Hip update - week #46

It's been a while since my last update - almost a year in fact!

Last time I shared before and after x-rays and was doing physical therapy to get my leg back up to speed. I was nervous, because I had expected to have to work harder at physical therapy, or do more of it, or do it for longer than I ended up doing it for.

But they said I'd made really good progress, and I didn't go to all that many physical therapy visits in total. But it seemed to work ok, at week #12 I went to Seattle and, while it might not have been the best idea, I played a 3 day ultimate tournament!

I wasn't fully healed at that time, and I was FAR from full speed, but I managed to play frisbee all three days. Now, almost a year later, I'm pleased to report that my hip is doing GREAT! I had taken a league season or two off, but I've been playing outdoor league on Wednesdays and indoor league on Fridays for a few months now. While I'm out of shape, my hip is holding up fantastically.

Yesterday I went to the park to play Sunday Pickup, and there were a TON of people out there -- most of whom I didn't even know. I ran a bunch there and went home feeling absolutely terrific!

Over the last few years I have gained some weight and got more and more out of shape. It was easy to blame my crappy hip, and after surgery it was easy to use recovery as an excuse, but a few months ago I finally got fed up with weighing over 190 pounds. I started counting calories using MyFitnesspal, and found that I was consuming about 2200 calories a day. That was obviously too much, so I decided to cut it down with a goal of about 1750 calories a day. Using that goal for a while, I noticed I wasn't really making any progress losing weight, so about a week ago I decided to step things up and limit myself to 1200-1300 calories a day.

It was a little tough at first, feeling hungry when I would normally just get a snack, but that passed pretty quickly. I've started ordering less food at a time, like at Subway I normally eat a 12" sandwich, now I just order a 6" sandwich instead. and I've cut out almost all candy, cookies, and other goodies. I'm trying to limit soda to just a couple a week as well.

All that seems to be starting to work, and I think I might have started to lose some weight finally. I'm still over 190 pounds, but perhaps if I keep this up I'll soon be down to the low 180s. Ideally I'd like to be back around 175, where I spent the first half of my adult life.

Well, here's hoping this holds up. I'll check in again sometime, maybe even sometime soon.