The Easy Does It Plan

Since getting the all clear on Tuesday morning from my doctor, I have been thinking about the how to get back into the exercise habit, build up my fitness again, and avoid doing any more damage to my knees...

Walking, at a slow pace, seems safe. I'll get bored if that's all I'm doing though.

Should I go back to my usual workouts, but reduce weights and intensity? I'm afraid I'll get impatient with that, and I'm not so sure those workouts are the best for recovery. Maybe I am overthinking, and worrying too much, but I would prefer to be cautious rather than wind up right back where I was last fall.

So, I turned to google for specific ideas and decided to give this a try:

8 Exercises to Help Your Knees from WebMD

Yesterday, did 6 of the 8 exercises here, alternating each one with an upper body or core exercise. It took me an hour to do, so not something that I am likely to squeeze in on a work night. Feeling it today, and probably will be feeling it even more tomorrow. 
 
Aside from this, what I have been trying to do is:

1. Get in a a walking break of at least 20 minutes during my work day. The office building I work in is part of a complex of buildings connected by walkways, so I can easily walk indoors without worrying about the weather (or slipping and falling on ice, and possibly banging up my knees even more).
2. Aim to get in an additional 20 minutes of activity after work. This could be walking, or other exercise.

The workouts might be longer than 20 minutes. Some days there might only be one. Some days I might do a block of 40 all at once. Basically just trying to get movement back into my life without overdoing it. 

I'm not sure how I'm going to track this. So far I have set it up on my side bar to just mark off the blocks of [at least] 20 minutes that I get in each day. I don't want to get into writing down specifics of treadmill walks; I used to always write down speed, distance, incline for my treadmill sessions but this tends to lead to me wanting to outdo my last session, which in turn can lead to me overdoing things, and I really want to keep things slow and easy for now.

I really do feel like I'm being ridiculous and making too big a deal of this...But then I remind myself of what it was like to not even feel confident about walking. I'm already nervous about walking down stairs, and always try to keep my hand on a railing because I don't trust myself. I have a real fear of falling now (something to do with having done that three times in three years).

So this is my loose plan. I will likely have to come up with some shorter strength routines; possibly I will just break up the Web MD one, but I did see some other exercises when I was looking around.

The rest of last week passed in a blur...I'm trying to remember what I did, but obviously nothing exciting! We had more snow on Wednesday, I remember that for sure. Yesterday morning it was snowing again, and it looked very pretty in the morning. Then by afternoon it turned to rain again.

I slept in a bit, then relaxed for the morning with my coffee and a book, plus a bit of time on the computer. Cottage cheese for breakfast because it's easy, I like it, and it gives me protein. Did my workout and then had lunch:

The Indian meal delivery for this week was Pad Thai (which is not so much Indian, but not complaining) . This is the second time for Pad Thai, and last time I found that one serving was enough to give me two meals. There is always a Dal dish offered, so this time we ordered one Pad Thai for me (with Paneer), two for Husband (one shrimp, one chicken) and one order of the Dal.

I split the Dal between us for lunch, and toasted some sprouted grain bread. I very much enjoyed it, Husband said he didn't like the Kale that was in it.

I followed that with a piece of Dark Chocolate Almond Bark that Husband brought home on Friday;

Then I tackled sorting through some old clothes to get rid of. I am such a pack rat, I have a hard time getting rid of anything. Over the years, as older clothes no longer fit, I have packed them away in the hopes that someday they will fit again...No such luck. It's gotten to the point where it is really too much. If I just chucked all of, it would probably be a lot less stress, but I don't know how to do that. So I am making an effort to go through things and at least make a start. Yesterday, I found that I pretty much had an immediate Yes or No reaction to most things, so I didn't allow myself to think about it too hard; anything that was a No immediately went in the toss pile. My aim is to spend a bit of time every weekend on this.

I thought about going downstairs to do some painting, but lately this has been a difficult thing because Isabelle comes down, getting into things and wanting attention. In the fall and early winter she didn't do that so much, I think because the basement seemed like Trixie's domain, but she's getting braver about that. So I ended up just puttering a bit upstairs - I cannot find Isabelle's harness, have not been able to for a week and I keep searching - and then playing a little ESO, and some more reading while I munched on some Pistachios.

Dinner was the rest of our Indian delivery; 1/2 serving of Pad Thai with Paneer for me, Pad Thai with Chicken for Husband.

And there was some more chocolate for dessert. The Husband brought me a rum & coke. Apparently it was a day for treats.


Today has been another damp, gloomy day. We were supposed to go out and do grocery shopping, but our drive way is all ice at the moment; we live on a hill, so we worry about being to get back up the drive way when it's all icy. Forecast is for freezing rain, so tomorrow might be interesting.

I need to get in some piano practice, and a short walk on the treadmill would be good. And the next thing I know, it will be Monday again...