I’ve been making a good start getting myself used to the new diet. The OptiFast order arrived so I’m having a ‘protein shake’ for breakfast, a salad for lunch and a Lite n Easy meal for dinner. So far I’ve managed to restrain myself from eating ‘snacks’ and I seem to be moving along slowly but steadily. My weight this morning was 154.6 so down 4 kilos, which to be fair isn’t such a bad start!!
Since I seem to be pretty much coping with the current diet regime, my next move will be to substitute the salad I’m having for lunch, with an OptiFast *soup*. The idea would be to reduce my calorie intake as much as I reasonably can without damaging myself. I will have to check both protein shakes and soups to determine how much protein is in each and compare the total against the recommended daily requirements for males of my age (and girth!). If they, plus the protein in the evening meal, don’t meet the daily needs, I’ll have to consider adding protein from elsewhere, perhaps adding beans to the soups etc.
The next issue is exercise. Here we’ve had a problem. For weeks I’ve been having problems in my left hip from bursitis. In fact, this might have been the initial motivator to start the recovery process. The pain has made it *very* difficult to do anything meaningful. I tried an exercise on YouTube that let me sit and mostly exercise my upper body with some ‘short kicks’ for shame’s sake, but the next morning I woke and my right arm was numb so I had to stop that, at least for the moment. I’m very aware I need to move more so what I *have* done is started frequenting the local swimming pool.
This pool has only recently been refurbished, actually *rebuilt* and it’s *very* nice indeed! All the pools are heated so they are extraordinarily comfortable to use, especially since it’s winter here currently. I say I’ve been ‘swimming’ but in fact, I’ve been *walking*. They have a small pool that is mainly for lessons and aquaerobics so when I go is usually almost empty. I walk down the ramp (I’ve never been keen on jumping into pools – even as a small child) and then basically walk up and down using the water to give me ‘resistance’ and stretching/strengthening by leg muscles. Eventually, I hope to progress to the gym and start trying to build up muscle and stamina, but for now, gentle walking in water will help. Mustn’t try to run before we can walk eh??
And that’s where this update stops. I’ll carry on doing what I’m doing for the next week and maybe introduce the soup at lunchtime to see how we go. Perhaps I’ll start tomorrow and have soup every other day to ‘acclimatise’ myself to it. Anyway, the next post will probably cover that and what happened.
The Eclectic Interweb 