Keeping Up the Cardio, Getting Through Physiotherapy

With every monthly health update, I get to look back to the past 30 days and always feel like saying, “What a month!” :) I have never succeeded in journaling at any interval in my life. I guess these health updates are somehow transforming in journals and helping me out see my progress. A side effect that I didn’t think of before for sure.

That’s a beautiful month. I managed to hit my goal of six days of a minimum of 40 minutes of cardio per week. I had some challenging days conflicting with travel for a couple of conferences I had to speak at, but I persisted. One time I was in Ankara and had to do my run. I didn’t want to run in the city, so I woke up at 5 AM to drive to Eymir Lake. When I started running, it was dark and crazy misty. No one with the right mind would start running at that point, especially after hearing random dogs barking in the forest. I did :) Here is a photo I took with my phone close to the end of my run. That’s worth waking up at 5 AM.

What about the shoulder?

Last month I told you the beginnings of my shoulder impingement story and why I stopped doing weight lifting. After seeing my physiotherapist, we decided to go through a combination of ultrasound therapy and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) for my shoulder. After two weeks, I’m feeling much better. I don’t have any shoulder pain while driving (oh, that did happen before). Once I was done with the four days a week, two weeks long therapy, the next step is MIHA, en EMS training stimulating muscle all over the body to improve muscle power imbalances. I will keep doing it twice a week for five weeks. We will see what’s next after that :) While all this is happening, I followed and will keep my cardio schedule as it is.

What about my weight?

I’m losing weight like crazy. Compared to previous months, the weight loss did speed up. I’m not sure if this is just water loss because of me dropping heavy lifting, or just the additional load from physical therapy sessions increasing my caloric expenditure. I’m not feeling hungry and have no reason to increase my intake for now. I’m wondering what I will see during the next month.

The plan

That is simple. Don’t mess with something that works. I will keep my cardio regimen as it is and stick with the 2000cal/day intake.

After more than a year of staying on track with both exercise and diet, I might give a slight day off on the 31st December :) I plan to combine it with 48 hours of fasting. I will eat on the 29th morning and fast till the 31st evening. Considering I’m eating a single meal a day, it shouldn’t be that hard. Most probably 31st will be my day off from the cardio workout perspective for that week.

Well, we will see how much of this plan will stick :) See you next year!