So it is now day 30 of my BUGGER CONVENTIONAL WISDOM! dietary changes, and nearly two months in on the TRT. So how are things shaping up? Pretty darn well!
Not eating all day has mostly been a breeze, after a bit of an adjustment period. It’s how my body paces itself naturally, so that’s not much of a surprise. I’ve lost 17 lbs in the last month and gone done a pants size, and I haven’t suffered at all. Plus I’m now about two months into the testosterone shots, and that’s really helped quite a bit both with motivation and with actually letting my body lose weight as I haven’t changed my activity level at all. I’m still swimming an hour in the mornings 4-5 times a week.
I don’t limit myself as to quantity when I eat, and that works out fine. I’m naturally eating fairly small portions and feeling fuller more quickly. And if I overeat now, I suffer very badly! I can’t pack it away like I used to when my gut was in constant digestion mode, moving everything through at top speed all day long.
For swimming I do 5 minutes of warm up with the foam barbells and kicking in the deep end, then 30 min of straight and frog kicking alternating (with side kicks if I get bored), and then 30 min of backstroke in the lap pool. This tires me out pleasantly, and I soak in the hot tub and steam room after and then sometimes go back home for a nap.
Recently I had a great epiphany at a friend’s daughter’s birthday party. For the last few years I’ve had to severely limit my exercise to avoid stressing my joints; even light free weights caused my tendons and ligaments to pull away from the bone and produced ugly bruises at the tear sites on my elbows and collar bones. Which is why I now swim, nothing else – very easy on the weight bearing parts. Even then, I haven’t been able to do forward crawl for ages as it would give me “swimmer’s elbow” (like tennis elbow, but on the top rather than bottom side of the joint). I also still had to be super careful not to lift heavy things or do repeated lifting, or it would tear. So playing with the kids (lifting them up, spinning them around, wrestling with them) would often result in over stressing the ligaments. I’d read that exercise to strengthen the opposite muscle groups from the ligament could help with that, so I’ve been doing backstroke almost exclusively now for six months. So at the birthday party I spent a couple hours rough housing with the kids in the park… and the next day had absolutely no elbow pain or bruising. Huzzah! All the backstroke had worked – the supporting musculature and existing attachments had gotten stronger! Now, my evil plans are to start working front crawl back into my swimming… I hate backstroke!