Swimmy swimmy swim swim

Swimming in a pool is my least favorite of all things. Lately I’ve begun to enjoy the serene meditation of the elliptical, especially after about 30 minutes on it. I think that may be a function of the rhythmic pumping and the music (which I must have - I cannot run without it). Swimming, on the other hand, has gone very much the opposite. Where I used to look forward to swimming, I sort of don’t any more. I still enjoy it, the water and the splashing and the chicks with the tight swim suits, but 90% of the time my face is under water and I’m following a black line back and forth and back and forth and back and forth for 30 minutes. But I appreciate that it’s important since I can’t run regularly due to a certain body part:

What do you say to that? *sigh*. It doesn’t hurt. Doing copious amounts of elliptical actually remove the pain the next day, so long as I ice it down for hours the night before and feed myself NSAIDs before I go to sleep. If I take a day off, it hurts like a beyotch though. I’ve made an appointment with my family doc so she can look at it, concur with my observation that it’s larger than the other one and send me to a PT doc who will help me more than the university sports med guy who just told me to do some squats. A month later, that’s not doing anything and I’m a month out from the race. Barring horrible bone pain, I intend to run no matter what. Besides, I earned it doing this:

The good thing about shrinking is that you don’t have to buy new clothes if you don’t mind looking like a homeless person.

The bad news is you look like a homeless person.  This wouldn’t matter much for me if I didn’t have a wife that it actually mattered to who nevertheless doesn’t buy me new shorts to replace those that don’t fit.  Complaining is free, you know.

mmm bad week

I’ve done something bad to my calf muscles and had to abandon my work out only 13 minutes into a 35 minute eliptical thingiee yesterday.  It’s quite a bummer because now I not only have a weak knee but also seriously sore calf muscles.  To top it off, digestive problems (which are always around the corner for me) is going to make swimming unlikely today.  I’ve decided that I’m going to have to take today off, which will be the first day I skip a work out, but it’s sad nonetheless, since I didn’t get a full workout yesterday either.

Running is really painful.  I don’t know why people do it.  I don’t want to lead anyone on to the notion that I like to run, because I don’t.  There’s a buzz or a high at the end, but getting it is really awful… like whoring for crack.  My body is also rejecting it as evidence by my legs and knees, though with the PT (which includes regular leg presses), my legs are getting huge.  I could seriously kick someone in the lower part of their leg very hard if I wanted to.  Beyond that, I’m not sure what the function of huge legs with bad knees could be.

In other news, I’ve decided what chapter 3 of this blog is going to be.  Since the race (and training for the race) is over at the beginning of June, I need something that starts in June so… MARTIAL ARTS!  Woot.  I’ll be starting a martial arts course in June that combines Taekwondo with Brazilian Jujitsu.  I have no idea what that’s going to be like…

Sunburst 10K exercise regiment

For my own personal convenience (and to satisfy any curiosity you may have) I have posted the present tentative workout schedule that I’ll be following. It’s very similar to the one my dad made for me, but I had to reduce the length of swimming as 1. my skin can’t take a full hour in the pool and 2. swimming is even more boring than elliptical and you can’t take an iPod into the pool.

I need to work out a more regimented diet. My former one of starvation isn’t as conducive to training as it needs to be.

The fruits of my labor

The Nikon D80 arrived, which was paid for with the winnings I received from everyone who sponsored me. Thanks everyone! I took some pictures of Zhara and the most imposing Lord Picklesworth this morning to show off the awesome power that is the D80.

I’m going to the gym. The knee, if you’re curious, is getting better. The PT is helping and so are the pair of New Balance shoes I pulled out of my closet. (Knee problems are not aided by boots.) My runnings shoes are new and were generously supplied by my mom - so that’s always been fine. I still think my old New Balances are awesome. Something about and old pair of sneakers (that don’t smell) make me feel better.

OH, and hooray for summer. And boo for gaining another 2 pounds. I think I need to re-examine my diet.

+5 lbs

Over the last two weeks, the good living has frustratingly added weight back.  I’ve noticed it in my stomach.  While I’m still obviously far thinner than I was, I’ve gained back around 5 pounds from enjoying (over enjoying) good food and not doing anything physical.  Next week begins the “training” for the Sunburst, so I’ll have to knock off the superfluous eating habit that I’ve picked up again.  I’m fairly certain I’ll lose it again and I’m still at 184, which is roughly my ideal (actually, I prefer 182) but it’s above what I want and it’s going in a very wrong direct and it did it very quickly.

It’s just so damn hard to help myself.  Food is everywhere and it’s all junk.  Salty and sweet, my two favorite flavors, are practically free and unavoidable.  Cake at group meeting for graduating students (caramel cake at that), cookies and chocolates and extra helpings.  It’s impossible to avoid it and I’m clearly addicted to it.  And I don’t mean addicted in the “haha look at me, I enjoy chocolate” kind of way, I mean I feel physically bad when I deny myself food.  It’s like trying to quit smoking, but worse.  At least with cigarettes you can just stop forever.  Swear off the damn things and be done, never to see them again.  Safe in knowing they can’t get you if you don’t get them first.  Obviously not eating will have rather tragic consequences, therefore continuously eating is an obligation, but the absurd amount of control it can have over you is almost frightening.

I’ve suddenly begun to look at anorexics in a whole new light.  Anorexia isn’t about losing control of your diet, it’s about asserting it.

It’s a matter of asymmetry

The human body is a remarkable thing, I think. Today I learned that my left leg is slightly longer longer than my right leg from Dr. Moriarity at the University Clinic. This small defect has caused a mild pronation to compensate. An article on the issue is found here, from which I quote:

Chronic overuse problems that persist despite appropriate care are the hallmarks of a leg length discrepancy (LLD) in an athlete. While the symptoms associated with LLDs are diverse and, at times, vague and confusing, you should suspect limb length asymmetry when athletes have back or lower extremity complaints. Leg length asymmetries appear to be the third most common cause of running injuries and occur in 60 to 90 percent of the population.

This pronation causes asymmetric muscle construction in both legs, which in turn causes the knees to bend in awkward directions to compensate. Again, from an outside source, I quote:

Contrary to popular belief, the acquired shortage is a pronation problem, first and foremost. The reason is that, while you may look identical on both sides of your body, the left and right don’t work exactly the same. The same goes for pronation. As you develop, the brain picks up on the patterns of two feet, recognizing the slight variation in gait. The body compensates by rotating one of the hip bones (called the ileum). The ileum can rotate either backward and downward (called PI Ileum for posterior inferior) or forward and upward (AS Ileum for anterior-superior). This pulls the leg higher into the hip socket, causing the leg to function short, changing the alignment of the muscles around the hip and spine. Unfortunately, this causes those muscles to work unequally and inefficiently, and ultimately causes pain.

What this means is that the muscles in my legs have caused a misalignment in one of the two primary “joints” inside of the knee - the femoro-patellar joint, which consists of the “kneecap” the, sesamoid bone which sits within the tendon of the anterior thigh muscle, and the patellar groove on the front of the femur through which it slides. Muscles which are “overgrown” in response to the height discrepancy will pull on the patella (kneecap) in such a way that it becomes misaligned with the patellar grove. The end result is knee pain. Conditioning the under developed muscles will push you to rely on them more - thereby attaining symmetry in your movement.

This means that I need to condition the muscles that are underdeveloped by doing exercises which promote a more ‘natural motion’ in the knee. I’ll take a picture of what I mean when I get my camera in the mail (Nikon D80. Thanks for all the money!) Hopefully next week. But the idea is quite simple:

If you stand on one leg, with your hands on your hips and do a squat (on one leg) your knee should naturally fold down right on top of your foot. If it bends in (or out) and your hips twist out (or in) then your not built quite right. In my case, my knee swings well inside and my hips rotate around to correct it. I cannot squat directly over my knee as my muscles do not support my weight. In the end, one should be able to squat to an almost ’sitting position’ with the knee over the foot.

In the end, what all this means, is that I need to do strength training on my legs which include some ridiculous looking exercises, which include standing on one foot for two minutes at a time with the patella, foot and hips all perfectly straight. After that’s nearly effortless, I then do squats, lunges and various other knee bending exercises to sculpt a normal shaped knee. This means that, in the short term, I’m allowed to do short jobs, elliptical, stationary bike and swimming.

And, most importantly, I shouldn’t have any problem running in the Sunburst in two months, though I most likely will not be able to run very well, since this sort of injury takes a while to work out. But I am cleared for short jogs until the pain is mostly gone.

A knee in need

Tomorrow I go to the doctor to get the OK with my knee.  My legs were really roughed up in Utah skiing, but they have made a complete recovery.  I even managed to get in 20 minutes at the pool today.  The water there is too chlorinated - too much so to do swimming for more than 30 or 40 minutes at a time.  Now that I shave my face, my sensitive skin is now reactive extra-stupid sensitive and flakes white stuff off a few hours after drying.

As for the knee, I’m not much sure what to make of it.  All the joints in my lower half have hurt, with the exception of my feet.  The new fancy-pants runnings shoes my mom got me helped, I’m sure, but obviously not sufficient to totally prevent complication.  One thing they did prevent, for which I’m eternally grateful, was shin splints.  I haven’t had to deal with them once.  I’m quite certain my knee, of which only the right seems to provide any sustained discomfort, was injured from a combination of over use and abuse, as I tried to stomp something in the lab while pissed off and over extended my knee into our concrete floor whilst wearing my boots.  I suppose had I sat down and followed my normal habit - do nothing, I don’t imagine I would have hurt it - but I did a 4 mile run the next day did an extended 30 minute swim the day after that and ran 3 miles the day after that.

BUT - that being said, I haven’t had to wear my wrap for the last 2 days and there has been no obvious swelling.  Periodically, after much walking around campus, the thing becomes sensitive.  I suppose the doctor will have something to say on it tomorrow, presumably instructions not to run on it for a little while longer, as well as PT instructions which he already promised he would give me, since I appear to have joints which are prone to being over extended and thus need muscle tissue…. (and if anyone could tell me how building tone muscle tissue compensates for joint overextension I would be very curious to hear.  Body builders don’t seem to lose any range of motion as they bulk up - why would my knee?)

Chapter 2: Sunburst 10K

The conclusion and victory of the biggest loser competition has given me motivation to continue in my rather strange quest to become a boxer. Thus begins a second chapter in a blog which, rather hopefully, will end in me boxing. In my estimation, a boxer (above all things) must have stamina. Thus, it would do me no good to enter into a ring with a body that needs to go 10 rounds but can only stand up to 1. Thus, before I even seek training in a ring, I figure I must first build myself into something that has the ability to hammer out 10 kilometers worth of pavement without stopping and in steady form. Enter the Sunburst Races.

The Race is May 31^st, which gives me a little under two months to prepare. The course looks fun. As far as I can tell, it’s a challenge to run 4 miles for me, I have never trained outside and I’ve never run in a “race” in my life. I wasn’t involved in a single high school or college sport - so, this will be my first competitive race ever.

If anyone knows how to train for these things, now would be a good time to tell me what to do over the next few months. :)

The end of Chapter 1 AKA, the open secrets.

The general flow of the preceding 3 months was rough, to say the least. Losing 40 pounds in that short span of time was taxing on myself, my relationships and my responsibilities at work. It was difficult, but it was accomplished. So, here I’ll do a bit of a review of the process that took 3 months to go from 219 pounds to 178.5 pounds.

Firstly, two things helped me a great deal. My family and Sparkpeople. My wife was exceptionally patient with me from the beginning to the end. I think, in her own way, she knew she would benefit from a skinnier, healthier husband, but in order to do that, she had to have the patients to put up with my odd emotional outburst. Losing weight is a complicated biochemical process. It’s a path that necessitates blunt force through a delicate corridor. The hormones that regulate weight gain and weight loss also operate as neurotransmitters and work within complicated feedback mechanisms to produce feelings of hunger and satiation. All this means, quite roughly, is that weight fluctuations translate into dramatic mood swings. Insulin, for instance, is an immensely important and complicated player in the process and regulating it by adjusting the available glucose levels appears to have a more dramatic effect on weight loss than simply regulating calories.

I am thus advocating the “Atkins” method to produce rapid weight loss. Now does this necessarily indicate that the weight loss is due to the loss of fat? That answer appears to be yes. A conclusion which appears to be born out by more thorough analyses published in actual respectable journals of medical sciences. For one, from JAMA: (The article is available free to the public here.)

Weight loss was greater for women in the Atkins diet group compared with the other diet groups at 12 months, and mean 12-month weight loss was significantly different between the Atkins and Zone diets (P<.05). Mean 12-month weight loss was as follows: Atkins, –4.7 kg (95% confidence interval [CI], –6.3 to –3.1 kg), Zone, –1.6 kg (95% CI, –2.8 to –0.4 kg), LEARN, –2.6 kg (–3.8 to –1.3 kg), and Ornish, –2.2 kg (–3.6 to –0.8 kg). Weight loss was not statistically different among the Zone, LEARN, and Ornish groups. At 12 months, secondary outcomes for the Atkins group were comparable with or more favorable than the other diet groups.

An early study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, arguably the most elite journal of medical research agrees and found:

Seventy-nine subjects completed the six-month study. An analysis including all subjects, with the last observation carried forward for those who dropped out, showed that subjects on the low-carbohydrate diet lost more weight than those on the low-fat diet (mean [±SD], –5.8±8.6 kg vs. –1.9±4.2 kg; P=0.002) and had greater decreases in triglyceride levels (mean, –20±43 percent vs. –4±31 percent; P=0.001), irrespective of the use or nonuse of hypoglycemic or lipid-lowering medications. Insulin sensitivity, measured only in subjects without diabetes, also improved more among subjects on the low-carbohydrate diet (6±9 percent vs. –3±8 percent, P=0.01). The amount of weight lost (P<0.001) and assignment to the low-carbohydrate diet (P=0.01) were independent predictors of improvement in triglyceride levels and insulin sensitivity.

Theories as to why fat is used differently than sugar is a field in its infancy. A general review can be found here, though any notion in its infancy is always subject to question and being overturned.

The consensus opinion appears to be:

1. Such diets result in greater weight loss compared to control groups
2. They are effective and generally safe for periods examined over the course of 12 months
3. No studies, that I am aware of have assessed their safety beyond 12 months
4. It is safe to remain on the diet 7 days a week, all 12 months, if you have no preexisting medical conditions which would prohibit you from eating large quantities of proteins or fats.

First, let me show you the course of my weight loss:

Make your own decisions there. Two factors combined strongly indicate, to me at least, that after 14 days of nominal weight loss and a sudden rapid resumption of weight loss after switching diet is a good indicator to me that one diet works markedly differently than another. BUT the addition of Alli makes my own personal results questionable. Was it the Alli? Was it the diet? Was it both? My inclination is to believe it is a combination of the two. But, that’s only a small bit of the data. Here is the nutritional data:

The largest difference was in the total number of carbohydrates consumed - the amount of fat I ate as well as the total calories were roughly the same. But, again, that’s not all the data either.

This rather strange chart is the approximate calories I burned by doing a combination of swimming, running and elliptical. Clearly, starting at the month of march, I increased my work out significantly.

In the end, the raw conclusion is that a combination of diet and exercise is necessary to decrease weight. Not a very novel conclusion, I know, and (to make matters worse) there are too many complicating factors to suggest that any one single thing helped the most. Was it the switch to Atkins, the use of Alli or the sudden and extreme increase in cardiovascular exercise that contributed the most to the sudden resumption of rapid weight loss? I don’t know. But that’s the full expose of my secrets.

I also want to thank my father for generating a nice workout schedule, which I did put to good use. Because I injured my knee, I had to substitute swimming for the last four weeks in place of 20 minutes of cardio.