Week 2 Update

I must confess I’ve not been working as hard at the exercises given to me by the physio as I perhaps should have been. I am on annual leave, and I’ve been finding it difficult to muster the enthusiasm to do anything if I don’t want to do it. Like college work. Or renewing my car insurance. Or exercising.

Since I last updated, I’ve been to the physio twice and played three games of five a side football. I’ve done virtually no stretching or core work, something that I’m annoyed with myself with. My excuse is that I’ve been busy watching Euro 2012, writing my JuNoWriMo entry and trying desperately to unwind while I’m off work, but I suspect that doesn’t carry much water.

At our session last week, the physio suggested my quadriceps are stronger than my hamstrings, but my hamstrings are less tight than my quadriceps. What I know about the human musculoskeletal system could be written on one of my finger tips, so when a health care professional suggests my hamstring and quads could be causing my knee problems, I have to take his word for it.

He also noted my discomfort in bending and straightening my right knee, and gave me an exercise for that as well, observing that the pain would get worse before it would get better. It’s another exercise I haven’t really been doing, but hopefully I will develop more of a regime when I return to work properly on the 25th of the month.

I have been studiously recording my calorie intake however, using the Livestrong website and app. Since I started observing how much and I eat and my weight, I’ve apparently lost 5lbs. I would ideally like to get down around 210lbs, or 95kg; that’s 27lbs/12.5kg away. Again, because I’m off work, and because of my knee, I’m not doing a huge amount of exercise right now, but that will hopefully change next month.

Finally, I hope to have reached an understanding with my bicycle over its continual mangling of inner tubes. I’ve bought a new, Kevlar-laced, puncture resistant tyre (£25), and at some point in the next few days I’ll put the wheel back on the bike. And then sometime after that I might actually ride it.

I may not update again until the 30th of June; by then I may have fallen back into some semblance of routine.

Week 1 Update

In my last post, I wrote about how much I’d like to take up running again but was being frustrated in my aim by a series of small, ongoing injuries. This entry will be the first of a series of entries as I hopefully track my journey back to being a reasonably fit human being, footballer and athlete.

It’s been a busy week. On Wednesday morning I had my second physiotherapy session, where I had, for the first time in my life, acupuncture. The physio seems to think it will help my knees and shins, but I’m not convinced by it; maybe for that reason it won’t work for me. We also continued to work on stretches for my quads, hamstrings and calves and we touched on core work and cycling. I’m due back next Wednesday when we will look at my apparently awful balance.

Aside from the physiotherapy, I’ve invested in a pedometer and have been tracking my steps, distance and calories daily. I wasn’t sure what the significance of how many calories I had burned was, and I did some reading. This has led to an interesting and potentially significant discovery; in recent times I may have been under-eating, which may in turn have slowed my metabolism. Fortunately for me, my work colleague Ian is also a fitness instructor, and he’s been able to give me advice on exercise in the past, so it was to him I took my queries on nutrition.

As far as I understand it (and please correct me if I’m wrong), your average human being requires 2-3,000 calories a day just to function, for your heart to keep beating and your brain firing and your other organs doing what they do. That’s if you lie in bed all day. If you exercise, you can add another 500 calories on top of that. For instance, on Tuesdays, I play football for an hour in the evening. That can apparently burn 800 kcal on top of the ~2700kcal I need to consume anyway. As I’ve mentioned, I have become concerned about my weight, so I may have been tempted to eat less. Or, if I have eaten a lot, it’s been sugary/fatty gunk. According to my research, under-eating can actually be detrimental to weight-loss as when your body thinks it’s not getting enough nutrients it slows your metabolism to protect its stores of fats.

This is the theory anyway. I’ve downloaded the Livestrong Calorie tracker app, and for the past three days I’ve been conscientiously logging what I eat and how much I exercise. Inputting your personal details, such as height, weight, age, gender and weight loss target, the app will tell you how many calories you should consume each day, and after each meal, how many are left. It also notes the nutritional content of each food you eat, and provides a daily pie chart (pardon the pun) breakdown of your carbs, protein and fat intake. There appear to be several schools of thought as to what that ratio should be, but I’m currently using what appears to be the most popular; 60% carbs, 20% protein, 20% fat.

It’s probably still a little early for me to tell if eating a lot more per day than I’ve been used to is having a positive effect, but I’m certainly feeling no worse. Time will tell I suppose.

And the knee? It’s not great. I played football twice last week, and it’s swollen up quite badly. The shins on the other hand felt slightly better after the litany of stretches, exercises and massages I was given by the physio. The back has been ok, thankfully, the best it’s been in a long time. The planks appear to be helping, and to further strengthen my core, I’m going to a Pilates class in a couple of hours. Wish me luck!