One of the inevitable consequences of getting more strenuous exercise is that you occasionally have to deal with injuries. Tempting karma, I had once remarked that in my athletic career and other endeavors I had pulled pretty much every muscle available. Well karma was listening and responded over the past 8-9 months with several new aches and pains I didn't even knew existed. Some of that you can chalk up to getting older, but not all of it - sometimes even when taking precautions to best of your abilities, you're gonna get hurt anyway. And that's exactly when you find out who you REALLY are...
See, when you're an addict, you look for ways to put off getting clean - not just because staying high feels good, but because it's a lot of work to STAY clean once you get there, and so profoundly disappointing to you and everyone around you when you fail. The same applies to any addiction - alcohol, meth, heroin, cigarettes...all are enormously hard to give up not just for the "pleasure" they give but because changing your life for good is hard work. When you're overweight or obese, food is your drug, and in my opinion it's the hardest habit to "kick" because - you need it.
You don't need to drink or do drugs or smoke cigarettes; unless you're in chronic pain and in need of medication, every single one of those is something you can give up entirely and eventually not miss much at all. Honestly this is probably the reason why I've admittedly looked so unfavorably upon people who go and get themselves addicted to those things. But you can't live without food. And learning how to not only stop overeating, but to stop eating stuff that's bad for you...that's a whole lot harder than you can imagine. Every meal, every bite you take is a slippery slope, and it's just so much easier to NOT watch what you eat....that your mind will pretty much take any opportunity to avoid standing guard. And if it's any consolation, I still struggle with this pretty much every day - especially now that I'm coming back off an injury.
When you can get on the weight-loss wagon for a good stretch, and you really see results, and you can exercise at will...then watching what you eat is much easier. It's when something disrupts that delicate balance that
problems arise. You go to a party and over-indulge and that turns one bad day into a week - or more. Or you know there's a birthday or an anniversary or a holiday coming up and instead of keeping yourself in line before and afterwards, you just say the hell with it and eat whatever you want, because I mean, you're gonna blow it on that day anyway, right? You'll quit doing the bad thing and start acting right AFTER that, and it's always AFTER. And heaven forbid you get sick or injured, that can derail any exercise program for good. I know because I have been in ALL of these places before.
The upside to all this is, it's all in your head. Yes, there's a special event coming, and the temptation might be there to relax your self-control. But even if you do get out of control on a particular day and go over your allotted calories/points limit, so what. Start over again the next day. Nearly the same situation applies when you are sick or injured. However, for the sake of clarity, let's deal with each individually.
Illness - say you're cruising along, losing weight at a good clip...you have your meals planned and your exercise times mapped out. Then one morning, wham. You wake up and you feel like a truck hit you and you're breathing like you're underwater. What do you do? Well the #1 thing you can't do is to give up. Colds are temporary and sometimes unavoidable (although, if you're remaining properly hydrated, taking your vitamins, exercising regularly and eating a balanced diet, they should be happening less often). The average adult gets sick about 1-4 times per year, so this is something you WILL have to deal with. The trick is to stay positive and keep doing what you can do. If you a have a fever and a wracking cough, by all means - rest. Get more sleep and drink plenty of fluids, hopefully you'll pee it out and be done with it. But otherwise, get back into your exercise routine and do as much as you can. If you come up a little short of the goals you set for yourself for that week, oh well, you were sick. At least you did something. I heard a friend once say about working out while you're sick - "you'll either sweat it out or make it worse". Good words to live by, don't let the germs get you down.
Injury - this is a touchy subject because in the end, nobody really knows how much pain you're in other than you. The question is where the real pain ends and the addiction fighting to resurface begins. Let's take my current injury for example - I was playing soccer without stretching out and wound up with three minor strains and one major one. The pain was so bad for the first 3-4 days that I could barely walk and stayed at home to work. However I've been gradually working myself back to the treadmill and hope to be back up to full speed in the next couple weeks. Here are some guidelines you can use to do the same:
1. If you're truly hurt, meaning anything beyond a muscle sprain or pull, then go see a doctor, especially if you're unsure as to the extent of your injury. As I mentioned before, I've been an athlete in my former life in high school and earlier, I know exactly what a sprain feels like and how to deal with it. But there is no honor in ignoring pain, injuring yourself further and getting even more off track. If the doctor says to stay off whatever type of activity caused it, listen to him/her and find another way to get in your exercise.
2. If what you have is a generic muscle strain or pull, then the key to a quicker recovery is to get the appropriate treatment in place ASAP after it happens. An old rule of thumb that I like is called "
RICE", which stands for "rest, ice, compress, elevation". Say you sprain your hamstring, which is a really common injury for runners (particularly during sprints). For the first 24-48 hours, you need to stay off your feet and REST as much as possible. Also, as immediately as you can, get ICE onto the affected area - advice differs here, some physios like to do the 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off, repeat rule (which you would do for as long as you possibly could). Others like you to ice for 15-20 minutes every 3-4 hours for the first 48 hours. I particularly like the alternating heat/cold treatment for the first couple hours of injury - 20 minutes ice, 20 minutes with a heating pad or spa, for as long as I can handle it. Any one of those three is sound advice and will reduce the swelling, allowing your healing time to pick up. The "C" and "E" part of the equation are more optional - if you CAN put an ace bandage or compress on the affected area (like a leg or arm), then absolutely do it for the first 2-3 days, it helps keep the muscle/joint still. And while doing the initial heat/ice/rest period for 48 hours, try to keep the body part elevated above your heart as much as possible - this slows the flow of blood to the area, also reducing swelling. Another thing you can do to slow the swelling is to take 400-800 mg of Motrin or Ibuprofen every 8 hours for the first 2 days. But the important part is not to wait on treatment, it's to start as soon as you can to shorten the recovery time.
3. After you've gotten through the first 2-3 days and you've rested properly, it's time to assess where you are. Is it a more serious injury that requires you staying off your feet entirely? Or is it something you can work around? Let's go back to that hamstring injury as an example. The hamstring is the long muscle on the back side of your thigh and really comes into play when you push your legs up high, as you would while sprinting. So sprinting at this point would be a bad idea. However walking, or doing jumping jacks, or riding a bike might not be out of the question, so consider getting back into that.
4. Consider all options for rehab exercise while you're healing up - if you sprained an ankle or knee, try swimming if you've got access to a pool. If you pulled an abdominal muscle and running makes you sore, riding a bike is a lesser impact. Walking is a great rehab in pretty much every situation. I like putting a soccer match on TV and watching that while walking on the treadmill. Some other things I've done for rehab exercise - play Wii Fit, do yard work, clean the house, or my personal favorite - put the drums on Expert+ in Guitar Hero Metallica and wail away. If you don't break a sweat doing that, then shoot me a message, I need a drummer for my new band.
5. Take it slow....ballpark figure for a minor sprain - 2 weeks recovery. For more serious sprains, it could take anywhere from 3-8 weeks to get back to full strength. And sometimes depending on how bad it is, it could take a couple months before you fully "trust" that body part to perform the way it did pre-injury. Your mind is still primitive in many ways, as evolving animals we've learned to protect ourselves from harm...so it's only natural that after an injury that you're hesitant to push yourself for a while. Just don't let it get beyond that 2-3 month period where you should be back up to full speed already. For the sartorius injury I have currently, I didn't do anything for the first 3-4 days. Then I did some walking on the treadmill and playing Guitar Hero drums, icing my leg down after each activity. About 10 days after the injury I did a light jog on the treadmill (about 4-5 mph) for 25 minutes. Today I went back up to 6 mph for 20 minutes. Considering I was running 7-8 mph for 30-40 min at a clip, this felt like crawling. Another rule of thumb here - no strenuous exercise two days in a row while in rehab. Just take it slow, build up intensity gradually, and pay attention to the signals your body sends you - if you feel pain, stop...rest a day, then get back to it at a lower level. Eventually you'll come all the way back, but the important thing is that you have to keep testing the waters bit by bit or you'll never really know if you ARE back or not.
6. Once you're back to exercising, warm up and stretch properly. This will be the specific subject matter for tomorrow's post, but I can tell you from experience that nearly EVERY time I got hurt it was because I didn't stretch out enough beforehand. Prevent the injury before it happens.
7. Be EXTRA careful on your diet during rehab. I know the temptation is strong when the exercise is on hold to say "oh I'll take a vacation from this too". Again, you don't want one minor hiccup in the scheme of your life to ruin it entirely, so stay on track as much as you can.
That's all for now.
Diet for Tuesday 12/1/09:
Breakfast
- Cheerios w/fat-free milk
- 4 oz orange juice w/vitamins
- Big cup of coffee
- 2 pieces wheat toast w/yogurt spread
Lunch
- Turkey sandwich on wheat
- 3 large carrots, raw, peeled
Dinner
- Subway foot-long roasted chicken breast on wheat
- Baked Lays potato chips
Dessert
- fat-free chocolate frozen yogurt
Exercise for Tuesday 12/1/09:
- 5 min warm up @ 3.5 mph on treadmill
- 10 min stretching
- 20 min light run on treadmill
- 11 min @ 6 mph
- 2 min @ 6.2
- 2 min @ 6.4
- 2 min @ 6.6
- 2 min @ 6.8
- 1 min @ 7 mph
- 5 min cooldown - 2 min @ 4 mph, 2 min @ 3.5 mph, 1 min @ 3 mph
Sleep for Tuesday 12/1/09:
