Hey everybody! This is about two and a half months since my knee surgery took place. Nice progress so far. I am getting about 13000 to 20000 steps a day in at work and the knee is finally accepting that. I have been getting in 5 minutes at a time on the inside bike for about three weeks now. And have pushed that up to ten minutes at a time for about the last week or so. The biggest issue with my knee still is the going DOWN of stairs. Still a bit weak there because it has been easy to cheat and use gravity to propel me.
Another thing I have been working on since the surgery is my diet. I have been in need of losing weight for quite some time now How does this relate to biking? Well, I have gone through two rims on two different bikes in the last year due to my excessive weight of 235 lbs. I have since the surgery managed to lose 36 pounds and only just yesterday celebrated breaking the 200 lb mark. Woohoo! My goal is to aim for about 170 lbs eventually. Already I have noticed that my energy level has gone up in the last week(finally!). I started this care for my diet out by counting carbs, not calories! I focused directly on eliminating soda, breads, potatos, pasta, rice, fruit drinks and juices. I allowed myself all the proteins and meat and veggies and fruit. That got me to about 25 lbs lost over a two month period. I allowed carbs sometimes because it isnt too healthy to deprive ALL carbs all the time. I kept a food log every day to stay focused on the goal. I finally got the app for my phone called My Fitness Pal Calorie Counter. I set a goal of 170 lbs and 1880 calories a day to get there. That is aggressive enough without pushing things too much.
So far all of this is working. And I hope to be ramping up that time on the bike really soon! Keep on biking!