Dealing with Emotions

As I mentioned in my previous post, I injured my right leg a few weeks ago.  We were in the middle of the Working Hard Competition, and I overdid it.  I know exactly when I hurt it, I was Working Hard! and I was going to show those young whippersnappers at the gym a thing or two.

When I was young (in high school and college), I was never athletic.  I never participated in sports or physical activities.  Even when I was a firefighter (in my late 20's and early 30's), I was not that "in shape."  I was strong and muscular (that's easy to accomplish when you're young) but I really didn't have the overall strength that I have achieved over the past 3 years of working out at my gym.  So winning the competition was going to be a source of pride that I could "do this" at my age.  

My right leg has always been my weak one.  As I neared the end of my workout, I knew my right side was close to failure.  Whatever, keep pushing.  Sure enough, I felt the muscle in my right calf give way.  It didn't exactly hurt then, but when I woke up the next day, the whole knee was swollen and my calf hurt like an SOB.  I could barely bend my knee.  And my backside hurt too!  But rather than let everything rest and heal, I loaded up on ibuprofen and bound my knee up tightly with a compression sleeve and a knee brace so I could still compete over the next few days.  I didn't tell my trainer how much pain I was in.  I sucked it up.  Can you say STUPID?  How about COMPULSIVE? I almost won the competition but there has been hell to pay.  I’ve been in pain ever since.  So although I am proud of myself and what I have accomplished, in the back of my mind, I'm a bit concerned that I've done something to permanently screw up my leg.

Sometimes the pain is severe.  I can't go down stairs normally because I can't bend my knee.  About a week ago, I was almost in tears while I was just walking my dogs.  I’m still working out, but once I confessed to my trainer what I did, he cut me off from any cardio and leg exercises and won't let me go back to lower body training until I see a doctor and get the okay. 

So, tomorrow I have a doctor’s appointment with an orthopedic guy to see if I have done anything bad.  I will say that after resting for a week, along with icing, stretching and massage, it’s FINALLY feeling a tiny bit better, so I'm optimistic that it's nothing serious. 

I’ve also been feeling a bit sorry for myself because of it, and of course, what do I want to do when I am feeling sad?  I want to eat sugar.  And when I eat sugar, I feel even crappier. 

Early Saturday morning, I had to go visit my mother at her assisted living place to deal with an issue.  That's always a joy (sarcasm) so I was feeling super EXTRA sorry for myself.  Boo hoo, I hate my mommy AND my leg hurts.

Even though I told myself NO NO NO on the way home, I almost felt like I was in a trance.  My car, magically on its own, stopped at the store and somehow I ended up with a big bag of Sour Patch Kids. I just love those little sugar bombs, but I knew they were going to make me feel like crap.  Whatever!  I felt almost like a kid throwing a tantrum and I ate most of them before I got home.  Of course, I did feel terrible, I was shaky and could feel my heart palpitating.  My a-fib does not like sugar, especially on an empty stomach.  

Even more terrible was my husband was cooking a nice healthy breakfast for us when I got home.  I didn't tell him about the candy, because I was embarrassed and ashamed.  So even though I wasn't really hungry at that point, I ate the breakfast.

Lesson learned, AGAIN.  Grace…Do not eat sugar, especially on an empty stomach!  Deal with the emotions instead of the urges. 

So Monday is always another opportunity to succeed.  I worked out today (upper body) and so far have been eating healthy. So, I faltered but I did not fail.     

Working Hard Challenge

Well, I almost won the challenge.  I lost by ONE point.

I hurt my knee about halfway through, so I was not able to work out quite as hard as usual the second week.

So I took second place.  The other winners are MUCH younger than I am (20’s and 30’s).

I wanted to write after my name “65 years old with a leg injury.” LOL

Anyway, I’m proud of myself on this one. 

New doctor

It's been 2 years since I had an annual checkup.  I had been putting it off because my long-time doctor retired 3 years ago, and 2 years ago I was "assigned" a new doctor (actually she was a Physician's Assistant).  Even though she was much younger than I am (isn't everyone?), she was condescending and kind of rude.   Plus the nurse there told me that Obamacare required that I be weighed on their scale.  If I refused, insurance would probably not pay for the exam.  My old doctor had told me I didn't need to weigh because of my history of eating disorders, but with the new person, it was "Get on the Scale."  (I honestly think it was just a "control" thing.)  Anyway, it was just NOT a good experience.  Since going in for such appointments is unpleasant enough even without the "attitude," I procrastinated and missed my yearly check up in 2017.

About a week ago, I decided enough was enough.  I generally take very good care of my health, but here I was falling down on that most important job.  So I called another clinic where I had been for a "specialty" exam about 2 years ago, and asked if I could become a regular patient.  The receptionist was helpful and scheduled me with a doctor who was taking new patients.   

I'm happy to say that after my appointment this morning, I definitely know that I made the right decision to change.  They were very efficient, I got in right on time (at my other clinic, I would often have to wait 30 minutes even with an appointment). 

The nurse was super nice and when I told her I wasn't getting on the scale and to just write down xxx as my weight, she did!  She didn't even bat an eye.  The doctor was great.  Very thorough, professional and pleasant, open to questions, and was just generally a good communicator.  When I brought up about why I didn't want to get on the scale, she said there was no need to explain, it was perfectly okay.   And...she also said that since I work out so much, my muscle mass is no doubt high.  So the scale really isn't a good measurement of weight anyway.  YES!

Then they gave me a tetanus shot and a pneumonia shot (for us oldsters over 65), took blood, and scheduled me for a mammogram next week and (ugh) a colonoscopy next month.  And all that stuff is performed at the clinic.  My old clinic you had to go here and there for this and that.  Anyway, yeah, I'm going to get it all over with.  Just do it!
 
The challenge at my gym goes on for another 2 days, so I'm working hard at it.  Right now I am in first place!

 

A Challenging Challenge

While I work out with my trainer 4 times a week for an hour, I wear a heart rate monitor.  The brand is called "MyZone" and the information shows up on a TV monitor that the trainer can see while you're working out.  He can know when you've reach 100 percent of your max heart rate, and then how long to allow for heart rate recovery to back to normal, etc.  Besides monitoring heart rate, the belt measures calories burned and something called MEP's. 

MEPs is an acronym for MyZone Effort Points, and it's how effort is measured in the MyZone system. MEPs are earned by exercising within in your desired heart rate zone over a period of time. The more effort you put into your workouts, the more MEPs you earn. 

The workout is designed along the lines of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training.)   The point is to stay within the yellow (aerobic activity) as much as possible, with periodic spurts into the red zone (which is anaerobic).  On upper body days, the workout usually consists of upper body weight lifting such as shoulder presses or push ups (green), interspersed with some full body work such as TRX rows (yellow) and finally mountain climbers or medicine ball slams for 45 seconds (red). Lower body days consist of weighted squats, lunges, etc, interspersed with fast cardio activities.  Each workout, we try to do the circuit 3 times. 

So my gym started a two week challenge yesterday which involves the average MEP's per workout.  I've been working out for over 3 years with my trainer, and I always push myself really hard.  Of course, now that it's a competition, I push myself even harder.

So this was my workout yesterday.  It was upper body and over the course of an hour workout, I burned 555 calories and produced 216 MEP's.   

Yesterday, I thought that was a good number.  But today was lower body day and I burned a lot more...eek!  Okay, I am really tired now.  (At several points, around the 2/3 mark, I thought I was gonna puke...but I didn't. I just kept going.) 

I am glad the challenge is only two weeks!  Apparently my trainer has been telling the other trainers about me as the one to beat...yeah, here I am, a 65 year old lady and I'm supposedly gonna beat people who are much younger and probably in better shape.

We'll see.  I'm pretty competitive so I hope I can keep up this pace for the duration.  Wish me luck!

Looking Forward to Spring

I love TCM's 31 Days of Oscar...so many great movies.  We usually record some of them and watch them later.

Today we watched "Harry and Tonto" from 1974.  Art Carney won the Best Actor that year.  It's the story of an elderly man and his pet cat.  It was a great movie, but it made me cry, a lot.

The part where he dances with his girlfriend from way back, and she has Alzheimers so she really doesn't know who he is.  Very poignant, the blank look in Geraldine Fitzgerald's eyes kind of reminds me of my mother.  Then at the end, the cat Tonto dies.  As Harry is at the vet saying goodbye to his friend, I just broke down.  I find myself so close to tears all the time nowadays over the smallest things.    

The weather is getting much better and soon it will be Daylight Savings Time...I can't wait!  One of my goals this year is to walk a lot more outside.  I used to walk all the time but since I started working out with a trainer 4 times a week, I don't do much else.  I think the fresh air would do me good and help me with the bit of depression I'm still feeling over Buster's death.

I asked my husband last night if he misses Buster, and he very honestly said "Not really."  I think he saw B's declining health as a real liability and felt as if B had not really been very engaged with him the last few years.  My first reaction was to be a bit offended, but the bottom line is that B was really MY dog.  He wasn't so much a companion to my husband any more, like he was when he was younger.  B would sleep all day in the back room, and what energy he did have left, he focused it on me when I was home from work.  So the fact that my husband felt less close to him in the last few years is natural, right? No reason to be offended.  But still, that made me sad too.   

On that note, does anyone have any suggestions (non-medication related) for how to deal with mild depression?  I feel as if I am doing everything right with diet and exercise and keeping busy at work.  But I still get overwhelmed with sadness a lot. 

I hope everyone is looking forward to the spring and that it starts "busting out all over" soon!

These are my tulips a few years ago.  

I planted new tulips bulbs in November, so I'm hoping they turn out as well this year.