Status Report: Mixed Bag
There's no FART today. I've not been paying much attention to the world around me this week so I don't know who's being silly and who isn't.
Today's post is basically a health status report.
Knee: Knee is about as good as it's going to get. That's good and bad. I can do just about anything I need to on a daily basis. Up until recently, walking required thought... watching my steps, making sure I wasn't limping, etc. I've gotten to the point where walking is natural. Stairs aren't natural. Going up and down steps is still tricky and still uncomfortable. I've got a snazzy knee brace that works a real treat though. For heavy load days I can strap that thing on and go crazy. It's very handy. I'm ready for paintball with that thing.
Brain: My brain is still broken. Insomnia is getting worse. I'm averaging less than 3 hours a night of sleep and those hours are only semi-restful. My brain just won't go to sleep. I'm tired as hell... just can't sleep. Ambien doesn't even knock me out. Doctors are baffled. We've been playing with a wide variety of medical cocktails to see if anything short of anesthesia will knock me out. So far, nothing has done it.
Weight: Down 20lbs. That made me happy. I've got another 20 or 30 to go. Moving in the right direction though.
Heart: Probably the biggest health improvement I've got. My cardio is rock solid. My blood pressure has dropped from 167/94 to 122/82 and my resting heart rate (aka pulse) is 84. That's pretty cool. My doc is thrilled with that. I did some tests where you basically spike your heart rate for 20 minutes and then see how long it takes for it to get back to normal... mine took 2 minutes to go back to the resting rate. 2-10 minutes is good, the faster the better, so my heart is bueno. Apparently, by accident, I've been during endurance training instead of aerobic training. Who knew? I have to slow down my exercise routine to burn more fat. Strange but true. According to science, there's this magic number (there's a real formula for it and everything) that is your target heart rate range for burning 85% fat calories during exercise. If you go under the number you don't do diddly... if you go over your body only burns around 25% fat calories, but starts putting out toxins and increasing muscle mass (if protein is around) and increases your cardio endurance (and heart size!). So, I've been doing 8 weeks of the endurance level stuff. Whoops. Now that I have a heart rate monitor and these handy formulas I can figure out exactly what I'm doing. Instead of doing all endurance level stuff, I'm going to do aerobic twice a week and endurance once or twice a week. Science!
Every pound of weight I lose is 7 pounds of pressure on my angry knee that I don't have to deal with every time I take a step. So I've basically taken 120lbs of pressure off the knee. Good thing.
I think if I could just get to sleep, I'd be solid.
Oh and sometime in the near future I'm going to start swimming again. The goal is still to get SCUBA certified by next summer. The 100 yard endurance test was what stopped me before. I'm going to take the classes and training locally in a pool and then go do the two final open water dives in the Caribbean.