Bouncing Back

Hey, Gang --

Thank you all for the good thoughts, wishes, and prayers. I've been home for just over a week now, and I'm feeling pretty good. I'm moving slowly, can't drive, and am strictly limited in what I can lift, but I can get up and down without help, fix a meal, load and unload the dishwasher, that sort of thing.

So I've started some cautious, gentle exercise. I wrote years ago in Lowcarbezine! that while I don't yo-yo diet -- I eat healthy pretty much all the time -- I do yo-yo exercise. I'll get into pretty fierce shape until something knocks me off track. My fitness level will drop till I'm sick and tired of it, and I'll get back in shape.

Well, between wretched spring weather hereabouts that made walking impossible much of the time, Lyme disease in the early summer, and major surgery, I am in pretty bad shape, at least for me. But now that I've had the Huge Bleb From Hell removed (the thing was, no exaggeration, 13" across) and won't look 5 months pregnant, at least as soon as the swelling from the surgery goes down, I've got a real chance to look good again. And regardless of how I look, I want to feel great.

I've written about my breathing exercises, and how I feel they give me the most gain in fitness for the least time and effort put in of any exercise I've ever tried. I don't want to do my usual breathing exercises because they call for a very intense abdominal contraction on each breath cycle, and what with an incision across the bottom of my belly and all, that's just not my best gig right now.

Instead I'm doing Oxycise. Similar in theory, Oxycise uses a completely different basic breathing technique, avoiding the hard abdominal contraction of the version I usually do, though it definitely works the abs. I experimented years back to see which version raised my body temperature more -- a down-and-dirty gauge of increasing metabolism -- and found them to be pretty much equal. (Here's that article I don't know whether the info on availability is still current.) So I'm confident that Oxycise will help me kick-start the getting-back in shape process.

I'm also doing some very gentle bouncing on my mini-trampoline -- not hard enough for my feet to leave the mat -- and have been using my Bodyblade a bit. One of the great things about the Bodyblade is that the resistance it gives you depends on how hard you move it, so when you're feeling a little under the weather or otherwise not as strong as possible, it gives less resistance. Makes it very safe for someone in my condition.

I hope to be able to take long walks soon, to; the autumn weather is so lovely. And if I start with my 1 1/2 pounders, I should be able to take up ... HeavyHands walking -- my favorite exercise for 25 years -- again, too. Should be a pretty short jump from there to pretty much any exercise I care to do.

Anyone care to get back in shape with me?