What Happened in my Garden

Here’s what I saw when I drove up. This is that little wild rose just loaded down with blooms! I pruned it pretty severely this winter, but it does seem to be getting bigger and bigger!

Here’s the garden with my roses, the canterbury bells, and a foxglove that managed to get in there. I even have a few delphiniums blooming there!

A close-up:

And this was a big surprise. One of my little trees is an azalea, and I was so surprised to see it blooming.

I walked outside the yard to get this picture of my honeysuckle vine. I also pruned it pretty severely in the winter. It is huge, and I love when I walk outside in the evening and get a whiff of that beautiful perfume from them.

And this is what the chickens do ANY TIME I walk by them. They are always certain that I am bringing them food or a treat. And usually, they are right 🙂

This week its supposed to be in the 90’s all week, so I will be walking early in the morning, spending some time in the garden, giving Noah the big white dog a bath, and then spending the majority of time in the house rug hooking and quilting.

Recovery

And here is where the longer story takes place. Although my experience with post-op pain was not as bad as I had expected, I have come to realize that returning to “normal life” is going to take a little longer.

Doing exercises three times a day is somewhat daunting. But I am determined to keep those up. I’ve found that I need long naps, sometimes two or three a day! For a non-napper, this is a big change! But I am embracing the nap 🙂

Shelley named Sophie “the Healer Dog.” I put her on the bed with me when I do my exercises. Here is the Healer Dog trying to encourage me:

Noah returned home after two weeks, and after a couple of days, I decided to start taking longer walks with him. I was pretty excited this morning when my walk was as long as I had been taking pre-surgery! I walk slowly, but I feel steadier on my feet, and it is such a wonderful feeling to walk for that long and NOT limp. I know that I am still on pain medicines, but it is amazing how much limping made other body parts hurt.

Icing after exercise is another part of the recovery. The hospital sent me home with a lot of disposable ice packs so it has been very convenient to rotate those in the freezer to have ready when needed.

This week I went to PT for the first time. It was very disappointing… It might be partly because I am doing so well, and partly because I was already doing the exercises that needed to be done… anyway, it was a disappointing experience. The one thing I did garner from it was that getting on a bicycle would be helpful for recovery. I’m pretty excited about this. In a week I should be able to drive, and I will be going to the gym for biking sessions, and shortly after that I will be able to get back in the pool.

I still have good days and bad days. The bad days aren’t so much about knee pain as they are about just feeling terrible. And when I feel terrible, things just seem to multiply on that day. Like, last Saturday, I woke up just feeling bad. Then the neighbor’s dog kept coming down and making Noah bark like crazy. So then I made all the dogs come inside for a while. A few hours later, I decided to let the little girls out to see if the coast was clear, and Chloe started barking very insistently. I went to see what she was barking at, and it was a HUGE rattlesnake coiled up on a rock inside my yard!!! Eek. Wrangled all four girls back in the house while I was calling my neighbor to come and kill the snake. Before he got here the snake started to move. I didn’t want him to disappear in my garden somewhere, and so I went and stood about ten feet from it, which worked. Yep. That was a very bad day

Overall, I think I am doing better than most who have had knee replacement surgery. I’m sure that it was a partial knee replacement is one reason. Another is all the prayer that has taken place. And of course, I would like to think that a big part of it is that I remained active and continued to do my exercises up until the day before surgery.

I have to remind myself that it will take time to get back to normal, and to not be impatient.  I am actually very excited about “Debby 2.0” as Shelley named the post-op me.

 

My Healthy Life

Hmmm. I said I’d write this post weeks ago. I have thought about it ever since then, but avoided putting it to paper. I remember when I started this blog. I couldn’t stop talking about healthy food, exercise, weight loss, weight maintenance. It was a relief to have an online group of friends who were interested in the same things. I didn’t have to worry about people rolling their eyes back in their heads as I prattled on enthusiastically about all this stuff. Well, its been twelve years since I first darkened the W.W. doorway, and ten years since I started “maintaining.” Yeah, that maintaining is in quotes, because for me maintaining has been a bit of a roller coaster. Up thirteen, back down to 100 lost. Up 25, back down to 100 lost. Now, currently, up 40. So that’s still a net loss of 60 pounds. And I tell myself that that is a lot better than almost every study I’ve read, which usually ends with the participants losing an average of 17 pounds over a year’s time. Most of those studies conclude after that one year period. Their information is basically useless for me.  If you only study what helps people to lose weight without studying what helps them to maintain that loss, you are providing false hope for so many people.

So…about what is working for me now in living the healthiest life possible at age 62. So many of the good practices and habits that I have learned about and applied over the years has stuck.

Food: From W.W. I learned about the evils of high fat foods (I don’t necessarily believe this any more.) But eating low fat is a way of life that has stuck. I enjoy the fresh taste of most foods without added fat.

From my personal trainer, Vickie, I learned about so many new healthful foods. I got a little more adventurous in my food choices. And I learned that good fats make food taste better 🙂

From friends, the internet, other bloggers, books, maybe even Dr. Phil(!) I learned lots of new ways of keeping fresh foods available, new recipes, new healthy food combos. I love to cook and experiment with food.

So now, I still shop the perimeter of the store (where all the whole foods are kept,) I almost always eat fresh vegetables and fruit. The meat I eat right now is salmon, chicken, and ground turkey. Just my current fav’s.

I try to listen to what my body is asking for. I’ve noticed that I am not as hungry in the morning as I used to be. So my breakfast is usually 2-300 calories, and that is enough to satisfy me until lunchtime.

I try to have a vegetable with every lunch. If I remember, I like roasting green beans, cauliflower, beets, rutabaga, or butternut squash. Lately, my favorite lunch is a simple strawberry smoothie. I get it ready and drink it on the way to the gym. 1 cup yogurt, 1 cup strawberries, spinach, splenda, cinnamon and vanilla. Very satisfying! Oh, that reminds me. That is one thing I have changed. For better or worse, I changed to using whole milk for my homemade yogurt. And I started using real butter sometimes. Do you want to know what I still do with that? When I put a new cube of butter in the butter dish, I mark the top in 8 even slices. That way I know how much a tablespoon is, and I can use 1/3 of that marked piece for a teaspoon.

I look forward to my afternoon coffee break every day, and I will admit that I still have a protein bar (Quest or Oh Yeah) with that coffee. These bars have 20 grams of protein in them. So that means dinner is usually simple and light. Most nights its meat and a vegetable. Most nights dinner is about 300 calories.  But who’s counting? 🙂 I am not logging my foods right now, but there is always a running total going on in my head. I am eating between 1400 and 1800 calories a day.

Lastly, I really enjoy having one diet Coke, a bowl of Skinny Pop popcorn and a small piece of chocolate after dinner.

So, you can see that although my food choices are not 100 per cent optimal, I eat a very healthy diet. I didn’t talk about grains, but I do have pasta very occasionally, granola on my yogurt sometimes, and of course, almost always breakfast includes some sort of whole grain. I don’t try to stay wheat free any more (wheat tastes good 🙂 ), and I do have sugar occasionally.

Cutting back to lose some weight would be great. But that is not happening right now. So continuing to make healthy choices every day is a good thing.

Exercise: as I’ve said before, exercise is very important to me. That said, I will admit that my knee REALLY hurts, and many other parts hurt as well. So I avoid walking, and my walks with my dogs have become shorter and shorter. All this is a good reminder to me that I really do need that knee surgery. Which is scheduled for July! I decided that I really wanted to get my baby chicks first, and they are coming in a week! I can hardly wait (for the chicks 🙂 ) This will probably turn into a chicken blog very soon.

When I take a walk and everything hurts so much, that makes me feel bad about myself. It makes me feel like I am a failure and that if I kept my weight down, I wouldn’t hurt and would be a more successful person. Intellectually I know that is not true. But that’s what it makes me feel like. So that is one reason I have had trouble writing this.

I love going to the gym and exercising hard. The bike doesn’t hurt, and running in the pool and swimming doesn’t hurt. The weight machines don’t hurt in a bad way, and I am working on increasing my upper body strength in preparation for my knee surgery. I go to the gym three days a week, and I’m thinking about increasing that to four days until I have the surgery. It just takes a big chunk of time out of the middle of my day, so that’s why I only go three days right now.

Sleep: Well, that is hit and miss. I know that my older friends (haha, I’m fast becoming one of them) cut out caffeine more and more. So far I’m not willing to give up my afternoon coffee and my evening diet Coke. But I go to bed at a normal time and wake up at a normal time. I rarely set an alarm. It seems like 7 hours is good for me. Sometimes a take a melatonin before bed if my mind is racing or I have not slept well for a few nights.

For a retired person, I think I have a fairly disciplined life. I start every day doing some sort of housework. And then I spend a large amount of time every day working on my art in my studio. When I am done in the studio, that is usually when I go to the gym or take the dogs for a walk. I spend most of the evening working on my quilted embroidery. Of course, I work a bit in the garden every day. I could do a lot more out there, but bending over… well, you know.

I hope this review is helpful for someone. I know it was helpful for me to think about all the healthy habits I have worked on and maintained over the years. I personally think that it is much healthier to eat well, exercise, and get a decent amount of sleep even if you never achieve your “ideal” weight.

The Two Hour Mile

Yessiree! I ran a mile in two hours and 10 minutes. What? You’re not impressed? Well let me tell you about it.

After I hit my goal of swimming a mile a bit ago, I realized that I enjoyed the challenge of doing endurance type goals. So I thought, why not make it a goal to run a mile in the water? Most days I do 30-40 lengths of water running. I started doing some longer runs and Saturday was a beautiful day, so I decided that would be the day. The most I had done before then was 1/2 a mile (88 lengths.) I knew my water running was faster than my swimming, but I wasn’t sure if I would end up slowing down doing such a long distance. I was pleased that for the most part I was able to keep up my pace and came in at 2 hours 10 minutes. Since I am short, I run with the water shoulder deep, so there is more resistance than someone who is tall and is able to run in waist-deep water. I ran about 20 lengths, followed by two lengths fast-walking backwards, and one length of lunges.

It feels so good to run in the water. I feel like that picture you see of the perfect twenty year old running full out effortlessly. And then, as I said to my BF, I get out of the water, and I’m still a fat old lady. No matter. For me its a great form of exercise. Here’s a link to some of the benefits of running in the water (although its actually an advertisement to sell a water treadmill.) And here’s another article from Runner’s World.

I plan to keep getting in the pool for as long as I can stand it. But my next goal is to cycle (on the stationary bike) 40 miles. Right now I usually do 5 miles in 20-25 minutes. I’ll start doing some longer rides, and then one Saturday, I’ll just go for it.

Swam a Mile

Did you wonder where the healthy lifestyle/weight loss/weight maintenance blogger went? The truth is, I think about it ALL THE TIME. I think about what I should write, about what I should tell you, about things that I’ve seen and heard, and have an opinion about. I’ve even taken notes on some podcasts, and was going to review them for you. This American Life did a Fat podcast that was excellent. I could relate to so much of what the women interviewed said. Oh, and this week I watched the beginning of a new television show “This is Us” on the recommendation of two of my blog buddies, and I couldn’t even believe how much of the inside stuff they got on the overweight character. I don’t know if I laughed or was just speechless when they showed her getting onto the scale, and then pausing to take her earrings off (I HAVE DONE THIS) and then she stepped on the scale so gingerly that she fell backwards off of it (I STILL DO THIS. well, not the falling off. at least most of the time.)

But when it comes down to it, I just don’t want to write about it anymore. The longer time goes on, the less I think I know about it, especially weight maintenance. Back in the beginning of this year, I had a little rebellion. I was just too tired of keeping track of everything I ate. What would happen if I just ate like a normal person? What would happen? I would gain weight. Yep. So then I decided that I would just track everything. I really like LoseIt, and its almost fun for me to write down my meals for the day. But I just couldn’t restrict any more. And by that, I mean, I couldn’t  restrict enough to lose weight. So I set LoseIt to 1650 calories (which they thought would allow me to lose 1/2 pound a week hahahaha.) Eating 1650 calories every day was a lot more than I’ve consciously allowed myself for a LOOOONG time. That’s been going pretty good. Occasionally I’ll think, oh, give it the old college try again–just cut back by 200 calories. And I can immediately feel the rebellion welling up inside of me. If I force the issue, I end up eating MORE than I should. I just tell you all this to say, you have to know yourself.

In the meantime, I have kept a vigorous exercise regimen going. I knew I didn’t dare cut back on that, even on the days I felt “too fat” to go to the gym. When I am home, I keep a regular routine (and you all know I love my routines) of walking the dogs early in the morning three days a week (20-30 minutes). On those days I also do my physical therapy exercises plus some core exercises (also 20-30 minutes.) And then three days a week I go to the gym. For the summer I’ve been splitting my time between the stationary bike and the pool. I like “jogging” in the pool. It feels like real exercise, and its so nice to work out hard and NOT have knee pain. Somewhere towards the middle of the summer, I started enjoying swimming more, and started swimming longer distances. I thought I might make a goal of swimming a mile again. A mile in an Olympic pool is 175 lengths, and that has taken me three hours in the past. I think its been a couple of years since I did that. Saturday morning I was talking with my brother, who was on the Swim Team in high school, and I asked him if he thought it would be better to try to swim the mile on a cooler day (73 degrees,) or wait for a warmer day. He thought it would be better on a cooler day. So that was it.

I did go ahead of time to a special bakery to get myself a treat for swimming a mile 🙂 And here is how it always goes for me. The FIRST length, I think, Oh, I can’t do this. I’ll just do my 20 minutes and do some water jogging and be done with it. Then after maybe 15 minutes I think, well maybe I can make it for two hours. I’ll do the whole mile later. As two hours approached, I kept thinking about a lot of things–Shelley running her half marathons, Olympians training and training, Lori doing her 40 mile bike rides, my special treat waiting for me, AND the fact that if I stopped now I’d have to come back and swim this ridiculous amount of time AGAIN. So I just kept going.

Related to how I like counting my calories, I also like doing the math in my head–after 15 minutes, okay, one-twelfth done. Now, just five minutes later, one-nineth done. Thirty minutes in, about one-sixth done. Okay, I won’t bore you with any more of my math calculations 🙂 I wear a little lap counter on my finger and keep track that way. This year it took me 3 hours and 10 minutes. I didn’t practice as much as I have in previous years. And, as my brother pointed out, I’m older. I’ll take it. I am going to be 62 years old in December. I’m still overweight, but I’m not the same person as I was twelve years ago. I have a lot of healthy habits, and I plan on keeping those.

Inspiration Near and Far

Inspiration Number 1: my own pain. When I came back from that trip at the beginning of June, and not just my knee, but my whole leg and various other body parts hurt so badly, I instinctively knew I needed to move more, not less. I have been more disciplined about exercise in the past month than I have ever been. I did all the things I thought would help with mobility and range of motion, and kept a very disciplined schedule every day. The only thing I didn’t do was walk as much. I did the bike, water jogging, swimming, and my P.T. exercises. As I started feeling better, along came–

Inspiration Number 2:  Its not new, but dang, she’s so consistent. Shelley has been getting up EARLY in the morning to run for a long time. I always get up early, but I don’t get dressed for quite a while 🙂 One day I decided it wouldn’t hurt me to get dressed and get out for a walk before it got hot and before people started driving out the dusty dirt road to get to work. It was WONDERFUL! I’m happy to report that I have now taken 6 early morning walks. Working towards 21 to make it a permanent habit. And this morning, I took an extra long walk, because of–

Inspiration Number 3:  I had lunch with a friend to hear about her recent trip to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago. She is about my age, in very good physical shape. But people, SHE WALKED 500 MILES IN 35 DAYS!! Between 11 and 19 miles each day. And partway through the walk she developed some serious back problems, but she kept going, just a bit slower.

She told me about two movies, and I have watched both of them in the past week. One is a documentary, and was very good. Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago followed six people on their journey. Almost everyone suffered some sort of pain or injury. That’s just a lot of wear and tear on the body. The other was a regular movie, called The Way. It was also very good, although none of the main characters suffered any kind of injury 🙂

This kind of thing has always inspired me. I read Walk Across America many years ago, and it made an impact on me back then. I know I will never walk across America, or walk the Camino de Santiago. But I can do better, with the inspiration of those who do.

The Camino inspired me in other ways. I wrote about it on The Other Blog.

Saturday Fun Day

Shelley mentioned on her blog that she was going to run 9 miles on Saturday, and that that would allow her guilt-free lazing around the rest of the day. That appealed to me. Yes, the guilt free lazing, not the running 🙂 So I estimated that it would take me at least 2 hours 15 minutes to run/walk 9 miles, if I was even able to do that, and decided that I would spend that much time working out in the gym.

Of course, I didn’t get up at o’dark o’clock, like Shelley does when she runs. First, I had to try out a new recipe idea I’d been wanting to try for a while. I wanted to make some strawberry scones, using my basic Bare Bones Scones recipe. But strawberries get too juicy when you bake with them. So I had the idea to semi-dry them the night before. I just cut them into little pieces, and put them on a baking sheet in the oven with the oven light on for the night. That worked out splendidly! The strawberry pieces were a bit dryer, and the scones were delicious, IMO. Sometimes I eat them with plain yogurt and pretend it is clotted cream.

Okay, so then I was ready to go to the gym. But I made the mistake of checking the garden first. Two days without water, and there were some plants I could not ignore. While I moved the hose from place to place, I made good use of my time, and scrubbed the bathroom down, and then made some fresh salsa, motivated by Helen’s salsa blog! I love shrimp salsa, and decided that that would be my special dinner after my big day at the gym.

Finally, I got off to the gym. So fun to not limit my workout time. I spent 30 minutes on the bike, then went upstairs worked out on the weight machines. Back downstairs, and did some more aerobic work on something called a NuStep–kinda a cross between a rowing machine and an elliptical, only recumbent. Then, it was out to the pool, where I did 20 minutes of swimming, and then finished with 30 minutes of pool running. Its not as intense as running 9 miles, but it sure did feel like a good workout.

I did kind of laze for the rest of the day, but since I got such a late start to the gym, it was 3 pm by the time I got home. I treated myself to a new-to-me knitting pattern, and started a new shawl/scarf (copied this from Shelley too!)

Here’s my shrimp salsa. If I don’t have the little salad shrimp in the freezer, I just cut the big ones into bite sized chunks. So yummy. But, note to self, I simply cannot make good chips myself. They always come out either burned or chewy.

And just like Lori, who bikes for cupcakes, I decided to end my day with a sweet treat. I made a single iced sugar cookie. Most worthy.

It was a super fun day. I’m hoping I will make this more of a regular occurrence on Saturdays.

Good Clean Fun

I don’t seem to have much to post these days, but I thought I’d share life in general, and a few fun things (food 🙂 ) that I have enjoyed in the past few weeks.

Those 9 pounds I gained on vacation? Six pounds came off quickly. I’m still working on the last three.

I didn’t mention it, but the steroid shot I got for my knee only lasted a month. It was a very sad day when it stopped working. For a while it seemed like things were worse than ever, but that seems to have leveled out. The brace still helps on short walks and especially when I am working in the yard, so I am grateful for that. Next doctor’s appointment is in less than a month. We’ll see what they say.

No more three mile walks for me. Right now I’m not even walking Noah every day. Its hot, so he doesn’t seem to mind. He spends 95% of his day lounging. The other 5% he is racing around like a mad man to bark at the “marauding neighbors.” He’s still getting his allotment of aerobic exercise 🙂

For me, I have embraced the gym! I really enjoy going down for my (at least) 20 minutes on the bike and (at least) 20 minutes jogging in the pool. I swim occasionally, but I am enjoying the jogging so much, and I do not like getting water in my face, so swimming has taken a back seat for now.

Yesterday I went to the lawyer’s to finalize the trust on my estate. I was very reluctant to do this. The wording on my dad’s trust was very misleading, and it seemed like if I made a trust, nothing would belong to me anymore. I know that’s not true. It just seemed like that to me. But in general it makes life much easier for the folks that are left after you die, so I do recommend it to anyone who is thinking about that. The lawyer I went to specializes in estate planning, and I was surprised that she could make a personalized trust so easily with just a little bit of information from me (where I wanted stuff to go.) Now on to the burial plot!! LOL.

Its been hot hot hot here. It still cools down in the early morning, so I get up (early) and open all the windows for a couple of hours. I try to get out in the morning to water the plants, and sometimes do a bit of watering or weeding in the evening. Tomorrow MLG comes to put in the patchwork path, so I need to get out there and decide how/where I want the stones to go. I foresee some sweat in my near future 😦

Here’s a couple of fun food items. I found the 85% chocolate in the bins again. I made a mix of: 4 oz melted chocolate, 2 oz dried cherries, 2 oz dried apricots, 2 oz raisins, and 4 oz walnuts. That came out to about 2000 calories, so I divided it into 20 clumps and made my own healthier chocolate candy treats. The 85% chocolate makes it so I am not tempted to eat more than one of these at a time.

Not a great picture, but I wanted to show it in my hand for size comparison.

I made myself some protein pancakes the other day, and used my smashed strawberries and some laughing cow lite as a topping. Yummy.

And last but not least, I found these little lovelies at Trader Joe’s. The tin actually says there is one calorie per piece. I usually only grab 3 or 4 pieces at a time–they have an intense chocolate flavor and a little crunch to them. The other day I wanted to have some chocolate with my cherries for dessert, so I counted out 50 of them. VERY satisfying.

Put my finger in there for size comparison.

Every day when I go into the studio, the little girls fight over this square of sunlight coming in through the front door.

And that’s about it for news around here. Hope your week is going well, and you are staying cool (or warm, depending on how the weather is near you!)