Friday, August 16, 2013

Change

Change is hard. At least, that's what Skip says. And she's right, it is hard. I need something to push me to make a change, otherwise I'll maintain the status quo.

Well, I've got my catalyst. I went to the orthopedist on Monday about my knee and found out a few things. The bony tumor is a non-event. Apparently, these bone growths can happen in your youth when you're growing. Unless the tumor starts to change, indicating it might be cancerous, it's nothing to worry about. But, I do have arthritis in my knee. The doc suggested physical therapy, especially to strengthen the muscles around my knee. He also said I could get a cortisone shot, but I will wait to see how exercising and such helps to reduce the discomfort. If the discomfort continues, I'll think about the shot.

So, it's time to get serious about losing weight to take some pressure off the knee and exercising for general health and strengthening. I joined Weight Watchers Monday evening and went back to the gym on Tuesday. I met with the trainer and got a set of exercises for upper body and core strengthening. She also showed me how to use the quadriceps machine, for leg strengthening.

Weight Watchers has changed their program quite a bit, which is good news for me. It means I can't just assume I know everything about it and be a bit complacent. Along with that, there are some great apps I am using on my smartphone for tracking my eating. It even has a tool for scanning barcodes and determining the Weight Watchers point values per serving. It's good to feel like I am taking control of my eating.

It's also good to be back to the gym. When I was going regularly January - May, I overdid it a bit -- at least for a late 50s, fat gal who's never been a gym-goer before. This time, I'm going to be careful to only go 3-4 times a week and not exercise for more than 30 minutes each time. Also, I'll be keeping close tabs on my knees and how they feel. If either of them hurts while on the stationary bike, I'll either cut back on the effort or stop altogether.

I'm looking forward to feeling stronger and having my clothes start to get looser ....


6 comments:

Muffie said...

With age comes wisdom! I, too, wrecked my knee while doing PT, of all things. I know, now, that trying to be Supergal will only hurt me. Good luck with both WW and the gym! Did you ever check out the WW slow cooker recipes? Some are really good!
Peace,
Muff

Cranky said...

Muff - hmmmm, wrecking your knee with PT? Now that sounds like a cautionary tale. It's funny you'd mention the slow cooker recipes. The meeting leader was discussing some of them when I sat down in the meeting on Monday. I'll check them out.

lightning36 said...

Good luck with the exercise. I find that fatigue from work affects my motivation to do so. Not to mention the knees that have ssen better days.

Cranky said...

Yeah - the knees can stop me short from going to the gym, too.

lightning36 said...

Looks like your twitter account was hacked. I got a direct message with a url hot link today.

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