Bloody Measurement (Again)

The End of Cycle three and it’s time to talk about measurement again : only this time it’s a lot about medically based measurements and specifically about having bloods taken and working out what the numbers mean.

In each cycle so far iv’e aimed to deal with the next important thing – whatever that important thing that is. I cycle three iv’e come back to the first things that I did : ie some exercise and some measurement although this time the exercise has moved on the training my posterior chain (deadlifts) and measurement has finally got around to me requesting bloods to be taken followed by a face to face review with my GP. As of the week that I have bloods taken it’s something like week 20 of the whole project and it will be week 23 when I see my GP thus 5 months into the whole project.

Week 20 is my recorded end of cycle two : you’ll probably notice that i’m regarding my cycles as now being ten weeks simply because it’s easier for simpletons like me to calculate the average weekly drop in weight even though I don’t regard that of as great importance as reduction in waist circumference and or percentage visceral fat. It also means that I get to have a reassessment at the twenty week point and decide what I need to concentrate on in cycle three – obviously this time around it’s one exercise change and one measurement. As of the end of cycle two i’m regularly making my step count goal quite easily, i’m inching towards my next goal of a hundred squats a week although only at the beginning with deadlifts.

I terms of what the current measurements show I passed 10 Kg in weight loss so i’m back, but only just back, in double figures and i’m pretty gruntled about that. If that sounds smug and self congratulatory then fear not as I estimate that iv’e got at least double that still to go – it was briefly encouraging to see though. Iv’e even had to edit the post several times since I originally wrote it as when I did I was just coming up on 8% loss and have altered that twice now. I’m looking forward to my everyday working shorts just falling off (and probably walking away on their own) as my waist circumference has come in another notch, As and when it does I intend to treat myself to some new working shorts as it’s not only the time when I waer shorts all of the time but i’ll need to drop a waist size at the same time. My weight loss has accelerated again so it feels a bit like surfing the long wave down rather then having to find new strategies to keep it going.

What prompted my request for bloods and an appointment with my GP was something that I didn’t expect. As well as regularly weighing myself iv’e been taking my blood pressure once a month and recently I had cause to check it more often when I had a few episodes of loss of balance when standing from sitting or during a walk. I suspected a BP drop even when I couldn’t provoke a significant change between lying and standing BP at home : what I found instead was that my BP was unaccountably lower generally and I had to leave out some of my usual medicines over a few days. I’m happy enough to self manage my medicines for a short period but it seemed like the ideal opportunity to have a full set of bloods taken and reviewed at the same time. I’m slowly forgetting most of what I knew about standard blood results and often have to ask doctor Google or nurse Jackie what this or that number signifies- even what the normal values are – I used to know this shit but i’m the wrong side of a brain injury now.

What I am having to do until I get to see my GP is self managing my medicines : all that means is acting like the staff nurse I once was, taking a twice daily blood pressure and asking sister Jackie how much of my anti hypertensives to take at each dose time. What I intend to do once iv’e had my face to face is invest in a fancier bathroom scale – the kind that estimates visceral fat. I would really like to get an accurate measurement now and thus calibrate what the scales have to say but i’m highly unlikely to sweet talk my GP into referring me for a single slice MRI as that would have to come out of their budget.

Blog-a few days later…..My appointment went well and I think my GP was pleased that not only had I lost a load of weight but i’d been managing my medicines effectively and can now do it more simply as she has prescribed lower doses and is happy that I might need to double up some days. As I predicted she did want to push me towards taking statins again but gracefully accepted that i’d given them a decent trial and found that they gave me something like DOMS and a measurable change in my stride length – as I said to her, it was as though I had a speed and stride length limiter and without that my step count per known route has gone down again as my stride length has increased.

Bloody Knee Again !

A hiccup tends to come along once per cycle. In cycle two it was almost failure mode engaged when I grasped the knowledge of everything I should be doing and briefly, I almost forgot that it’s only a very few basic things that really count ; in my case that iv’e largely excluded sugar and started walking. I was getting a bit over confident at the end of the cycle when I found that my weight loss had accelerated, I was making my exercise and dietary goals and was feeling that maybe, just perhaps maybe, that this was all going to work when my operative knee crapped out on me and I had to go to the local minor injuries unit to have it seen. This wasn’t useful and only resulted in me having to put in another online review request at my surgery and as I thought, get to see my GP.

I had to rest my knee completely and the resulting loss of exercise seemed to put my improving blood pressure back to it’s normally high such that I ended up taking different doses of my medicines nearly every day during my enforced rest – I also missed the exercise badly after a few days and I think a large part of that was being cooped up in the house all day. With about a week of total rest I was able to move around the house without crutches and at the end of the week make a few slow cycles of the first lane but definitely no squats or deadlifts. I was very happy when, at the end of the first week of my latest knee problem, that my weight had continued on it’s slow progress down and hadn’t, as I suspected crept back up, I did also get to see one of the duty GP’s and she both requested an Xray (done) and made the referral to the orthopaedic team.

This forced me to become a bit more focused on the fine detail of my walking ; that is to say that each walk, although shorter, I had to make more effective in what it was doing for my overall metabolic health. Two examples ; one walk had to be completed while I was still in an overnight fasted state and the last one of the day had to be immediately after eating my last meal of the day and if possible the longest walk of the day. Even with my knee problem I still made it my goal to do 5000 steps a day and at least 25000 over the week : with doing quite a lot of project work during the day some of my ‘mileage’ was made up by just moving about a lot on the job.

In this part of cycle two/three i’m feeling really beat up ; been to one minor injuries unit – plus going back for an Xray when they wouldn’t do it without a GP referral – and then having to go to the local MIU for what feels like an eye injury caused by concrete dust. Oh and did I mention that I popped a rib cartilage while laying over the back wall to hack at the dense mat of ivy that was taking over ?. What with Jackie’s PMR and the side effects of her various medicines we’be both a bit crocked up and this week in and out of the surgery to have bloods taken ; i’m slowly working on her to retire completely as the level of management BS has gone up several notches *.

Cycle three deep dive while trying to achieve simplicity.

I tend to do a deep dive on some subject once per cycle ; as this cycle seemed to be revolving around measurement I found myself thinking about my actual health risks and with lipids very much at the front of that. As it happens everything came back pretty well slap bang in the middle of normal range which was not only gratifying but made it much less likely to have my GP try to persuade me into taking statins again. My answer, had that been the case, is that one thing I routinely measure is my step count for each walking route. I noticed that when I was taking statins and feeling as though I had DOMS all of the time (delayed onset muscle soreness) my step count went up quite a lot which meant that my stride length had reduced : the opposite happened within a few months of starting walking again and as I stopped statins – what this seemed to suggest is that when not taking statins my walking, notably my stride length, had improved and that continued even when my operative knee played up again.

I know that I over think anything : whether that’s what i’m doing now with my new exercise and nutrition or as I used to be when I was awake for hours endlessly going over some detail or other of the boat that I was building, This cycle I was way over thinking what might be happening in my body as I start metabolizing lots of visceral fat – as I write i’m already down by about 8% in measured body weight and 2-3 inches in waist circumference – still a long way to go but it’s going the right way.

Most of my overthinking came, as it often does, from one more Youtube video watched thus adding to my already overloaded mind – that’s the best way I can describe my post stroke brain – too much information downloaded but not yet processed and assimilated. From finding the internet to be a fascinating rabbit hole that I used to spend hours in, I now find it a bit of a trap as it fuels my overthinking : my response has been to self block from sites that are wildly informative but where the information is coming at me like a firehose. I almost want to point the finger of blame at specific Youtubers – the ones that release video after video – i’m sure that they’re great if you can absorb that much new information but some of them are too much for me to add another thing to have to think about thus one of my main goals for cycle three is best described using the KISS principle (keep it simple stoopid).

What that means is sticking to the things that I did right at the start : a no sugar diet, increased protein plus daily fasting window and as many steps per day as my bloody knees will cope with – this week that’s around 5-6000 per day. The rest is just so much distracting fluff, however interesting and/or relevant it might be.

Half Term Report.

I was the kind of kid that went home at the end of term with the report that “Steven is lazy and could do better” ; my parents were always disappointed until the day I got my ‘O’ level results – when they were just surprised and a bit miffed. It’s true that I was a lazy kid and most days I didn’t bother with my homework unless it was the few subjects that engaged me in any way – don’t even talk to me about French – what’s the point of learning French grammar I ask ?.

It’s only since my school days that I acquired a work ethic but then iv’e mostly done jobs that I care about and/or are somehow important ; like taking people to sea and being responsible for them even if they were complete tuesdays. Oddly enough, when I started to train in the gym every other day the guy that was training me said that he enjoyed working with me because I had a good work ethic ; I can only surmise that twenty-five years as a nurse had had some kind of effect.

As of time of writing i’m just passed 5 months into my project so by the time we’ve had our summer holidays I should be at half a year completed. As i’m writing this very much in the the now I find it best to say only what iv’e done/achieved so far in the things that are measurable – as with the entire post. As I write i’m coming up (or down) on 9% total weight loss and that equates closely to around 9 Kg or near enough 20 Lbs. As I said recently i’m not that focused on weight loss ; regarding it as a quick guide to progress and little more. What I regard as more significant is my waist circumference and that, according to the belt that I have to wear now, seems to be in by 3 notches (3 inches). When I measure with a tape I don’t get that result but my belly fat has gone so loose that maybe I don’t pull the tape in enough ; whatever – it seems to be reducing as it should be.

I hope that I haven’t given a rather smug summary of what iv’e done ; rather, the way i’d like to have this taken is that i’m disappointed at the state I allowed myself to get into and I know just how far iv’e got to go. I hope that at the end of one year i’m somewhere near my intermediate goal.

Best wishes everyone.