Paean to My Legs

It won't be particularly musical and may not rhyme, or even be in verse... but I wanted to document some things I've learnt about my body in the past 3 weeks.

I've been quite good about getting at least 20 minutes of exercise a day for 19 of the last 20 days. This included a couple of days when I was ill with a cold, so am pretty pleased with myself. I've also been eating carefully:

7:00 a.m. (or within 1 hr of waking up) - Meal Replacement Shake;
11:30 a.m. (or within 4 hrs of MRS) - Meal, typically consisting of 3 rotis, veggies, curd and maybe pickle; or a sandwich (2 slices of brown bread, veggies, egg, cheese);
4:00 p.m. (or within another 4 hours) - Another small meal with carbs, sometimes sandwich, sometimes chaat (usually bhel to avoid the worst of the fried things);
8:00 p.m. (or within another 4 hours) - Meal Replacement Shake.

I notice that now my hunger has reduced and I eat smaller portions. Noticed this on weekends, when the primary social activity is eating. I've allowed myself to eat in restaurants, but just to eat sensibly - picking more veggies than fried stuff or carbs, and avoiding desert or eating just a spoon or two. Typically, if I eat a huge lunch (and its always lunch), I eat it at about 2:00 p.m., and I skip the 4 p.m. meal, going straight to the evening meal replacement.

I'm trying to maintain a balance between healthy eating and abstinence. So I allow myself a few cheats. Like a biscuit when I'm absolutely craving it, or a little bit of cola, just smaller amounts than I would earlier have eaten/drunk. I know myself well enough to know that if I abstain, I will crack at some point. The last time I tried concentrated diet/exercise, I was going to a gym with a nutritionist who asked me to maintain a food diary and weighed me every day. I got upset when I followed it strictly and didn't lose weight, even when I was not eating stuff that I liked at all! The cruelty of it all got to me.

Anyway, I started on my current path on 20th January 2011 and since then (75 kgs) I've followed the food routine I've mentioned, and at least 20 minutes of exercise. I started the Couch25k (http://www.c25k.com/c25k_metric.html) towards the end of January and have completed Week 1. On the alternate days of the Couch25k, I'm trying to play squash or basketball or generally walk/jog but I'm going to concentrate on squash and hopefully basketball. Squash may be easier as I can play it alone and there are others who play and are nice about it.

The specific reason I'm posting, is that I want to talk about my legs. When I was a teenager (or young at any rate) I recognized that I had good legs. Long and strong. I didn't do much to make them that way, or anything to keep them that way, but there they were. Actually, in retrospect, I probably did a fair bit. When I was about 13, I started playing hockey, I was never on the school team, but I used to run around the ground as warm up, run up and down for training etc. I wasn't very good, but I was ok. Then when I was about 17, I did karate for a year, which involved a good amount of exercise in terms of kicking and stretching.

Anyway, so I had good legs. I went to college, didn't do much, didn't play sports actively and my legs kind of sustained themselves. I finished college and all activity came to an end, and I started gaining weight. I gain first on my waist/stomach, then hips, then torso (chest, not breasts - think love handles) and then legs. When I gain weight on my legs, my knees start to get strained and I start getting nervous.

Every year, for the past 3-4 years, I've reached a point where my knees start to pain when I climb stairs and I get nervous. I start walking and things improve... so I do that for a bit then stop, starting the whole cycle off again. This year, it's a 9 week commitment at least, hopefully a lifestyle change when it comes to exercise.

So, when my knees started paining this year, I got scared and decided to start walking. As we now live in an apartment complex which has 'amenities', it's considerably easier to walk, than it was in my old home, where I would have had to walk on the street. I started walking on the jogging track, walked in one direction for a few days then changed direction and after just about 5 days of walking, I felt like jogging so I did a bit. Then I started actively with the Couch25k.

It's now been 19 days of mostly walking/jogging, with interim squash, one day of basketball and I note that my legs have changed. They're firmer and have the elasticity of muscle, more than the blobbiness of fat. So basically, in 3 weeks of moderate exercise, my legs have pulled out all the stops in redeeming their muscle tone. They're not fat-less, that would be going too far, but they're certainly more muscular. Going up all the way to my butt!

I guess I just wanted to document that of all my major muscle groups, I'm currently most thankful for the ones in my legs, the ones that are eager to get on with it, and very quick to realise the benefits of exercise.

Its motivational in itself to have parts of my body respond so quickly, as I really didn't think I was built for any 'sport', and it turns out that I'm probably built to be a runner.