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Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Aging: Rebuilding and Maintaining Muscle Mass

My personal trainer, Tracy, taught me that many old age ailments come from a loss in muscle mass. Hip problems, knee problems etc... are all preceded by weakened muscles around those joints. Tracy was very good at designing exercises for me that work specific muscle groups. With her help, we were able to help The Husband build the muscles around his ruptured disc, which was causing him back pain. Thanks to Tracy, I no longer feel pain when I walk up and down the stairs.

I am quite amazed at how far I have come with Tracy's help. About 8 years of gluten poisoning had destroyed my gut to such extent that I was absorbing very little nourishment from the food I was eating. I lost so much muscle mass that I had aches and pains everywhere. I looked in the mirror and saw that I was aging before my time. Everything was sagging. My underarms behaved like curtains. My thighs looked like tree trunks. My ankles were so weak that I kept spraining them. I could not stand stably on one foot.

I started with Tracy from a very low base. I could barely do one push up. Just walking upstairs made me pant heavily. Today, I can easily clock 4 hrs of cycling at 28km/hr. That makes 112km of cycling at one stretch. I really cannot tell you how hard it was to get here. My entire body was falling apart. My thyroid was not working properly. My adrenal glands were weak. If I pushed myself too hard, I would collapse and be unable to get out of bed at all. Sometimes, I crashed for 2 weeks before I could start exercising again.

If, in 2017,  I was so often crashed out on the bed that if you had given me the goal of cycling 4 hrs a day 4 times a week, I think I would have given up exercising altogether. You know, just give up and die right there.

It was like taking 2 steps forward and then 3 steps back. It was like walking in a blizzard. You can't see anything and you feel like cold winds are pushing you back with every step forward. I suppose that I must thank The Husband for my determination. He said I was not pretty. So, I was desperate to prove him wrong. To be fair to The Husband, he baulked at no expense to help me regain my figure. For a financially prudent man, his willingness to spend money on this signalled to me that how I looked MATTERED to him, even though he always said, "I love you for your brains, and for the fact that you are mother of my children."

Like real hor... Anyway, he is my husband and I know what he did not say.

Petunia's PhD thesis was about how to motivate people to achieve impossible goals. This, to me, was an impossible goal. The very first strategy was to focus on taking one step at a time. I refused to look at the final goal. I had none. I simply wanted to be just a bit better, be just a bit stronger, be just a bit fitter. I knew that if I did a bit a day, I would be able to tolerate more in time to come. So, I focused on the bit a day that was right in front of me.

In 2019, I only crashed out once. That was the first time I pushed myself to cycle for 4 hours. When I did it again, I did not crash. I just kept pushing and pushing.

Then, in 2019, I read this horror story about a woman my age, saddled with diabetes and with knees so weak that she could not kneel. Her husband had died, and this fat wheelchair bound lady could not look after herself. It was not just physically unable. This lady was forgetful and feared even doing basic financial transactions. Her deficit was also in her brain.

This story freaked me out because this lady was my age. Oh good gracious! That woman could be me!

On that day, I realised that looking good was really beside the point. Looking good is a bonus. It makes The Husband happy. What I really want is to be strong and to be able to look after myself until the day I die.

Muscles and brain are the same. You use it or you lose it. Now, with stronger ankle muscles, I can stand on one foot and do the following pose. No problem!





2 comments:

Joanne said...

Hi Dr Pet,
I am looking for a good personal trainer due to my knee injury. Can I have Tracy's contact to explore if we can work together ? Thanks,

Joanne

Petunia Lee said...

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