are other things that are more important to me. I'm pretty sure there are several areas where my "accomplishments" (aided by genetics, my career field and a thousand or so life circumstances) could let me turn the question around on Ms. Kang.

The problem, in short, isn't the picture or Ms. Kang's obvious devotion to fitness. The problem is her assumption that every other mother out there should WANT to have the same priorities, and have no excuse not to look like her. And since she makes her money on selling fitness, I guess it makes sense. Thing is, I'm not buying.

You shouldn't either.