Peg-Leg Update

Okay, no longer peg-legging my way around town, so even though there is still soreness in my left thigh, it is well within manageable post-workout soreness levels, the third day after the overuse injury now. Will still probably bump back leg presses for a day or two to make certain that the muscle is fully recovered, but that's totally fine. Pleased with my speed of healing, based on how painful that was even just yesterday, to be sure!

Going to do Workout A (upper body only) for the second time in a few hours, and I'm really psyched, actually. It will be fun to see if I netted any strength gains since last week. By the monster growth I've seen in my arms, I'm guessing yes! This is the acid test...does this heavy lift to failure minimum rep thing really really work? Can't wait to find out!

Eating protein like a crazy carnivore. My hunger levels have been through the roof. I wonder if my healing overuse injury is begging for more protein than usual. Think I'll go drink another protein powder shake to see if I can quiet the beast for a minute. My weight is slightly up, but Tim Ferriss predicts a 2.5 pound muscle gain per week, minimum, no matter who you are, girl, boy, hard-gainer or not, by following Occam's Protocol, and this gain is just less than that. I am not gonna let the scale freak me out right now. It's not about that. My clothes seem to be fitting the same, except I can see massive muscular gains in my arms, which is crazytown! So time to keep chilling...will re-measure in a week, halfway through the protocol, to see what's happening all over, body composition wise. If the scale is edging up and it's all muscle, that's great. If not, we'll have to revisit diet - see below.

My mood is back up again. It's been mostly crazy up (as has been my libido!) since a few weeks after going back to eating normal amounts of food, taking the AGG/PAG/CQ stack (see previous posts for more info), taking vitamin D again and getting exercise. It's very hard to tease out exactly what is helping, but I'm glad something is.

I know this morning's rant about angry people seems...angry. I think I overloaded on the toxicity of so much of it at once. It made me kind of nauseous. And again, don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with being angry, even if someone is angry with me! Especially with me. I get angry, everyone does, it's important. It's all in how you deal with it. Do you stew in it, rage with it, take it out on other people? Or do you use it to see something is wrong, state your case, stand your ground calmly and try to negotiate a better life? At least my mood bobbed back up pretty quickly. I just needed to vent and move on. One more thing to remember about how your problems do not magically disappear when you reach a normal weight. In case you didn't know.

Tried on clothes for a second whilst running errands. Simultaneously awesome and depressing. Skinny-fat sucks. I am now so amazingly small, overall, but so...bulgy. I ended up buying nothing. Sometimes clothes look so freaking hot on me, but they really have to be the right ones. I know that now is the time to be patient, gain the muscle that is going to give me more definition and shift my metabolism more to fat-burning. Patience now is key. I may have to stay out of dressing rooms a little longer...

Lastly...I feel a little at sea about my diet right now. I know I need to be taking in 1.25 grams of protein/pound of lean body mass during this massive muscle gain phase. Do I need to be limiting my fats to keep from gaining? So much conflicting information. I'm supposed to be limiting my carbs to near nil except one day a week, and I am, though I am reluctant to completely give up fruit 6 days out the week as Ferriss recommends. I like an apple and almonds as a snack, but it's against my religion, apparently, right now. I am NOT limiting myself to lean protein at all. Eating roast chicken with skin, ribeye steaks, shrimp, salmon, butter, cream, occasional goat cheese. Some people seem to think that will work better for me, some think it's a recipe for disaster. This is kind of hard. Also, tired of severe restriction after many years on and off of that. Guess I just have to experiment and see what happens. Again, starting in April, cutting/functional fitness/more cardio-oriented phase may help tremendously.

Edit - one last thought for the day: I am not a religious-type person, so I was puzzled when I first saw this middle-aged lady crossing the street with what looked like some kind of junk smeared across her forehead. It was the second one that I saw in Target that produced my startling realization that it was in fact, Ash Wednesday, and these ladies were taking it quite seriously, which is cool by me, just not accustomed to it. Right after my revelation, I overheard this kid one aisle over: "She has ice cream on her head!" I totally busted up.

Happy Ice-Cream-Head Wednesday!

The Sorest Loser

Okay, so my last post on super-heavy lifting was a bit...enthusiastic. As was the workout.

I have a bit of an overuse injury in my left leg. A bit, meaning agony in my thigh muscles, both on top and the underside of my left thigh when I walk, especially down stairs, though today this is a little better. I believe it is partly a result of the excessive amount of lifts I did trying during calibration testing to find what my lift to failure in 10+ reps would be for the leg press. I started too low, not believing in my own strength, and as a result, did probably 40+ lifts, including the 8.5 to failure at 70% of my highest weight to failure. And strained my left thigh.

This is not a "true injury". I didn't tear any muscles/ligaments/tendons, damage a joint. I know because besides being incredibly noodly-weak right afterwards, I had no pain. It wasn't until I woke up in the morning that I felt really sore, and it got worse during the day, especially when we foolishly tried to do some hiking uphill. We turned around and went back about a mile and 500 feet of elevation or so into the hike. But I think it was too late not to have exacerbated the situation. I started to walk like a pirate, so I don't think that's good.

My left side is my weak side, and since your legs lift together on the leg press, I forced my left leg to do the same amount of work as my right, over and over. I'm pretty sure that's how that happened. So, since we're following "Occam's Protocol" from Tim Ferriss' "4 Hour Body"', I want to put a caveat in here. Ferris has a whole chapter on "Prehab", things to do BEFORE you start seriously training, including identifying body imbalances and correcting them. Did I do that? NO. No I did not. Because...it involves some very complex maneuvers, again, that probably require a personal trainer's input to master. At least for me.

But lifting weights...I already know how to do that relatively safely, I THOUGHT. Now I know I need to be a bit more careful. I do plan on doing the imbalance correction in the future, when the personal trainer becomes an affordable option (which it should, barring any more emergency trips to the Midwest.)

However...the calibration phase of the workouts is over. I should only be doing one set of 7+ reps per exercise (except 10+ for legs), 2 exercises per session plus abs. Each individual workout of the two is only done about once a week to give adequate time for muscle repair. So I don't fear the overuse injury so much for the next 5 weeks.

And pain is just pain. I know that the best idea is to stay off the leg today, so I am. I will probably do my upper body only workout as scheduled tomorrow, as I am not sore there. And I will bump back Workout B if I am not pain-free by next Saturday, as Ferriss himself suggests. I don't mind muscle training pain, but I do not seek injury.

So today is walk like a pirate day two for me, that's all. If I say "Arrrrrr" from the soreness a few times, that will just add to the magic. As long as it's getting better, I won't be too concerned. Onwards and upwards. Cautiously.