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Updates and new year's resolutions

Dear Diary,

in the past 35 days:

• I managed to maintain my weight despite unhealthy food

• Knee progress: we reached the terminal point of my knee flexion, among other things

• I took a break from supplements to recover my liver

• I now have back problems

• I came up with manageable new year’s resolutions

Let’s look into each of these.

Weight

I ate like shit, but managed to keep my weight below 75kg over the past month or so. I did gain a bit over the first part of holidays…

…but I will easily reverse that trend in a few days.

This is largely due to not eating breakfast and just heading into 4 hour therapy, every day.

On the stationary bike alone, I would do 400 kcal before doing all the other stuff - muscle exercises, treadmill, etc. It is entirely possible I did 600-700 kcal burns before lunch.

I now have a stationary bike at home along with treadmills, so I can easily be mobile while at home and make up for it, plus add some cardio on top if a therapy day was light, plus this is good for weekends.

Terminal Point

At therapy, we reached something called a terminal point - the point beyond my flexion will theoretically not go any more. This is about 10 degrees away from the flexion of my other leg, with which I can connect my heel to my butt. So… no more Slavic squats for me 🫤

The PT is on collective vacation from Dec 23rd to Jan 9th so I have a long break from therapy, but I will still try to do regular exercise for at least an hour a day. I am already feeling the stiffness of the quad returning due to lack of stretching, we will see how it works when we’re back in the groove.

I do have an MRI and check-up with the surgeon around the 20th, which should also help demistify the problem with clicking I have on the PCL - whenever I fully extend my leg, it feels like it skips a few degree minutes, makes a clicking “sound”, as if the PCL is rearranging. Hope it’s nothing serious.

Supplement break

I took a break from supplements in the last 2 weeks to give my liver and kidneys a chance to recover. I do not feel any kind of negative effect, but I will get back on them now in 2023, at least until my leg is at 100%, then another 1 or 2 month break, evaluate results, and decide on whether or not to go on.

Back problems

Partially due to my occasional limp, partially from resisting the flexion during the last month of very aggressive therapy, and partially from not using my core or back muscles a whole lot for almost 5 months now, I seem to have hurt my back or spine somehow - I feel lumbar back pain, and I feel pain when I press a finger against L1-L3 spinal discs. I need to get it checked out, but I am also taking core more seriously now: planks, back extensions, yoga.

Manageable Goals

Given the above, the goals I have for myself this year are:

• do something physically challenging every day

• do something mentally challenging every day

• try to walk 5+ km every day

• stay below 75kg of weight

• do 1 focused hour of at least one of the following activities every day:

  • ukulele practice

  • illustration

  • coding

  • reading

• read and write a short review of two books per month.

No rigid numbers, no too-hard-to-follow discipline. Just be better. Every day.

Achievements, 1/365

Today, after a day of family visits and food madness, I did:

✅ Physical challenge:

• 1min plank x 2

• 1:45 total of dead hang

• 1 x 25 pushups

• 30 min stationary bike

✅ Mental challenge:

• Cold shower, 1 minute.

  • This minute was super hard because I did not do WHM before it, and I did not do cold showers for a while now. Additionally, I have a new higher pressure showerhead, and the weather is much colder so the water pipes are ice cold, all of which creates a cocktail of horror. I am looking forward to pushing it back into 2 minutes until my ice plunge is ready.

✅ Walk:

• Due to excessive family visits, I only walked around 1km total today on the outside, but then clocked in another 4km in 1 hour on the treadmill.

❌ Weight:

• 76.4 at the night weigh-in, the holiday overfeeding is showing its results. I can get that under 75 by end of week easily.

✅ Hour of Focus:

• Reading 1 hour: Player of Games.

The mental challenge intensity should improve soon, the sauna and ice plunge should be installed within two weeks 🤞

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2023

This year should be fun again!

My work burnout is decreasing, my personal life stress is kind of stabilizing, and I am feeling inspired by a new challenge. I will try and do more of these posts going forward, if anything, just to track my own process for myself, and to hold myself accountable.