Thursday, May 3, 2012

Totally got called out

I've been having knee problems for a while now, and they seem to be never-ending. I ended up having surgery on it in December, got a steroid shot last month, and am still having some grinding/diffuse pain issues even though the steroid helped immensely with the worst of the pain.

Anywhos, I went to my orthopedic doctor today and I felt like the office had become a bit too familiar. The front-desk lady pulled out my chart as soon as she saw me come in and the PA actually pronounced my nickname correctly (that's how I usually know people remember meeting me). I clearly have been coming in too much.

Why all this detail? Well, it's mostly because I like to ramble. But my main point is that the doc and his PA both said that I need to work more on strengthening the knee, by doing core, hip, and quad workouts. Yeah, I've been slacking on those like crazy and they totally called me out on it.

I mean, I'll go on really hard bike rides several times a week but I honestly can't remember the last time I did a side plank. And my left quad is still significantly smaller than my right one. (I have no idea how they can tell that just by poking around my kneecap, but I'll take it.)

So that is something I'm going to have to work on now to make this knee thing go away. But I'm really glad they don't think I'd torn my meniscus, again. I don't have time or energy to deal with all that that entails.

And on another positive front, I'm down to 213.5 lbs today, which is pretty awesome considering my 3 x per week of exercise max and eating out habits. Since I started this shindig at the end of February, I've somewhat consistently been losing 1 lb per week, which has been the plan. Awesome!

My clothes don't fit any better, so I've been worrying that my muscles have been atrophying due to my schedule of insane studying and not much else. But my fat % has also been creeping down so maybe that's an unfounded concern. The biggest challenge will be finding motivation to exercise during the next two months while I'm on a boat (in my flippy floppies).

Regardless, today has been a pretty good day.