Oh torture

The house is full of leftover hallowe'en candy that I can't eat! Not fair. I did manage 6 mini Aero bars though (chocolate is easy, you just pop it on your tongue and let it melt) and still did not manage to top 1400 calories (I'm aiming for a minimum of 1600, and preferably way higher) although I did cram in a respectable 60 grams of protein, thanks to a tin of salmon and some mayo.

And, I did 20 sit-ups today, albeit slowly. It is hard to find exercises that don't use your feet in some way! I would like to do something for my arms, and thought of dips, but I don't know how that would work—maybe it would be ok because the weight would be on my heel? Hmm...

Yikes

Ok I'm in my first cold water soak of the cold-hot-cold routine, and yow! Oh boy.

Anyway, I didn't do much today, but I did do some walking and climbed a few stairs. And, I just did my foot-lift work-out.

And now I'm in the warm bath, and prickles all over. My nerves are crazy. Whoa.

I'm short on everything again today (calories, protein, nutrients) so I'm having a Myoplex to top up. My goal is to get at least 1500 calories and 70 grams of protein (1 gram for every kilo of bodyweight—although I'm sure I weigh less than that now.

And while I'm here, I did my blood pressure at the the pharmacy the other day and found it in my pocket, so here it is for posterity: 104/64, pulse 59.

We must do our exercises

For posterity, another "before" pic—of my legs, showing how one is twice the size of the other. One is bulky, one is flabby. Charming. Now you know why my physio was laughing! The smaller one is pure marshmallow as well—zero muscle tone. Which is why I'm so tired after my big workout today. I feel like I ran a marathon! After probably a cumulative five minutes of exercise spread throughout the day. So sad. I have a long, long way to go. I am definitely ready for a nice soak with epsom salts or something at this point.

And here is a video of my exercise—so you can see just how intense it is. Ha!

Before

Here are a couple of "before" pics taken at the orthodontist's office. Not pretty, not pretty at all. But I guess they're not supposed to be. And boy, I had no idea how uncomfortable it is getting these photos done! They put these awful plastic thingies in your mouth to pull your lips etc. out of the way. Ugh.

I have more of these, but I will spare you (and myself) the ugliness.

my first physio

The wonderful Angus looked a bit worried when I walked in this morning (after all of the chronic pain agonies of the past year) but had to stop himself from laughing when I said "I just wanted to show off my new boot" and laughed out loud when he saw how withered my calf is. He was unimpressed with the doc who initially withheld the news about the fracture, and said it'll be another 3 weeks before I should really think about putting weight on it again. So for now (5 weeks to the day since I broke it) here's my new routine:

1. Take off cast as much as possible while sitting, and practise flexing my calf by alternately lifting heel and toe from the floor, without putting any weight on it.
2. With theraband around ball of foot, push against and hold.
3. Alternate 2 min in a warm foot bath/2 min in a cold foot bath, 5 times each.

I said "I guess it's too early to ask for a recommendation on where to get fitted for a good walking shoe" and he just nodded and stuck some lovely, lovely needles into my leg.

Hmm.

Went to bed early last night, and then my son let out a shriek sometime after one o'clock, and here I am three hours later...

I started using fitday earlier this week. I've used it periodically over the years, mainly to check how I'm doing with vitamins and minerals—I'm anemic so I need lots of iron, and it's also interesting to see what you get lots or not enough of. It was actually fitday that inspired one of my current favourite soups (lentil & chard)—I realised I don't get a lot of vitamin E or selenium as well as iron, looked at what foods contain those nutrients (answer: lentils and chard) and then looked for a recipe containing those ingredients.

Anyway, looking at my food diary for this week the problem is pretty clear—I am not getting nearly enough food! The most calories I managed in a day was 1500 (a third of that was from chocolate); one day I only got 880. so, I had better start drinking the myoplex. and doing more cooking. part of the food problem is that, in addition to the chewing difficulty, the broken foot has interfered with my dinner routine. Normally I would take the subway or bike to work, but I can't manage with the aircast (going down stairs is very difficult for me, and most subway stations on my route only seem to have "up" escalators). I would get home from work, pop dinner (made ahead, I actually have a freezer full of food) in the oven, and then drive up to my son's school and my husband's office, bring them both home, and dinner would be ready. Now, I drive to H's school straight from work, no time to go home to put dinner in the oven, and by the time we're all home we're tired and hungry and generally just eat some pasta or something. Not exactly balanced. I need to find a solution for this. I wish our oven was programmable!

And did I mention asthma?

I was diagnosed with mild asthma last spring. When I thought I would start running. I started slow like you’re supposed to, the jog-a-bit-walk-a-bit routine, and started experiencing chest pains, although not while I was jogging (it would happen at other unrelated times of the day). So that’s another wrinkle in my road back to health. I started learning this summer about inhaling into different areas of the lung (I had been working on diaphragmatic breathing as opposed to chesty breathing already, but this is a qi-gong thing where you breathe into the back of the lung) in my tai chi class, but of course I can't do tai chi with an aircast on my foot. So much to work on, so little time (and energy)!

Hello.

This is going to be a personal fitness blog. I expect it to be quite boring.

Basically, about a year ago I started suffering from chronic (maybe constant is a better word) pain. Arthrotec helps. Then in September I got braces and the same week broke my foot (technically, a minor fracture of the toe, and “soft tissue damage” that causes pain mid-foot and my first three toes to be numb/tingly all of the time). During the pity party that ensued, I ate a lot of cake and icecream and poutine. I’ve started eating better—homemade soups, lentils, beans, etc. to try to get some protein and fibre back into my diet, but I’ve lost a lot of weight—all of it muscle. I actually got a body-builder-type drink (Myoplex) at the drugstore yesterday to try to up my protein intake, because it is quite sad.

Anyway tomorrow I start physio, and I wanted a place to keep track of what I’m doing exercise-wise, diet-wise, and otherwise-wise.