Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Seeing a difference

Tonight I did a lunge.

This evening I was watching the Biggest Loser while pedaling away on my recumbent bike. Before one of the commercial breaks, they showed you how to do lunges and told you to do them for the whole commercial break. Now, I'm not going to follow their workout suggestions out of guilt. After all, I'm not sitting on the couch while watching this show. I'm working up a sweat. But I thought, "what the heck".

I got off of my bike and I did a lunge. Then I did another one. And four more. Then I tried a squat. I did two squats.

It doesn't seem like much. I used to do lunges and squats all the time with significant weight on my back. That was about 7 years ago.

About 4 years ago, I started to feel serious pain in my knees when I hiked up steep inclines. Then, I started feeling occasional pain even climbing stairs. My knees are what scares me the most about the extra weight I'm carrying and it's what scares me the most about exercises like lunges and squats.

Before tonight, the last time I tried to do a lunge was about 1 month ago. As I went down, my knees screamed at me to stop. Not the kind of pain where you know you're working it, but the kind of pain where something feels wrong. I dropped down and didn't push it.

Tonight, as I tentatively did a lunge, I didn't feel that pain. It just felt... normal. Yeah, it works the muscles, but that's the kind of feeling I'm starting to embrace. As I did more, I felt it in my legs, but my knees were going strong. Even in the squats, which are what has caused me more difficulty, my knees didn't hurt me.

I felt like I could have done more, but I'm not going to push it yet. I still have to be aware of my body and know it's limits. But, if a month of regular workouts and 10 pounds lost can make this much of a change, I can't wait to see what a year of regular workouts and 65 pounds lost will do!

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