Being overweight most of my life, I was never the fast runner or even walker. I spend a majority of my time doing "catch up" with others. However, in 2001, I began to realize that with my extra weight and lingering age, I started feeling incredibly stiff when sitting on my bed. Most of the time, I would sit on my bed with one leg under me and one dangling or bracing the bed frame. When I would get up, I could not just start walking with ease. I was so stiff that it would take a few steps before I could achieve fluid movements.
Christmas of 2006, my father and I drove down to Houma, LA to visit my grandmother. Not sure if it was how I was sleeping or the weather, but my left hip was so stiff it was painful. On the trip home, I took two hydrocodone pills for the pain. Honestly, it never eased the pain and made me incredibly loopy. I slept most of the way home. A few days later, I absolutely could not stand the pain much longer, I went to the pharmacy and got Tylenol for arthritis pain. Within 20 minutes, the pain was gone and stayed gone. Another slap in the face that I was getting older.
Over the past few years, I have found that if I sit for a very long period of time, when I get up, I am so stiff that it takes awhile before my walking is pretty fluid. People have started to notice. My director saw me walking very stiffly the other day and I saw the questioning look on her face if I was okay. On Tuesday, I had lunch with a friend. When I got up, she thought I had hurt myself because it seemed I was limping. I just said, "I sat for too long."
The only thing I can think to do about the stiff situation is to get up and walk around every 45 minutes. Just loosen up the muscles and such, so that it is not so bad when I get up and start walking. It is just sad to realize my body is getting older. I would like to think my mind is still young and active, but I have my days of memory loss. I usually attribute that to the constant information overload - Too Much Information!
When I turned 40, I did realize that marriage and children were probably not in the cards for me. However, I would like to think I am wiser than I was when I was 20 years old. I still have a lot to learn in the world. There will never be any doubt in that area. However, I refuse to grow too much into an old fart. :-)
Health Update:
For the past two weeks, my blood sugar has remained under 200. That is truly progress for me. There have even been a couple of days where I only had to increase my dosage for fast acting insulin by one to three units.
I have yet to crack below the 300 mark on my weight. I am getting close. I got on the scale and it read 301.4 on Thursday. I just have to keep trying.
As for my FitBit flex goals, I keep striving to reach my 10,000 step mark, but never quite get there. Most days, I can make about 60% of my goals. Yesterday, I was about 1600 steps from making the 10,000 step mark. I was bummed when I did not reach it, but not depressed. I just figured - try again. That is all you have to do - try again. When you get it, then try to do it again.
Food:
Tonight, as I was driving to a new pizza place, I was thinking - I probably have missed my true calling. I should be a food critic. I know - I laughed about it myself. My co-workers and I love to try new restaurants and give our critiques. For example, Fuzzy's Taco stand. I enjoyed the huge salad I got one time, but other than that, it is like any other Tex-Mex restaurant. Rusty Taco - I love their shrimp, brisket, pork, and various breakfast tacos. Not a slam on the place, but was not a fan of chorizo. However, Rusty's Taco is strictly about the "taco". You can get chips, salsa, queso, and guacamole, but no rice and beans. I am good with that.
The new pizza place, Palio's Pizza Cafe, I had heard it was pretty good from a co-worker and a friend of mine. I went to check out the pizza. The pizza had the crispy, thin crust that I like. I also saw that the place provided gluten-free pizza crust. The pizza tasted fresh and I enjoyed that. I also had their garden salad with the house salad dressing. The dressing was really good.
This week, my plan for meals is to make sure I cook. I had to run some quick errands this morning and picked up a few items from the grocery store. I noticed that the store had packaged up three small salmon pieces, so I picked that up. I found a recipe for roasted salmon. I figured I could make that tomorrow night for dinner with some rice, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, and a salad. In consideration for my co-workers, I will eat the leftovers at home. That way, I won't smell up the break room with a fishy odor.
I do have a back up plan for lunch. I plan on making tuna salad and can also have a green salad with soup. I know - SOUP????!!!! In the middle of this Texas heat and humidity?! Are you crazy? No - soup and salad just fills me up in a good way and it is very quick to make at work.
Life:
Thursday night, I went with a co-worker to Studio Movie Grill to see Red 2. It is your typical "shoot 'em up" movie about a group of assassins, but it is just so funny. If you have not seen Red, rent it first. I absolutely adore Helen Mirren and she is my favorite in this movie. John Malkovich just makes the movie because he is so funny and crazy. I loved the movie so much that I went to see it again last night with a friend. I have only done that with two other movies: Vanity Fair and Mr. and Mrs. Jones.
I had planned on going to see Despicable Me 2 tomorrow, but I just have way too much I need to do in the apartment to do that. I would like to get a lot of that "home" stuff done first, then go sometime during the week. I may do that.
For my personal birthday present, I bought myself a new iPad. I have had the first generation iPad for awhile and it still works. I figured it was time to invest again and look at the new iPad and all of its new capabilities. I may blog and write more on it. I found some really cool apps for writing and programming. It would be interesting to see what more I can do with it.
Let's see what sort of things I can get into this coming week...
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