Month: April 2023

fitness · rest

One week countdown to second knee replacement surgery: 10 things Sam is doing to get ready

Sam B2 Comments

Sleep

Obviously it’s good to arrive at the hospital the day of surgery well rested. I’ll try to get a good night’s sleep the night before but more importantly I’ll try to get lots of regular sleep the week before. I’m doing pretty well these days. No 4 hour nights, followed by 10 hour nights.

Check it out!

Sleep!

Work

This goal might conflict with sleep. Lol. I’m trying to get lots done at work so things are under control for the people I leave in the Acting Dean role. It’s hard because it’s not just that the Dean is away, it’s also that we’re down one person in the dean’s office. And we’re short on staff to start. In September when I went on medical leave for knee #1, things were pretty calm. Not so now. We’re still in the middle of budget conversations and there’s a lot up in the air.

Exercise

Another goal that competes with work and sleep for my time…

I’m aiming to put as much movement as possible in the bank because post surgery there’ll be a few weeks when it will only be physio plus a lot of lying around. I’ve been working on core and upper body strength too for all of the getting in and out of bed activity, which is especially challenging after surgery when your legs don’t work. All the triceps exercises, right Meg? (Meg is the world’s best personal trainer and she works at the U of G athletics centre, where she’s also the throwing coach.)

Last week I did three hours of personal training plus two physio appointments plus a ton of walking. This weekend I was happy to get out on my bike, outdoors. Yay!

Outdoor bike riding first time since Arizona

I also have some exercise goals to wrap up this week, like the Build Me Up Lite training program in Zwift.

Here’s my progress so far:

Tidying and organizing stuff

Getting around on crutches isn’t easy and it especially isn’t easy if you’re navigating around stuff. I’m going to clear out my room and put things away, leaving out only the things I’ll need. I’m swapping over winter and summer clothing early because once I’m back at work, I won’t need my winter work clothes. It’s a task that’s physically easy now but won’t be so easy after surgery.

There’s also the stuff I’ll need post surgery– the ice machine, pain drugs, crutches, etc. I’m trying to find all the things and get organized.

Iron and good eating

Readers who follow me on social media will know that I struggled a bit to get my iron levels where they should be for surgery. In the end, diet alone wouldn’t do it (I’m a vegetarian) but ferrous glucanate did the trick. I also supplemented vitamin C since that is supposed to help with iron absorption. I’m now at the top end of normal for adult women. But I am still trying to eat lots of leafy green vegetables. Sarah made this soup for us to take to a potluck on Saturday to celebrate an anniversary.

Leek Soup with Herbed Gremolata

Movies and shows

The last time through I made a big stack of books I’d planned on reading but honestly for the first few weeks I just wasn’t up to reading. I moved from philosophy to challenging contemporary fiction to popular fiction and then genre fiction, but none of it stuck. I just kept losing track of the plot and the characters and getting frustrated. For the first few weeks even challenging TV was too much. SheHulk was about right. Also, Never Have I Ever. After that, I needed gripping content. I ended up binging Better Call Saul and then Breaking Bad. This time I might watch The Expanse and Babylon 5. I’ve also never watched The Wire.

Physio

I’ve been doing physio twice a week for a very long time. But these days the focus is on getting ready for the next knee surgery. The left knee–the new one–is in pretty good shape. So we’re rehabbing the left knee, and pre-habbing the right.

Mindset

I’m struggling a bit here. At one level, I really don’t want to go through this again. I know what it feels like and I’m not anxious to experience that again.

I’ve been enjoying walking a bit and riding my bike. But I am still in a lot of knee pain, the right knee. One day this week I wasn’t sure even with my cane if I could make it to the gym. This has to be done and better sooner than later as right now it’s the right knee that’s slowing me down.

I keep telling myself that it will be good to have the summer (no ice, no snow!) to recover.

I’m trying very hard to focus on the positive–SWIMMING!–and not worry so much about missing another summer of physical activity.

Mostly it’s just a lot of reminding myself that yes, this will be very hard, but I can do hard things.

Bird feeder

Since I plan on spending a lot of time in the back room, which a good view of the deck, or out on the deck, I think I’ll get a feeder and see if I can attract some birds to our back deck.

Bird feeders

I’m also getting a haircut!

Haircut with Dante at Image Makeover, On Queen West, Toronto. Before.
Haircut, after. But not yet dry.
Book Club · Book Reviews · fitness

To listen, read, and watch this week, the first week of April 2023

Sam B

Listen

There’s a new fit and feminist podcast in town!

#34 The benefits of journaling and getting started

The Fit and Feminist Podcast

Read

Our books club is starting soon! Do you have your copy?

“The co-host of Maintenance Phase and creator of Your Fat Friend equips you with the facts to debunk common anti-fat myths and with tools to take action for fat justice.

The pushback that shows up in conversations about fat justice takes exceedingly predicable form. Losing weight is easy—calories in, calories out. Fat people are unhealthy. We’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Fat acceptance “glorifies obesity.” The BMI is an objective measure of size and health. Yet, these myths are as readily debunked as they are pervasive.

In “You Just Need to Lose Weight,” Aubrey Gordon equips readers with the facts and figures to reframe myths about fatness in order to dismantle the anti-fat bias ingrained in how we think about and treat fat people. Bringing her dozen years of community organizing and training to bear, Gordon shares the rhetorical approaches she and other organizers employ to not only counter these pernicious myths, but to dismantle the anti-fat bias that so often underpin them.

As conversations about fat acceptance and fat justice continue to grow, “You Just Need to Lose Weight” will be essential to ensure that those conversations are informed, effective, and grounded in both research and history.”

Watch

“When the filmmaker Azza Cohen asked her grandmother to star in a documentary, she knew she wanted to tell a story of an older person not looking back at her life but forward. Cohen’s short film “FLOAT!” follows her 82-year-old bubbe as she checks off one of the items on her bucket list—learning how to swim.”

Float: A Grandma Learns to Swim

The New York Times short workout illustrations. Mini-workouts, and the people who have opinions about them
fitness · fitness classes

Mini-workouts, and the people who have opinions about them

catherine w

Yesterday I was busy with a bunch of errands and chores and tasks and to-do items, i.e. it was a normal Saturday. However, I found myself with not enough time to do a walk or yoga class. So, I thought, hey, let’s do one of those New York Times X-minute workout (where X is a number <10). They have 6, 7 and 9-minute workouts, along with modifications. Great– this is just the ticket.

I did the standing 7-minute workout, which was sufficient for my busy-day needs. You can try it here.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the NYT comments for the article. What I found was plenty of opinions:

  • use of the term “exercise snack” made them think about potato chips, which they didn’t want to do
  • the workout felt too much like a warmup
  • the workout needed more of a warmup
  • they suggested sprinting up three flights of stairs would be a better short workout
  • they expressed horror at the idea of sprinting up three flights of stairs
  • they wanted a printable version of the workout
  • apropos of nothing, they expressed their disapproval of leaf blowers (which I share, but..)

All this reminded me of a post I did a few years back about the NYT 6-minute workout. Now THOSE readers had some serious opinions. If you’d like to look at it, here’s the post below.

And however many minutes you choose to devote to working out, I wish you well. And don’t think about potato chips (unless you want to).

-caw

The NYT 6-minute workout: commenters’ critiques and robust responses
athletes · competition · fitness

Tracy couldn’t survive Physical: 100

Tracy I2 Comments

When I first noticed the Korean show Physical: 100 on Netflix, I was intrigued. It reminded me of The Shape of an Athlete, Howard Schatz’s amazing photographs of the wide range of athletic body types across diverse Olympic sports, from his book, Athlete.

Not only did it remind me of that, but I am a fan of Korean tv and I am a fan of competition shows (okay, mostly baking and cooking, but back in the early-90s I did name one of my first cats after an American Gladiator named Storm). Since I’d just finished Snack vs Chef and I like having one reality tv competition show on the go to dip in and out of, Physical: 100 seemed worth a try.

Physical: 100 starts with 100 of the fittest athletes in Korea (who are mostly Korean, but there are a few foreigners in the mix), from diverse sports and sectors. From an Olympic gold medalist to an extreme rescue worker, an MMA champion, boxers, body builders, fitness influencers, dancers, cheerleaders and martial artists, men and women, the diversity of strong and fit bodies is most definitely represented.

Watching them all enter the room in episode one and find their “torso” among the room full of plaster cast statues of each of their torsos was way more interesting than it sounds. Each time someone new came in they were all in awe. And though they all turn out to be super competitive, they also have a next level culture of respect that is nicely captured in those opening scenes.

Over the course of nine episodes there will be five challenges, with one person standing by the end. They win 300 million Korean Won (or just over $315,000 Canadian). They start with a pre-challenge to see how long they can hang suspended high in the air from a bar. the winner of that challenge gets a “benefit” (I haven’t seen enough to know what that means).

The hanging challenge was kind of interesting, seeing who could hang on and who dropped and when. But they divided into two groups of 50 and it spanned two episodes. Part of the intrigue is watching the people who are out of the game (because they dropped) react to the people who are still in.

The first actual elimination challenge sees 50/100 go home. It involves one to one combat, where the top 50 from the hanging challenge get to choose their opponent and the “arena” for the game — either an astroturf area with some obstacles and equipment, or a dirt patch with a muddy pool in the middle. The point of the game is simple, after three minutes in the ring, the person holding the ball (a large medicine ball type thing) wins. The loser has to smash their plaster torso and go home.

So it was this first challenge where they lost me, mostly because it’s just not interesting enough of a game for me to want to watch very many iterations of it. And also there just seemed to be more fighting than was necessary (though perhaps I underestimate how hard it would be to hang onto a ball and keep it for three minutes). Even with the added intrigue of who chose whom, interviews with the competitors in each match to hear what was going through their heads, and the other contestants watching and reacting as spectators, I got bored before the end of the second episode. The same game was going to spill over into the third and I just couldn’t.

Probably as an author for a feminist fitness blog I should have more to say of a critical nature than “I got bored.” I assume that the subsequent challenges will challenge them in different ways, where different bodies will face different advantages and disadvantages depending on what the challenge is. I also like that there is gender-diversity and the contestants challenge stereotypes, with some extremely hefty women bodybuilders, some small slight men, and some more androgynous athletes. I can’t say for sure that anyone identifies as non-binary, but many of the contestants defy gender-stereotypes.

I may go back to it at some point, but there is a lot of streaming content available these days. And right now, at the end of a long day the Australian dessert competition, Zumbo’s Just Desserts is winning out over Physical: 100.