Category: Weight Loss Exercise

We have had a long long Winter here in Calgary and I have to say I am excited seeing the temperature finally start to pick up. I think I was too excited a week ago Monday as I was going down my back stairs to take the recycling out and had a bit of a fall.

We have this little schedule at home. On Sunday night I take out garbage and Organic recycling to the back curb and on Monday night we get our other recycling together and I take that to the back curb to be picked up. We have done this for at least a couple years and it is our last thing at night before bed chore that I have done at least 200 times before.

But… Tragedy Strikes!

I have walked down a lot of stairs in my days but what happened is that for some reason as I was going down the last stair and turning to go into the back yard I somehow misjudged the distance to the ground and turned, I rolled my ankle and tumbled across my patio.

I let out a screech and grabbed my ankle but then I had the horrified thought that my stupid lack of coordination down one stair would attract the attention of my family and neighbours and I would have to explain how I had forgotten how to walk correctly ?

So I just whined quietly while holding my ankle until the pain went away a bit.

Finally, I got up and put a bit of weight on my leg and it seemed kinda ok. I continued limping across the lawn and through out the recycling, limped back to the house and sat on the couch, very whiney.

This isn’t the first time I have injured myself doing easy tasks. I once slipped on ice and went flying in the air and hurt my back. I also fell off a skateboard a few years back and knocked my pelvis out of place.

I think I have a coordination problem.

Anyway, I woke up in the morning, got up to take the dog out and feed the cat and immediately realized that I couldn’t walk. Very bad news. I spent a bit of time in bed accessing my ankle and finally hobbled into work (to work at a desk), and my wife got me an appointment to see the doctor in the next afternoon.

Hobble, hobble, around for a couple days.

I have a pretty great doctor. He is really laid back about a lot of stuff and immediately noticed that the swelling looked like stretched ligaments until he felt around the ball of my ankle and I make that screeching noice again. Uh oh, time to get an Xray.

On the Wednesday morning I got the XRay and by the afternoon got a call with results and a prescription. I had a fractured ankle. Take it easy, ice my ankle lots, and get an inflatable walking boot.

What Is An Inflatable Walking Boot?

As you can see from the picture, that as a fashion piece the walking boot is terrible, but having my ankle completely immobile while walking is fantastic.

No pain, and the healing can come faster because I am not reinjuring my ankle by limping badly on it.

I have to say that the idea of a walking boot seemed bad to me as I would have this big thing on my leg and have to explain to everyone my very embarrassing story of how I forgot how to step down stairs.

I avoided the boot for 2 or 3 days and finally got it on the Friday afternoon – 4 days after I first injured myself.

I should have got the walking boot sooner – it was really great

The boot goes half way up your lower leg and you just push your heel into the bottom against the back and there is a shell that goes on the front that you velcro into place and then pump up to get the pressure like a cast to immobilize the ankle and foot. Takes a minute to get on and a minute to take off. Easy and a very great way to help heal.

Since I have this boot on all day I can keep it off in the evening and get the mobility a bit while still icing it at least once or twice in the evening.

One day though I had the boot on too long. I was wearing it on a warm day for over 12 hours, took it off after getting groceries with my wife and the smell that wafted through our kitchen was unmistakably mine. My foot smelled worse than I ever remember after being trapped in the boot and sweating without air for the day. Terrible, and my wife and kids wouldn’t let me forget about it.

There Was An Unexpected Advantage To The Walking Boot

I was unexpectedly surprised about one side effect of the inflatable walking boot. Instead of being angry about my injury and worrying about the healing I just let my foot heal and changed my daily schedule up a bit.

I tend to be bouncing from one task to another all the time. That first weekend I had to finally slow down and sit. Of course I can move around pretty good with my walking boot but really I find it a bit uncomfortable to be walking any kind of distance. So that weekend? I sat and read. I took time to plan my blog. I just had quiet time a lot more than I am used to and it was refreshing.

I even played some Fortnite (a video game) with my son and really had some great one on one time with my son, daughter, and wife. More than I usually would.

With more time on the couch I was able to catch up on YouTube videos and learn more, I meditated with some guided meditations, and caught up with some music on Spotify. Kind of like having a bit of a vacation at home without all the work.

Mindfulness is a wonderful thing. When you know that there is no way you will be mowing the lawn, vacuuming the house, running around to stores, there is a real freedom. I didn’t care as much about the regular weekend todo list and instead of the anxiousness that I would usually feel I just had space in time to do things that I always put to the side for “later”.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t all lazy. My wife was still having me do the dishes, I had to still take out the garbage and recycling (while watching the stairs:) ) but there were a lot less steps and a lot more intention on why I was going from point A to point B.

Now three weeks later my foot is more or less better. I am not running but am walking pretty good. I can go to the gym as long as I avoid working legs, and I am riding my bike again and have no pain doing that.

This has been a great few weeks as I look back on it. I know there was a lot of pain at times as well as lots of inconvenience, but I have been really surprised at the crazy pace I tend to have that is running around in circles so much. In the end I am pretty glad for this experience, especially coming in the Spring as I have really been able to refocus on a lot of priorities that I would not have otherwise as well as knowing that I will still be well healed for Summer.

We have had a long long Winter here in Calgary and I have to say I am excited seeing the temperature finally start to pick up. I think I was too excited a week ago Monday as I was going down my back stairs to take the recycling out and had a bit of a fall.

We have this little schedule at home. On Sunday night I take out garbage and Organic recycling to the back curb and on Monday night we get our other recycling together and I take that to the back curb to be picked up. We have done this for at least a couple years and it is our last thing at night before bed chore that I have done at least 200 times before.

But… Tragedy Strikes!

I have walked down a lot of stairs in my days but what happened is that for some reason as I was going down the last stair and turning to go into the back yard I somehow misjudged the distance to the ground and turned, I rolled my ankle and tumbled across my patio.

I let out a screech and grabbed my ankle but then I had the horrified thought that my stupid lack of coordination down one stair would attract the attention of my family and neighbours and I would have to explain how I had forgotten how to walk correctly ?

So I just whined quietly while holding my ankle until the pain went away a bit.

Finally, I got up and put a bit of weight on my leg and it seemed kinda ok. I continued limping across the lawn and through out the recycling, limped back to the house and sat on the couch, very whiney.

This isn’t the first time I have injured myself doing easy tasks. I once slipped on ice and went flying in the air and hurt my back. I also fell off a skateboard a few years back and knocked my pelvis out of place.

I think I have a coordination problem.

Anyway, I woke up in the morning, got up to take the dog out and feed the cat and immediately realized that I couldn’t walk. Very bad news. I spent a bit of time in bed accessing my ankle and finally hobbled into work (to work at a desk), and my wife got me an appointment to see the doctor in the next afternoon.

Hobble, hobble, around for a couple days.

I have a pretty great doctor. He is really laid back about a lot of stuff and immediately noticed that the swelling looked like stretched ligaments until he felt around the ball of my ankle and I make that screeching noice again. Uh oh, time to get an Xray.

On the Wednesday morning I got the XRay and by the afternoon got a call with results and a prescription. I had a fractured ankle. Take it easy, ice my ankle lots, and get an inflatable walking boot.

What Is An Inflatable Walking Boot?

As you can see from the picture, that as a fashion piece the walking boot is terrible, but having my ankle completely immobile while walking is fantastic.

No pain, and the healing can come faster because I am not reinjuring my ankle by limping badly on it.

I have to say that the idea of a walking boot seemed bad to me as I would have this big thing on my leg and have to explain to everyone my very embarrassing story of how I forgot how to step down stairs.

I avoided the boot for 2 or 3 days and finally got it on the Friday afternoon – 4 days after I first injured myself.

I should have got the walking boot sooner – it was really great

The boot goes half way up your lower leg and you just push your heel into the bottom against the back and there is a shell that goes on the front that you velcro into place and then pump up to get the pressure like a cast to immobilize the ankle and foot. Takes a minute to get on and a minute to take off. Easy and a very great way to help heal.

Since I have this boot on all day I can keep it off in the evening and get the mobility a bit while still icing it at least once or twice in the evening.

One day though I had the boot on too long. I was wearing it on a warm day for over 12 hours, took it off after getting groceries with my wife and the smell that wafted through our kitchen was unmistakably mine. My foot smelled worse than I ever remember after being trapped in the boot and sweating without air for the day. Terrible, and my wife and kids wouldn’t let me forget about it.

There Was An Unexpected Advantage To The Walking Boot

I was unexpectedly surprised about one side effect of the inflatable walking boot. Instead of being angry about my injury and worrying about the healing I just let my foot heal and changed my daily schedule up a bit.

I tend to be bouncing from one task to another all the time. That first weekend I had to finally slow down and sit. Of course I can move around pretty good with my walking boot but really I find it a bit uncomfortable to be walking any kind of distance. So that weekend? I sat and read. I took time to plan my blog. I just had quiet time a lot more than I am used to and it was refreshing.

I even played some Fortnite (a video game) with my son and really had some great one on one time with my son, daughter, and wife. More than I usually would.

With more time on the couch I was able to catch up on YouTube videos and learn more, I meditated with some guided meditations, and caught up with some music on Spotify. Kind of like having a bit of a vacation at home without all the work.

Mindfulness is a wonderful thing. When you know that there is no way you will be mowing the lawn, vacuuming the house, running around to stores, there is a real freedom. I didn’t care as much about the regular weekend todo list and instead of the anxiousness that I would usually feel I just had space in time to do things that I always put to the side for “later”.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t all lazy. My wife was still having me do the dishes, I had to still take out the garbage and recycling (while watching the stairs:) ) but there were a lot less steps and a lot more intention on why I was going from point A to point B.

Now three weeks later my foot is more or less better. I am not running but am walking pretty good. I can go to the gym as long as I avoid working legs, and I am riding my bike again and have no pain doing that.

This has been a great few weeks as I look back on it. I know there was a lot of pain at times as well as lots of inconvenience, but I have been really surprised at the crazy pace I tend to have that is running around in circles so much. In the end I am pretty glad for this experience, especially coming in the Spring as I have really been able to refocus on a lot of priorities that I would not have otherwise as well as knowing that I will still be well healed for Summer.

This subject is something that I have thought about writing about for a while now as it gets to our core beliefs of whether we can really do it, with it being our goals or not. I always wonder how I can stop people from failing, heck even stop myself from failing.

What do we need to succeed and what can cause us to fail?

I was watching a show that I really like last night, Survivorman. Survivorman is a show where the host Les Stroud goes out somewhere on the middle of nowhere and lives for a week with no food, shelter or equipment, just him and a few video cameras.

What does this have to do with fitness, besides maybe how starvation affects people? Well Les Stroud talks about how he feels in these places, last night for instance Les was in the desert.

People are afraid in the desert about animal attacks, water, food, spiders, loneliness, and other stuff and he made a point of saying what helps and why.

Really, I am getting to a point here.

So Les starts a fire. The fire to him is a way to keep himself safe from animals and warm at night. He finds a river. The river water keeps him hydrated and being full of water makes him less concerned about the lack of food.

So when dieting or going through a big change in your health or your fitness what do you rely on to make yourself feel “safe”?

Rely on Family

I know that in times of trouble people rely on their families and friends. Often with family and friends though if we are trying to make a big change they are going to be worried for us if we fail.

Instead of supporting you they are trying to help you down from being unrealistic, so maybe family and friends are not always the best. Rely on them if you can though!!

Rely on Food

Next thing is food. We rely on food to help us as energy but sometimes also through our emotional trouble, emotional eating is one of the toughest parts of changing our diet because lets face it a broiled chicken breast is not as nice as a bowl of ice cream if we are feeling down.

But food is of course our fuel source and we need to rely on that.

Rely on Exercise

Next of course is exercise, Exercise is the one thing that we can push and feel comfortable with. Exercise of course proves our worth to us in our fitness.

There is no way that we can cheat ourselves into running 5 miles or doing 30 minutes on the bike except for the fact that some days we are dogging it and some days we are pushing our limits, still though at the end of the workout you KNOW how hard you pushed it.

Rely on Community

The last thing is community. We can feel safe in community and the people around us. This is why it is great to have a fitness partner, a diet buddy, a message board that we can talk of our successes and failures with like minded people.

The people around us within our fitness and health circle are the ones that we rely on and at the same time the more we support them the better they can support us.

So where do we go from here?

The fact really is that there is always some kind of give and take. We give an give and never want to take back, at other times we take and take and never have the ability to give. These are just the constant changes in life.

Years ago I read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and even though there was a lot of stuff in there I remember the book only because Stephen Covey talked about this bank account of giving and receiving.

As you give to people in help, comments, being nice, any kind of giving then you are building a positive bank account that at some point they will want to give back to you for.

The first time you hear the idea it seems terrible like you are giving to take away from others but that is not really the way it works, giving begets receiving is more like it.

Anyway this is really all about getting some constants, some pillars to lean on in your life so that those variables that are tough, like food for instance, are easier to deal with.

Watch the people in your life, offer support to them, let them understand you and make it clear that you may need to lean on them when things are tough, your fitness friends will all understand this already but family and friends may not so make sure you explain your goals and fears to them.

If people understand why you are going through this uncharted territory then they will help you to feel safe (knew I would get back to those Survivorman references eventually) and then the tougher stuff like food and exercise are the only variables that you need to worry about.