This morning, on the first day of Autumn, I weighed in at slightly less than my best previous weight so it feels to me as though iv’e cracked the stall. It seems that my rate of actual weight loss has dropped and I still don’t fully understand why that is. Better news for me was that my usual belt went to it’s sixth and last notch once this week and while it’s back to notch no 5 most of the time it felt a bit loose at that when I had my last walk of the day. Using weight only as a measure is a slippery customer at the best of times so iv’e moved on to taking a waist circumference measurement once per month : this month I was some 4 inches down from my starting point, my face looks thinner and my arms more vascular.
The shocking thing about this morning is how weak iv’e become in my core and upper body. This week I started working with free weights again : a few simple squats (5 x 5) on Monday and a pathetic crack at press ups today. I was barely able to do one good press up and I got nowhere near my goal for the week which was also to do a 5 x 5 routine of press ups. For sure it didn’t help that I have a dose of tendonitis or arthritis in my right wrist so that wasn’t up to taking much weight through it : maybe I should tell you my story about that so……
By my mid twenties I was a qualified nurse in my first staff job in an intensive care unit, taking charge several shifts a month and a bit bored now that I was done with my training and wondering what to do with my career. I had this idea that I might go into the British army – most likely the RAMC – so on a day off I went for a chat at the local recruiting office. The initial conversation went like this ; Recruiting office sergeant shouting across the room – Oi son – Are You Married ? Me – err no sarge. Recruiting sergeant – Well You’re Wanking Too Much Then !
Now, I have to point out that i’d walked in wearing a wrist splint due to Tendonitis caused by me using one of those wrist exercising jobbies ; the kind with hard springs designed to be squeezed as a wrist strengthener. I should further explain that I was big into rock climbing at the time and trying hard to push my grade and one of the major things I was concentrating on was my grip strength.
Given the army humor opening I actually had an intelligent conversation in which the sergeant told me that I was a bad fit for the regular army as I was too old, too mature and already established in the role of being in charge of people. His solution was to either try out for the Royal Marines or go and be a weekend warrior with the Territorials. I actually got in touch with the TA and very weirdly they treated me as potential nurse officer. I did all the paperwork and was about to send it in when I got a place on a boat in the Whitbread race so it never happened.
So, iv’e got Tendonitis again and it’s because iv’e been overusing my wrist again only this time it’s because iv’e been trying to cut through woody tree and shrub branches with a pair of garden secateurs ; this week I got wise and bought a new pruning saw – not that that would be much help with my press up strength. Also what doesn’t help is that my right wrist hurts each time I press down on my crutch that side : i’m walking with a pair of crutches all the time now due to my extremely shagged knees.
The choices that iv’e made in the last 8 months have done wonders for my weight and level of visceral fat but I suggest that they’ve been bad choices, or at least incomplete ones for my muscle health : aside from my legs and heart of course as iv’e stomped up and down hills a lot. I suspect that as well as age related muscle loss, said to be 1% a year, I haven’t used my upper body muscles a lot since my strokes and I may have even encouraged some muscle loss with my weekly fasts. This last part i’m really not sure about as iv’e come across anecdotal reports of people experiencing measurable muscle mass during prolonged fasting but the evidence for muscle loss during intermittent or short term fasting doesn’t seem to be there when I search for it.
In my last job I often started the day with a hundred press ups and a bunch of body weight exercises. At best I could do the first thirty in one set and even later on at home I regularly did a set in between sets of other exercises but then that was a long time before the set of strokes I had, It’s best to accept that i’m horribly weak now when it comes to any upper body exercises but I figure that if I treat it like my walking then I can recover strength if not mass. While being in my late 60’s and thus having had a long period of age related muscle loss that doesn’t seem to be the case with my legs which not only feel harder and more defined but seem to have increased in overall mass.
Several times this year iv’e started posts about the exercise element of what i’m doing and iv’e often thought that I really should do some resistance exercise every day. Today’s failure with press ups only reinforces that so my plan is to do one session of one exercise only at a 5 x 5 reps/sets routine. So far I have a three day cycle that comprises of : day one is leg day ie squats, day 2 is the difficult one being press up day while day three, i’m writing this on day three, is deadlifts day. Today, day 4 is rest day and iv’e got a dose of DOM’s ; quite literally a pain in the ass from doing deadlifts. All I can say about that is that it showed me I did enough work to get that.
Most days I would also call my strokes a pain in the butt too. The only positive thing I can take from that episode is that it was a huge wake up call about my health. I’m unlikely to get any recovery that hasn’t already happened but I might be able to do something about the global loss of strength that iv’e experienced. We could say that finding out about my loss of strength is the second great wake up call so iv’e added that to the roster of things I have to work on. My new routine has to include some free weights and body weight resistance training : so far iv’e come up with a cycle of one exercise per day for three days and then a day off although yesterday I beat myself up by having another fight with the Brambles and Budliea bushes.
Best wishes Y’awl.
