ACL Surgery Week 8: Continuing PT and Starting food plan

My physical therapy sessions have been going well.  Nothing much to report other than here are a few highlights:

• Been going to the gym for a month now and have become quite a gym mouse.  Bike, elliptical, swimming, pilate class, yoga class, and now this body pump weight class (been twice).  Keeping classes to low impact ones and things seem to be going well for my leg.
• Bike workouts up to 45 minutes in length
• Elliptical workouts up to 25 minutes in length
• Continuing to increase weights on my leg press, leg extension, inner and outer thigh workouts.  Added glute extensions in the past 2 weeks.
• 10/13 - Biked outdoors on my road bike.  Even though it was only for 6.5 miles as part of leading the Biggest Loser 5k run.
• On the downside, I pulled my hamstring again.  It just seems really fragile.  

I'm now ONLY 4 weeks away from officially being able to start running again so that gets me quite excited :)

I've been moderating what I eat so that I don't gain a crazy amount of weight during these past 8 weeks where I haven't been able to work out as much as usual.  This past Monday, October 16th, Ben and I decided to start on a prepped food plan called Personal Trainer food.  The thought was to see what types of food and portion control this plan offered versus what we were already doing on our own.  Right off the bat, the portions are very small :)

Here's a look at the past 3 days which were all entirely randomly selected off of the bags in the freezer.

Oct 14 lunch		Italian Style Meatballs and Green Beans
Oct 14 dinner		Garlic Herb Chicken Breast and Cauliflower
Oct 15 lunch		Smoked Brisket and Broccoli florets
Oct 15 dinner		Mozzarella Roasted Garlic Chicken Sausage and Scandinavian Blend Veggies
Oct 16 lunch		Grilled Tender Chicken Breast and Green Zucchinis
Oct 16 dinner		Meatballs and Brussels Sprouts.  My "everything is round" meal.

The first day was rough since we weren't totally prepared.  We didn't have enough snacks handy to fill in the gaps.  On the second day, I had a headache and felt tired and weak all day.  Part of that was probably due to the sugar crash/leveling and we had come off of a weekend away and eating (aka gorging) out.  We also picked up some cheeses, deli meats and got a better idea on how many nuts we were able to eat to complement our 2 meals a day of prepped food.  Now on day 4, things are going better and I don't feel like I'm hungry all the time.

In terms of the food, some of them are not bad.  Some, I've definitely made them better.  The meats have all been pretty good.  The vegetables are all very fresh and taste very yummy on their own.  I haven't had to put much of their garlic sauce on them.  My least favorite so far are the brussels sprouts which I normally love.  I think they're just a bit too soggy for my taste.

Overall, trying to keep active and eat relatively healthy so I don't go soft during this recovery period :)

ACL Surgery: 6 Week Mark!

I had my 6-week check up with Dr. Peterson yesterday, 10/2.  The visit was rather short but filled with good news!

The assistant escorted me to the room and saw that my leg extension and flexion were pretty good.  Then Dr. Peterson showed up, checked up on my knee and checked how loose/tight the new ACL is.  He said it all felt pretty solid and that I'm good to start using the elliptical, bike outside, swim, and any activity that was in a straight line motion [YEAH!!!], except for running [BOO...].  He said it was best to wait till week 12 to start running since some people have experienced knee irritation from starting to run too soon.  Also, the next 6 weeks are really when the graft is the weakest so best not to add any unduly stress on it.  He frowned a little when I told him that I had already been swimming all good.  Upon a little more prying, he said I could start running in 4.5 weeks if things were going well instead of waiting the full 6.  We'll see...  But overall, all great news.

Right after my doctor's appointment, I had my PT appointment so I got to share the good news with Doug who started me on the elliptical the same day!  It felt great to get on there.  I've been given a plan to start with some biking and a little of elliptical (10 min), and slowly work my way to more elliptical and less biking if I want.  I'll switch it up depending on the day :).