Just getting started on the trail to better health

[skyking]

I have gotten into biking, riding to work from the train and back every day. It's just a short distance but I have extra time in the mornings so I get a good 30 minute cardio ride every day,
I have added in a 25~30 mile ride home a couple of times this week. I get off the train at the first stop and ride to my station.
Today I was able to keep my heart rate at an average of 126 for an hour and a half. The body parts are coming along

 

[skyking]

The air quality around here has been really bad due to smoke from fires in Canada. It cleared out enough Thursday to do cardio, and Friday I took my longest ride on the way home, 43.5 miles in 3:07 moving time. About 30 miles in I came to the realization that this was no longer an exercise ride, it was a personal athletic event and I was getting my ass kicked
I got into some leg cramps with 8 miles to go and knew I had to spin through them, stopping would be the end of it. With the 7.5 mile cardio ride that morning, it was a 50+ day.

 

[skyking]

I logged 230 miles last month. Hoping to get that many in this month, but I am walking 60~70 miles on concrete on the picket lines each week. I'm not feeling much like riding after that.

 

[skyking]

I've steadily gained weight over the last 9 months. It is a hard pill to swallow, but I have backslid 28 pounds total from my all time ( in the last 3 decades) low.
I rode 1200 miles on my bike from July to the end of the year at the same time, although the worst of the gain happened after the riding weather went away.
The good:
Resting HR is only up to 62.
BP is good.
Cholesterol is still <110

Today I started intermittent fasting. I had dinner last night and a protein bar at 4 pm, going to have dinner as normal.
Tomorrow I will have breakfast, lunch, dinner.
I will alternate this for a while and see.

 

[skyking]

Rather than start a new thread I will bring this up to date. Since the last post:
Two bad falls with rotator cuff tears and surgeries in 2018~19. I was cleared for work in June 2020, but the damage was done.
Some bouts with depression since then, untreated.
I became quite sedentary and gained most of the weight back that I had fought so hard to lose in early 2017.
I never thought of myself as a yo-yo dieter but this is my second yo.
I started back on a doctor supervised program, similar to the first one. I do 800 calories a day plus about 100 cals of good cheats. It is a mild ketosis diet just like the last.
I have week 4 in the bag and heading into week 5 today.
I picked up a new nordictrack/Ifit treadmill at Costco, it came with a 1 year Ifit family membership plan.
On week 2 of having the treadmill.
The first week was the water 12 week, and have done 4,4,3 since then.
Getting back on the treadmill has been easy enough for a 61 year old. I am now doing intervals and 45 minutes twice a day.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Good job dude. Working through the discomfort, or outright pain, for rehab and hopefully renewed athleticism at some point, well it's a SOB.

Having had a comminuted fracture of the left clavicle, and distal clavicle fracture with grade 3 separation of the right shoulder, I can somewhat relate to your difficulties.

But this is going somewhere, not hijacking the thread. The last shoulder injury, the right, was a decade or so ago, I was early to mid 40s. Now, in mid 50s everything is rehabbed and I am nearly pain free. Point being, keep with the eating plan, and rehab consistently, and you will amaze yourself with how far your recovery can go.

I can relate to the depression phase too. Happened after my knee surgery. Ended up with a spare tire gut, which never having had one, did a number on my psychological health, even more than my physical health. That was tough sledding, because it wasn't vanity, it was a sense of being broken and semi useless. The uncertainty of what my future health would be like? Would the pain and discomfort ever abate? Feeling like a burden on my loved ones. Add to that what weight gain does physiologically, and it was a bad cocktail.

And I am not going to talk about using your will power, that is finite, and you use it up. It's grim determination; implacable and relentless. I am the - "because fuck you that's why" type. I think we can all be if we draw on it. That's my advice: You will rehab the shoulders, lose the unhealthy weight, and get to the mental, emotional, and physical state you need, because you CAN stop, but you won't. Why? Because fuck that, that's why.

 

[skyking]

My right shoulder was a massive tear but fixable. It is as 100% as can be. I can build on that.
The left was not good at all. She knew she could not pull it together but she did snap a picture of her trying for LOLs.
She had an allogoraft of donor tissue there and the surgery had to be done at a hospital due to the tissue rules.
It has been not so good. It works and has range of motion, but not as strong and it is noisy and has hitches in the git-a-long.
I have no interest in the gym right now, so the upper body is going to be Ifit workouts on the floor in front of the TV, yoga and things like that.
Our retirement property is 1.3 miles from 100 miles of the Olympic Discovery Trail. My cardio will be biking.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Cool, but don't bike! One wreck and you could be FUBAR again. I completely exposed my left patella in a MTB wreck about 15yrs ago. Haven't biked since. I remember the ER tech cleaning it out, saying exercise was unhealthy. He was good; I was laughing while he scrubbed debris out of a huge gapping wound.

I just looked at that trail, and while it looks super tame, chaos reigns. I would not want to fall off that bike brother. You do what you feel is best. I haven't ridden in a long time. Got hurt worse on an MTB, than having D1 defensive linemen and wrestlers trying to twist my head off like a beer cap.

The rest sounds excellent. People that make fun of yoga, haven't spent enough time with yoga. And the treadmill is good lower impact cardio than the street or sidewalk.

Take the rehab easy, it ain't a Rocky training montage. It took me years for my knees to feel good. The left was the bike wreck, the right was the surgery after decades of combat sports. But dead lifts, and chalice squats have been money. I started with just stretching and body weight stuff of course. Getting to heavy weights was years of suffering. Which is something you probably already know, but it is important to iterate. It is going to suck, embrace the suck.

Oh, I don't know what they have you on. I don't do narcotic stuff, makes my skin crawl. Ibuprofen is my BFF though.

And how did both your shoulders get nuked? I don't think I read far enough?

 

[skyking]

I thought I was some sort of Quicksilver bicycle messenger in the streets of Seattle and I fell and tore them both. I have no illusions about the hazards of bicycling and I'm still going to do it Don't even try to talk me out of that shit.
Now I know how to pick my battlegrounds. I take nothing for pain and have been that way for years. The surgeries are old news going on two and a half years now.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I thought I was some sort of Quicksilver bicycle messenger in the streets of Seattle and I fell and tore them both. I have no illusions about the hazards of bicycling and I'm still going to do it Don't even try to talk me out of that shit.
Now I know how to pick my battlegrounds. I take nothing for pain and have been that way for years. The surgeries are old news going on two and a half years now.

LOL! I feel you. My wife tried to get me to stop doing combat sports for years before giving up. As the old adage says - Love hurts.

Very cool about dealing with the pain. I don't take ibuprofen primarily for discomfort though. It is NSAID i.e. anti inflammation I appreciate so much. Loosens my shoulders and knees up. I can barely pop up on a surfboard my knees are so tight without taking NSAIDs.

 

[skyking]

dropped another 2 at the Monday weigh in. I am doing some baby intervals on the treadmill and noticed that when I start out in the morning, my heart is very acceleration-resistant. It takes forever to warm it up over 120.
After that it goes right on up no problemo

 

[skyking]

It is a bit disheartening to measure what a person has lost in 5 years.
When I get down to 220~230 I can measure it better, but I used to do 4.5 MPH on the old treadmill in a walk. Now 3.8 seems like the comfortable speed on the new one. My heart rate follows that trend too.

 

[skyking]

My resting HR has dropped pretty quickly with the regular treadmill. 5 years ago when I was cycling daily, it was 52~53. During the dark days it went up to 61~63
Now it is cruising back down to 53~55
My BP was borderline and the cardiologist put me on the low dose of lisinopril, and I will probably have to cut them in half soon. This morning my home machine has me at 132/72 and HR 52.
last time I took it my weight was similar, and as I got down to a better weight I had to titrate that shizzle right down, as it got too low.

 

[skyking]

I did my first 5K walk on the treadmill, plus a little extra.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Didn't go through the whole thread, just the last page, but props for keeping it up. I know how hard it is, both the GF and I have been doing calorie restriction for the last 18mo or so, it's been a slog. Until ~6mo or so we had a pretty consistent 4lb/mo drop, flattened out though so we've started including workouts as well, which has pushed us a little further down. Feels good to be closer to my lowest adult weight again.

 

[skyking]

I'm about 6 months out from that and it seems like a long tunnel ahead.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I'm about 6 months out from that and it seems like a long tunnel ahead.

It's not a tunnel, it's a tube ride!

 

[skyking]

sure. My willpower has faded and I have to do a reset.
On a good note I did 4 miles yesterday and 4.6 miles today on the treadmill, a solid hour of cardio each time.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

sure. My willpower has faded and I have to do a reset.
On a good note I did 4 miles yesterday and 4.6 miles today on the treadmill, a solid hour of cardio each time.

My philosophy is never rely on will power for anything long term. It is a finite resource that gets exhausted. I don't workout, work is a 4 letter word. Have fun, fitness should be the by-product. If your body is unwilling to allow you to have fun now, perhaps look at pre exercise stacks to help? Provided your Dr is cool with it.

 

[skyking]

dude the willpower involves food. Crunchy tasty too many carbs food.

 

[Torn Mind]

I only got lacerations on my fingers and the muscular tightness from the recovery still affects me 3 years from that time; my rhomboids did not take well to awkward sleeping positions. Have had to do self-massage on them. I'm lucky my body is thin and I have flexibility to reach many muscles with my hands.

 

[skyking]

take your thin body out of this fat old man thread ASAP!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

dude the willpower involves food. Crunchy tasty too many carbs food.

I see said the blind man. Brain pleasure center activation aka junk food junky. That's tough sledding alright.

 

[skyking]

Yes, your tube ride is more like a lower GI journey.

 

[Torn Mind]

take your thin body out of this fat old man thread ASAP!

Jealous?

I might not have a gigantic appetite but I know that starches are a real addiction. After all, being an Asian, rice was a constant. I did however, avoid exposure to junk foods and Coca-Cola.

I find that I can quell cravings with some berries or fibrous sweets like sweet potato or apples. Just a little something to tame the appetite.

I'm a big believer in eating a mollusk or fatty fish(salmon, sardines, mackerel, etc) and approximately 1oz of very dark chocolate(88% or above) every day.

Fatty acid increases performance of cellular powerhouse

An entirely new control mechanism that regulates the function of mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell, has been discovered by researchers. Surprisingly, a fatty acid is playing a key role in this process. The scientists have now reported that using fatty acid as a food additive improved...

www.sciencedaily.com

Dietary stearic acid regulates mitochondria in vivo in humans - Nature Communications

Dietary fatty acids have different effects on human health. Here, the authors show that ingestion of the fatty acid C18:0, but not of C16:0, rapidly leads to fusion of mitochondria and fatty acid oxidation in humans, possibly explaining the health benefits of C18:0.

www.nature.com

I might not get fat but still have to worry about the likes of diabetes all the same. My mom is prediabetic with an A1C of 6.1, but she still gravitates towards GI bombs like ramen noodles.