I never thought I could do it ... but I did!

I walked 12.7 miles in a single sitting today, over almost 4 hours. 

The Nerd and I walked from our downtown apartment along the waterfront past the boardwalk all the way to the Humber River, and then came back along King Street through the theatre district and the financial centre back home. 

As you know I am training for this charity walk in the beginning of September.  The walk will require that I walk between 30 and 32 km in a single day.  There is no time limit, of course, but the laws of physics apply, so the faster one walks, the faster one finishes. 

I went from not being able to walk half a block without having to stop (before I began working out) to my current fitness level where a three mile walk (about an hour's walking) is no problem at all.  Last weekend the Nerd and I did two training walks, one 6.5 miles, and one 7 miles, and I could handle each with little difficulty.  I got a little tired near the end of each walk, but overall I felt pretty good. 

But today's training plan called for a 12.5 mile walk.  That's more than double my longest planned walk from last weekend, and easily the longest that I had ever walked in my entire life.  Not cumulatively, of course (although it certainly felt like it).
 

Mile 1

The day was a perfect one for walking, 20 degrees with a light breeze off the lake to keep us moving.  When we turned for home along King Street we lost the breeze, but gained some nice sunshine.

I was feeling fine up until around mile 8 (which, to be clear, is still to that point the longest that I had ever walked in a single stretch in my life).  Then my hip flexor started to ache on the right side, my feet started to hurt, and my back started to tighten up - - it was as if my entire lower body decided that it had had enough walking, all at once.  Two and a half years ago I would have felt like this just crossing the street, and now it takes 8 miles for it to happen - - things are definitely looking up!

So I have to say that I wanted to stop walking pretty much the entire last 4 and a half miles.  Every step hurt, and I must have looked like a zombie lurching down the street at some points.  I took a  couple of short breaks just to try and ease up on the legs a bit, but I did not stop.  I walked and I walked and I walked and then I finished.  12.7 miles all in all, in 3:54:53. 

I did not stop and I did achieve my training objective for today of walking 12.5 miles.  And although my legs are on fire and my feet are sore and it will take a bloody act of will to get out of bed to do it all over again tomorrow, I am very proud of myself for pushing through and doing the full distance.

I know that it will get easier over time, and pretty soon 10 miles will feel like nothing (at least I fervently hope so).  I walk 4 times a week, and week by week I will get stronger and stronger.  This is literally the worst that I should feel during my training, because this is the toughest fitness:distance ratio in the entire training plan. 

So I have taken a few Advil, and the Nerd and I are going to have a drink on the roof and look at the lake and relax and congratulate ourselves on our walk.  I think a little self-congratulations are in order here. 

Week 36 - Progress and Update

Another week is in the books, and it went pretty well.  I am down another 0.8 pounds, for a weight of 275.1, down 58.8 pounds total since I started this journey. 

All in all, it was a good week, bad back notwithstanding.  I stuck to my eating and exercise plan, and I was able to lose all of the water weight from last week and a bit more.  I am officially in new territory, lower than I have been since 2000 (the last time I worked out).

I had the extra bonus this morning of having normal blood sugar.  My reading was 5.4 mmol/L, which is under the cutoff of 5.5 mmol/L, and one of the lower readings I've had in recent weeks.  I am almost more happy about the normal blood sugar than I am about losing weight (but not entirely, as I know the two go hand in hand).

I now have 110.1 pounds left to lose, just under double what I have lost to date.  It sounds like such a big number - humungous, really - that I think sometimes that I will never accomplish it.  But then I look at my weight loss over time, and think back to the beginning of August, when I was pushing 295 pounds - - I have lost 18 pounds in just about 2 months, and that goes to show you that baby steps can add up to big results. 

The key is consistency, and sticking to the plan.  I am determined to keep exercising and eating well each day.  If I watch the days, the weeks take care of themselves.  And once the weeks are taken care of, the months seem to work as well.  So far, it's working.  I haven't missed a workout in 18 weeks, and I am becoming a more savvy shopper and eater every week. 

Photo courtesy Istvan Takacs, licensed CC-BY-SA

I have decided to reduce the gluten in my diet moving forward.  It's not that I have any real or imagined gluten intolerance, it's just that gluten is highly correlated with carbs, which raise my blood sugar.  And carb-y foods are trigger foods for my binges.  Even though it has been literally months since my last binge (in truth, I cannot remember exactly when I last binged), I know that as an emotional eater, I could relapse at any time, just like an alcoholic.  I'm a foodaholic. 

I am not going to cut out all gluten from my diet because that would require a more significant lifestyle change than I am willing to undergo right now.  But I will cut out bread and wheat-based pasta and flour-based snacks as much as possible.  If gluten appears in a sauce we use, or flour is used in a recipe as a thickener, for now we are going to ignore it.  The objective is to reduce the amount of gluten consumed, and see where that takes us.

The Nerd read an article from a researcher who claims that today's genetically modified wheat has an interesting feature - - when you eat products comprised of this wheat, it makes you crave more wheat-based products.  A vicious cycle, as it were.  Now I have not had a chance to review this guy's methodology, and his hypothesis sounds suspiciously like any number of self-serving "gurus" selling cheap fixes for weight loss and eternal happiness.  But I know from observation that people who cut down on their gluten consumption are also cutting down on other things that are not good for them at the same time, and they generally experience positive health benefits as a result.  I'm down with that.

My back is 100% better than earlier this week, although it is still a little twinge-y when I move in certain ways.  I still don't know what caused it to vex me so much, but at least whatever it is, is going away.  Not that it will go away forever - I know that back issues at my age typically recur. 

So, next steps: keep on doing what I am doing.  Try and be better at going on incremental walks (I have let that slide in recent weeks), and keep sticking to my eating plan. 

October will be a challenging month - - we have my nieceling's birthday party on Thanksgiving weekend, and then the Nerd and I are going down to Columbus to visit his parents for our birthdays.  Fortunately, the Nerd's mom really likes grim death marches around the neighborhood, so I think she would be supportive of my desire to keep active on our visit.  At the end of the month I will be in Washington DC for three days at a conference, and it will be particularly challenging to eat well and keep exercising.  No matter which way you slice it, there are a lot of things happening in October that will be a challenge for this little foodaholic, and it will take iron discipline to keep on path.  

I am a poorly adjusted bipedal hominid

I remember reading one of Stephen Jay Gould's essays on life, the universe and everything, and he was discussing our present bipedal form, and how as humans we generally suck at bipedalism (compared to other animals).  As Wikipedia notes:

     Even with much anatomical modification, some features of the human skeleton remain poorly adapted to bipedalism, leading to negative implications prevalent in humans today. The lower back and knee joints are plagued by osteological malfunction, lower back pain being a leading cause of lost working days, because the joints support more weight. Arthritis has been a problem since hominids became bipedal: scientists have discovered its traces in the vertebrae of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Physical constraints have made it difficult to modify the joints for further stability while maintaining efficiency of locomotion.

I was never more reminded of this than this weekend when I hurt my lower back - - what a typically bipedal hominid thing to do!  There I was, standing there, minding my own business when BLAMMO!  my back went out.

Saturday and Sunday were painful, but Monday was especially bad - - with all the water I drink in a day, sitting still is just not an option, and every time I got out of my chair to walk it was agony.  That is, until I wised up and took 3 extra strength Advils.  Once the pain was down to a dull ache, I could function again.

This morning my back is still sore, but I definitely see progress from yesterday and the day before.  And I will make a point of remembering that painkillers were invented for a reason - to stop my incessant whining - so I should stop trying to be a hero and take something when the discomfort is starting to impinge on my ability to function.

I predict tomorrow I will feel 100% better, at least according to my mother's scale of things.  For her, every day is 100% better than the last.  She's an incurable optimist, my mother.  A stoic with a high pain threshold, and an optimist at the same time, she possesses the perfect combination of traits to get over physical issues, and I am happy to have inherited these qualities from her.  Yay, mitochondrial DNA-linked traits!

On the good side, my back has not affected my ability to sweat on the elliptical machine, which is good.  I would hate to give back all my hard work due to inactivity.  As it is, the weight is trending in a very nice direction (i.e. downwards), and I just need to keep it up.  I'll just keep putting one foot in front of the other until I don't notice my lower back any more...

Week 35 - Progress and Update

This week, as expected, I mostly fought to get back to last week's weigh in number.  Since it is almost impossible to lose 8 pounds in a week (and keep it off), I thought that most of the astonishing loss from last week was due to water weight lost, or perhaps, scale error. 

I would seem to be borne out by my results this week.  My official Friday weigh in was 1.3 pounds heavier than last week, for a total loss of 56.7 pounds down.  However, by this morning (Sunday) after my elliptical workout, my weight was down still further to 276, for a total of 57.9 pounds lost.  It's almost as if this last week hasn't happened. 

I am most happy with the fact that I didn't let my gain after last week's weigh-in defeat me and start me on a cycle of emotional eating (which would have been much more difficult to recover from).  I kept my focus, kept eating well, and kept working out.  As a result, I am only .1 pounds off of last week's weigh in, essentially neutral. 

My sugars were somewhat high this week, but they are coming back down - today's reading was 5.7 mmol/L, which is only slightly above a normal reading.  Hopefully I can begin to string together some normal values again.

My BMI this morning was 40.8, which puts me on the edge of Obese Class III (according to the government of Canada).  Compared to my starting BMI of a whopping 49.3, I have come a long way.  My weight is still high enough at 276 pounds, that it does not appear on most BMI charts (they only go up to 40), but I can hope that within a month or so I could be below 40 and into Obese Class II (BMI of 35-39.9), which is one of my short term goals. 

On the good side, I went to a barbeque yesterday and managed to stick to my plan even though almost nothing was on my list of "safe" foods.  Instead of vegetables as a snack, the hosts had put out chips and dip, stuffed jalapeno poppers, and cheese and crackers.  No chicken, but only barbeque pulled pork.  There was a salad, which I loaded up on, and potato salad, which I shunned.  For dessert the Nerd made cookies.  I discovered that the Nerd's peanut butter cookies are my kryptonite, and I had 4 (1 in batter form and 1 to taste before we left, and then 2 more at the party). 

In the end, pre-planning helped me out.  I completely avoided the potato salad and stuck to the caesar salad.  I did not take a bun, but added onion and tomato to the pork.  I drank lots of water, and I stopped at 2 cookies (at the party), where previously I would have had 6 or more.  All in all, it was a great day for discipline for me, and I feel pretty good about that.

Photo courtesy Dr. Donald Corenman, licensed CC-BY-NC-ND

Which is good, because physically I am feeling terrible. 

I was shopping with my mother yesterday (as is my custom), and when I was reaching into my purse to hand her a wet wipe, I felt a sudden stabbing pain in my lower back.  Holding on to things with my arms outstretched was incredibly painful, as was slouching.  It almost took my breath away.  After a couple of minutes of wriggling around and trying to figure out less painful positions, I discovered that standing straight and walking were fine and sitting was fine, but transitioning between the two positions was agony, as was lifting or holding anything.

Initially I thought that I had reverted to the old type of back pain I used to experience after walking any distance before I started working out.  But back then, it helped to sit and lean over and stretch out the muscles in my lower back - - now that only causes more pain. 

I took some Robax and Advil, which collectively did nothing, and managed to make it through the party last night with relatively little discomfort by being careful to stand or sit, and my lifting as little as possible. 

I did not sleep well at all, mainly because any movement brought discomfort.  Changing sides - agony.  Rolling over - agony.  Lying flat and stretching - agony.  Every time I moved I woke up, and I am sure I got only half the sleep I usually would have gotten because of this stupid back thing.

This morning was another scheduled workout day, and I was pleased to find that doing the elliptical was fine, as long as I maintained proper posture.  Slouching would bring another jab of pain, and there is this constant dull ache in my back reminding me that it is there.  Thank goodness the workout was fine, though - - ironically, it hurt more to bend my body and lift my leg to put on my workout pants than it did to do the actual workout.  At least I will be able to keep active and exercising through this.  Although the pain was there during the workout, it was more as a reminder of what could be. 

Let's hope this goes away soon - - I am such a miserable wuss when I get hurt.