Category: Health

A BIG goal for Brett and me during the next two years is to get us back to as close to the great condition we were in when we set out on our Big Adventure in 2018. Besides being a bit older and developing a few more aches and pains lately, we have not been as diligent about staying in shape.

For nearly a year and a half before we left, we walked at least two miles (almost) daily out on Kauai’s eastside beach path. We were careful about what we ate and avoided carbohydrates as much as possible. We kept up with medical and dental visits, and our medications.

During our travels, we walked a lot, usually three to four miles a day. We continued to watch what we ate, although we did add carbohydrates back in reasonable amounts (what’s the point of visiting France if you can’t enjoy a fresh, warm baguette or a pastry now and then? Or fresh pasta or gelato in Italy?). However, we overate during our time in Japan in 2019, with frequent visits to our neighborhood bakery. In spite of all the walking we did there, we gained weight. We could still fit into our clothes, but they were definitely on the tight side for both of us.

I spent last summer in Portland avoiding almost all carbohydrates except for fresh fruit, a weekly slice of pizza, and a glass of wine on Friday and Saturday evenings. We walked every day, pushing ourselves to get to 10,000 steps. By the end of the summer, we were both back in great shape again, although I’d only lost six pounds for all my efforts, and Brett had injured his ankle on a long hike. We continued to walk, watch what we ate, and stay in shape while we were in England until we got to November when days of rain kept us trapped inside and we comforted ourselves with w-a-y too many scones, shortbread biscuits, ginger nuts, and cups of Cadbury hot chocolate. We were back on the path to where we needed to be during our stay in Japan at the beginning of this year, but the stay-at-home order and some depression brought all of that to a halt.

We’re back to the tight clothes stage again, but have two years to whip ourselves back into traveling shape, mainly because we don’t want to purchase new traveling clothes again! The pair of pants I’m wearing in the picture below is going be my guide for knowing when I’ve arrived. I can still get into them, but they are currently very tight – I want them to fit again like they did when we were in Australia.

Once again, we’re:

• Walking at least five days a week, at least two miles, with a goal of getting to daily walks of longer distances (weather permitting). Boy, do we miss having that beach path nearby though – the views never got old and it made walking so easy! We’ve found a good route to walk nearby for now, but it’s eventually going to get boring so we are going to need to find some different venues to mix things up a bit. We’re also trying to make sure we don’t sink into a sedentary lifestyle around the house.

  

• Being careful about what we eat. While I am not going low carb or Keto, at least not yet, I am limiting my daily carb intake. I’m never going back to cauliflower rice, but these days I measure and limit the amount of rice I take if I have it, or I just go without. We are keeping all chips, cookies, crackers, and store-bought bakery goods (except for bread) out of the house – snacks these days are nuts, fruit, and vegetables. We continue to take daily vitamins, and I’ve added a prebiotic + probiotic to help with my stomach issues.
• Taking care of our health. We are still looking for a new dentist here, one closer to where we live now, but I already have an eye appointment for this week with our former ophthalmologist. We did take care of health check-ups last summer but haven’t done anything since. My stomach issues have not completely abated, so I want to get that fully checked out first when I find a new doctor, and Brett still needs the surgery that he had originally scheduled in Portland this summer – he’s already found an endocrinologist here and is working toward that. We are blessed to have great insurance, including vision and dental, so we have no reason not to keep up with all of this.

There really is no excuse not to get back in shape now that we’re back in Hawaii. The weather and opportunities to get outside as well as the abundance of fresh produce (and the expense of buying and eating a lot of meat and processed foods) make it easy to create a healthier lifestyle here and stick with it. We’re back on the path!

As we get ready to enter the last month of the year, I’ve been looking back and assessing my one-month-at-a-time plan that I began last January. At the beginning of the year I put myself on a vegan diet, and added exercise. The goal was to stay with what I was doing for one full month, assess how it was going and how I felt, and then adjust as necessary when a new month began.

I have to admit that while I started out with the best of intentions, the exercise part of plan did not go well. I began the year with waking early to take a walk, but quit that in a couple of weeks because a) I hated having to wake up so early, and b) the walk was difficult because of the hills and the bursitis in my hip. I switched over to riding my exercise bicycle three times a day which went well until the humidity returned in the spring. Even with fans operating and breezes blowing I sweated enough to make the whole process exceedingly uncomfortable, and that form of exercise was given up. Exercise was changed to taking walks with Brett, but problems arose even with that when the bursitis in my right hip flared up to dangerous levels and didn’t subside. Injuring my back at the end of August sent me into what has become a three-month stretch of pure sedentary living. A couch potato probably gets more exercise than I have these past three months.

I’ve been happy overall though at how differently I approach eating these days because of the one-month-at-a-time plan. I’ve gradually added most things back into my diet, but am far more conscious now of what and how much I’m eating and how it affects me. I am aware of how little I need of some foods in order to be satisfied. Meat (poultry, beef and pork) remain the only things that have not returned, but probably will this month, in very limited quantities. I am going to follow Mark Bittman’s approach in the coming days, vegan/vegetarian before 6:00 p.m., and then a more varied diet at dinner, with meat included, if desired.

There will be some other new changes appearing on December 1:

• Now that I have a recumbent bicycle for exercise, I am going to ride 30 minutes/day, in two 15-minutes sessions. The humidity will be dealt with somehow.
• I am going to drink eight glasses of water every day.

Both of these will be tracked. When I complete both every day for a month I will reward myself at the end of the month, something a bit more special than a coffee at Starbucks or some such thing.

One other activity beginning December 1 will be to spend at least 30 minutes a day studying/reviewing Japanese, and 10 minutes each day learning another language, maybe Italian or Spanish (again).

One month at a time.

I’ve been complaining and whining here about my back for the last month or so, but I finally understand what happened and why, what I have to do to get well, and how long it’s going to take.

My current back injury is a long-term result of a catastrophic accident that occurred over 17 years ago. Two months after bringing WenYu home from China, I tripped over the baby gate we had installed at the bottom of the stairs in our house. My left kneecap hit the hardwood floor and shattered into five pieces. Before surgery, the doctor told Brett and I there was a possibility it could not be saved, and that I might not walk again. But, the doctor did a superb job and was able to repair the kneecap. It took a long time to heal, along with months of physical therapy. I can walk now, which is the most important thing, and will forever be grateful to the surgeon who repaired my knee, but there are things I’ve never been able to do since the accident, or do easily, like run, or walk down stairs or hills, or get up and down off the floor easily (which was hard when the girls were little).

Although I appear to walk normally, I’ve actually been favoring my broken knee ever since, and over the years developed a wicked case of bursitis in my hips, especially my right hip. It’s been getting worse over the past couple of years to the point where after walking for around a half hour or so I experience intense, burning pain. Over time my body has come up with all sorts of strategies to protect both my knee and my hips, and my current back problems are directly related to the bursitis in my right hip. During my long day of travel at the end of August, I hurt my back because I was protecting my hip which was still trying to protect my knee. Both my doctor and the physical therapist said a large knot had formed in my lower back, a mess of muscle and nerves.

After my first PT session I felt awful. The session itself hadn’t been painful, but I felt like the therapist had opened up a bag of poison that had been growing inside of me. I came home and slept for two and half hours, the longest nap I’ve ever taken, and the next morning I woke up feeling more sore than I had in weeks. But, as I went through the day I began to feel better and better and with a couple of exceptions I feel like I’m finally on the right track.

Besides helping my back to heal, the therapist and I will be working on retraining my back and hips so that the bursitis won’t flare up again, or at least not as much as it does now. The physical therapist will be using massage and exercise over the next few weeks to get things back to where they should be. The very good news is that I don’t have arthritis or spinal problems, which was a concern.

It’s going to take several weeks to accomplish the PT goals. I have to continue to spend time lying down, more than I would like, to rest my back. I’m going to have to resist trying to get up to “do it all” again. I felt good enough to go to the farmers’ market on Wednesday, but that proved to be a mistake and I came home in agony. So, short walks and small chores will be it for a while still. Brett and YaYu will continue to take over most of the household duties until I can ease back in to them.

I dislike being sick or injured, so I will get better. There’s a whole world waiting for me out there!