Fisherman’s Trail

Cycled Fisherman’s trail on my Ebike on Tues morning.  It’s a gravel trail that follows the Seymour River seemingly heading to wilderness oblivion. Very few people on the trail and fewer cyclists.  Rather peaceful and tranquil being in the big outdoors. I would love to ride longer when I heal my body but I am thankful I can get out for a short ride for now.  

 

Hitting speed bumps

 

They say you will encounter speed bumps and bad weather during your life’s journey.  You don’t always get warning signs, sometimes shit just happens.    Sometimes, you need a helping hand, sometimes a lot.  When shit happens, hold on hard.  I am so very fortunate to have the supports I have, especially my friends and family.  I am fortunate to live where I do in a great community.  Living so fortunate, I learned to be kind, lend a helping hand, be there, be present.  You never know when life throws a curve ball, a speed bump or a crazy-ass storm.    

Knowledge is Power

 

November 15, 2021

They say knowledge is power.  I've been  in search of acquiring knowledge in my quest to get heathier as my priority job.  Specifically, in search of knowledge to lose weight.  Not only am I too overweight, I need to lose weight so that there is less pressure on my spine - less chronic back pain and hopefully more ability to be more active longer.  I may never be able to run or race again, but I'd love to do  more than what I'm doing in this state. 

"Losing Weight", the holly grail which most people are in search of.  I came across this book which I quite enjoyed listening to.  I have to admit, I am a fan of Chris Crowley's Younger Next Year books.  I quite enjoyed listening to the audio book Thinner Next year while I cycled on my indoor Trainer.  I got quite a few good nuggets which I will endeavour to follow.  It's all really a lot of common sense.   Unfortunately, not so common yet.  Here are Jenn's 10 rules:

1. Make up your mind and go for it

2. Exercise 45-60 / day, six days a week, for the rest of your life

3. Eat Less and be mindful

4. Don't eat dead food

5. Eat plenty of produce, half of you diet should be veg's and fruit

6. Eat healthy fats in moderation and avoid saturated and trans fats

7. Eat less meat and make it lean

8. Don't drink you calories

9. Don't skip meals

10. Embrace change

I highlighted the rules which I particularly related to and found to be good new rules to try to religiously  follow as much as possible without being a zealot. 

Limping into my 60s

 

It's a typical rainy Vancouver day in November.  Every Sunday, my wife and I use to run Stanley Park's seawall, about 10kms.  Now, she runs the park while I try walking 3-4 kms pending how well I feel and how far I can endure.  The numbness and weakness has returned and my GP recommended intervals of  walking 1km then resting 5 minutes.  haha, 12 mins of slow walking with a 5 minute walk break intervals, walk shuffle is what it's come to.  Well, I am thankful  I can get out and at least do that, even enjoying the dreary dark and wet Vancouver weather.  So I limp into my 60s, struggling to walk but at least I'm walking.  I still hold out hope that I will eventually walk around the full seawall again.  

Getting Healthy is MY ONLY JOB - Time to reset

I just turned 60.  OMG, I'm officially an old fart.  What I didn't expect as I hit that milestone was that I'd be severally injured and disabled by that time.  I've always been very healthy and taken care of myself.  Where did that come from? Why did life throw such a curve ball? 

I've been suffering chronic back pain for a couple of years now.  Hard to believe it's been that long already.  I've had back surgery 9 months ago and been trying to recover and get back to good health.  It's been emotionally up and down for the last two years due to this injury but I focus on doing what I can.  Just like this pandemic we're in, this back injury was a huge shock to me.  Suddenly all my plans changed, can't travel, can't exercise, can't run, can't hike, can't do adventures....If I think about it too much (I do often), it gets me down and depression sets in.  The recovery hasn't gone as planned.  I was improving but the numbness and chronic pain seems to have returned to my dismay.

I do feel fortunate that I am somewhat mobile although my endurance is crap.  I can do some light exercises like biking, walking and swimming.  My doc and PT advise me to give up running, hiking and racing.  That really saddened me.   Although I was not great at it, I loved running, I loved hiking, I loved adventure, I loved the big outdoors, I loved racing.  I loved the training, setting goals, pushing myself to new levels, I even took pride in all the sacrifices to get to the start line. Racing even scared me to a large degree.  Testing your body to do things that are hard to do and race against others.  On the day of the race, seeing if all the training sacrifices paid off.   It made me feel alive!

I am on work leave hoping to get back to work so I can properly finish off my career.  While on leave, my goal has always been to get healthy again so I can resume "life".  I am working with a good medical team to help me get there.  However, I need to do the "heavy lifting" to get back to health.    To do that, I needed to resolve my lower back chronic pain as much as I could personally do.   One of the recommendations my doc told me was to lose some weight.  Now that it's fall, it's going to be even harder to lose weight, I always put on 10-15 lbs every fall. In the spring/summer, I exercise so much that I always lose that weight.

I need to make Getting Healthy, my job.  I need to really focus on my diet.  I need to be smarter with my light exercises, I need to get better sleep, I need to get better educated, to be smarter, I need to make getting healthy my job.  Even though I'm a couple of years into this journey already, as part of helping my mental health, I will journal and blog  my journey.  

My new Health Office: