Meet my new friends: ice
packs, knee braces, hiking poles, the hot tub and the chiropractor.
On Monday of the second week,
I hit the trail hard. This is the day
that they do an assessment hike so that they can put you with other people who
hike at your level. It was a great hike
and I felt much stronger than the previous week. I even followed up the 7 mile hike with 45
min of intervals on the treadmill and found myself jogging at 6 mph for 45
seconds, followed by a spin class, core class and a pool class. Not surprisingly, my body revolted. At 7pm, I was lying in bed with a bag of ice
under each knee and one on my left foot. At 9:30 pm, I was still applying the
ice.
On Tuesday, I bought a knee
brace for my left knee (already had one for my right knee), but I had to pass
on the hike. I had rekindled the torn
meniscus injury by doing something so simple as slamming a medicine ball. My knee was not stable, so I went back to my room, set up my ice bags,
took ibuprophen and promptly went to sleep.
I was still able to do all the afternoon exercise classes.
Wednesday, I did a hike that
I had done the previous week and I kept wondering when “the hard part” was
going to come; when I got to the top and realized that we had already done the
hard part, I had a great feeling of accomplishment.
I hiked the rest of the week
and while tired, was not nearly as tired as I was the first week.
Am I getting fit or am I breaking my body?
I find myself asking this
question often. But 3 things tell me I
am getting more fit.
Just when it seems I can do
no more, I start into an exercise and I end up feeling great. The other thing that is giving me some
feedback and telling me that I’m getting fit, is an instrument that they use to
weigh us; it is called the InBody 520. This
machine tells you the lean body mass and amount of fat in each leg, each arm,
and trunk.
Drummm roll…..results…..
I have lost 8.5 lbs of fat in
two weeks. I have gained 2.2 lbs of lean
muscle in the same amount of time. While
the net weight loss is only a little over 6 lbs, I have lost 3% of my body
fat. When I expressed disappointment in
the total lbs lost, I was told that most people take 4 weeks to lose 3% body
fat, so I ended up feeling pretty darn good about that.
My guess is that I am
generally good at building muscle when I work out and I think that over the
years, I would check the scale and some weeks get a pretty low weight loss
number – even though I was working out hard and eating right, and I would get
discouraged and feel like my efforts were useless. What I’m learning now, is that I need to be
more patient (Mom was right, I am not a patient person). I am realizing that being my normal size may
actually obtainable! I am very excited
about this! Living a healthy lifestyle is really not that hard for me, I like the food and exercise, but when it
seemed like I wasn’t getting anywhere with it, it was easier to toss it aside.
Another reading that the
InBody 520 gives is a reading of your intracellular and extracellular
water. The normal ratio is 0.360 –
0.390. My ratio is now 0.386 but when I
first was measured, it was slightly over normal at .0393. My understanding is
this higher than normal reading was likely due to some edema.
I guess in Southern
California, the InBody 520 machines are sometimes available in pharmacies like
CVS. In searching for InBody 520 by
certain cities, I did find some places that have the machines, but it doesn’t
sound as available as I had hoped. Here
is some additional information
http://www.biospaceamerica.com/product/ib520.html.
Other revelations
Working out in the fat
burning zone does not add to fitness and a calorie is not a calorie!
I’ll write more about this in
upcoming blogs. Wish me luck in being able to keep my knees in good shape this
week!
Bye for now,
Deb
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