Dag Nam It!
It’s gone, again. Kaputt. Adios. Farewell.
A good nine months after I first injured it, my leg is back to being a swollen, immobile, useless limb. The cause: football (again). The damage (physically): not as bad as when I first did it. The damage (emotionally): huge. There is no extensive bruising, no crying and fainting from the pain. In fact, it didn’t even ‘go’ like it did the first time; it was just playing football on it highlighted that it’s nowhere near strong enough. Even walking the day after was a struggle… All the progress I’d made in the last 9 months feels undone. All the positive changes to my diet as a means to getting fitter again – out the window. The sheer joy of playing football (even if just casual, 5-a-side – played to a mediocre level on my part at least) dashed as soon as it was re-realised.
As you can probably tell, I’m upset.
Although, to be fair, given the perspective of a few days, it’s maybe not as bad as I first thought. I haven’t re-torn muscles etc. and even walking has become a lot easier day-by-day. At first I thought I’d set back 8-or-so of the 9 months of recovery; I’m starting to think it’s not maybe as bad as that. The truly bitter bit to swallow is the sucker punch of thinking I was getting back to being physically fit again only to have it stolen away.
My diet change has definitely helped. I’m eating much more proportionally and definitely seeing some improvements. It’s not like the weight has instantly fallen straight off but I recognise small niche references to my old self: a hint of the old jawline, shirts that do up but hadn’t for years, etc… I’d started getting into getting more exercise to just help get into better shape. I’d at least like my body to look like it’s closer to 30 than 40 for the short period of time while that’s at least mathematically correct!
I have learnt some really interesting things from the diet change and calorie tracking though. One is that I have picked up a few vices, even in the last year, that I hadn’t fully appreciated were probably unsustainable changes. Namely: Bread, Peanut Butter and Smoothies. Specifically, we bought a new bread maker in the last 12 months when the old one died. The bread was so much better that I’ve been making loaves just for the fun of it. The problem is that I don’t really eat bread as part of any of my three meals of the day. Breakfast occasionally but I normally have porridge or cereal and those of you who know us or are familiar with the blog will know that we aren’t a ‘sandwich’ family for lunch or dinner. As a result, this bread gets eaten mostly as extended breakfasts or across-the-day snacks; typically just after getting home from work; with, and this brings me nicely on to the next point, peanut butter. We are now the kind of family that has two 1kg tubs of peanut butter on the go simultaneously. Typically Meridian Crunchy for my wife and son (because it doesn’t have added salt/sugar/oil) and Pip ‘n’ Nut Crunch for me (because I just love it). 1kg tubs of peanut butter are not cheap and we were going through both at quite an alarming rate. Partly on the copious amount of short-shelf-life bread but also in, you’ve guessed it, smoothies…
We actually bought the smoothie maker for a completely different purpose. We’d had a food processor from years ago – a wedding present, I believe. That broke a some time ago and we got a replacement but it never quite had the power of the old one. Even making guacamole was a challenge. So one day we saw a sale on Smoothie Makers and thought we’d try that instead. It was so powerful that we quickly stopped using the old food processor completely. However, you get a smoothie maker with a recipe book for lots of different smoothies and one thing sort of leads to another. We went through a phase of making every type of smoothie available. It was very much the ‘sandwich toaster’ analogy. However, instead of putting it away in the loft to never come out again, I found that I was quite keen on variations of banana, peanut butter, cacao and ginger. Sure it’s got fruit and even greens in it, but it’s mostly peanut butter and chocolate at the end of the day. It’s not until I put all the ingredients into my calorie tracking app that I realised a single batch of smoothie is about 1000 calories or 100g of sugar. For context, that’s just under half my recommended calories or all my sugar for a day!
Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t cut these things completely out of my diet. I’m still making bread, still eating peanut butter and (now it’s fixed following a period of overuse!) making smoothies. The trick is that I’m just eating them much more sensibly…
Regarding the injury, I think i just need to be pragmatic about it. The diet change is going to be more important than ever, particularly if I’m going to struggle for exercise – at least for a while anyway. The recovery had being going well across other types of exercise like running and mountain biking before I played football. Perhaps I just need to accept that I might have missed the boat on becoming a professional footballer. It always blows my mind that Wayne Rooney is about 9-months younger than me! Alternatively, as my good physio friend pointed out, I might just need to focus of football-specific rehabilitation if that’s what I want to achieve. I just hope it isn’t too long before I can get back to doing something physical, even if it isn’t football.
And on that note, I can still do some basic things. I managed (with only a minor bit of discomfort) to cycle to work at the end of last week. And I took Piglet out on a tour of the Olympic rowing lake near us with his balance bike. Olympic athlete isn’t looking much more likely than professional footballer at this point, for me anyway… Although Piglet’s progress on the balance bike is phenomenal. He manages to maintain a speed I just can’t comprehend considering he’s basically running while sitting down! We had a great morning taking in the sights, navigating our way through a firefighters’ exercise and freewheeling down the bridges. Although he was pretty exhausted afterwards – he barely made it to lunch before his nap.
Anyway – off to sleep now. Tomorrow is Sunday (i.e. white day) so that means pancakes for breakfast. Undoubtedly with a spoon of peanut butter and a mango smoothie. Onwards and upwards, eh?