Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke
After finishing today’s lawn mowing, I stepped onto the scale and was greeted by a pleasant surprise. I had finally climbed back into my target weight range. Maintaining weight in kidney disease can be challenging.
Admittedly, I am still hovering near the lower end of that range, but after several weeks of watching the numbers drift downward, I’ll gladly celebrate a small victory.
Summer has a way of turning my weight into a moving target.
Our backyard is built on steep hills, so mowing the lawn is far more demanding than simply walking behind a mower on level ground. If I attempted to finish the entire yard in one session, it would take somewhere between five and six hours.
That is less “yard work” and more “accidental endurance event.”
Before I took over the mowing, my wife managed it herself using a hand-push mower. Looking back, I honestly wonder how she did it while working full-time. She often had to divide the job over several days simply because there weren’t enough hours or enough energy in a single evening.
As my own endurance gradually improved, I began taking over the mowing.
My schedule is considerably more flexible than hers. Although my wife also works from home, her workdays leave little opportunity for yard work except on weekends and holidays. In fact, she used to spend much of her vacation time catching up on outdoor chores.
Now that I handle the mowing, she finally has more time to devote to other projects, and perhaps even enjoy a weekend once in a while.
Of course, mowing the lawn introduces another challenge for me.
Because of my kidney condition, I have to limit my protein intake, making it much harder to replace the calories burned during strenuous activity. At the same time, years of regular exercise have gradually increased my muscle mass. I now carry more than 120 pounds of muscle while my total body weight stays between about 145 and 148 pounds.
Muscle, unfortunately, is wonderfully demanding.
It happily burns calories all day long while politely ignoring the fact that I cannot simply eat everything in sight.
Managing my diet requires constant adjustment. Last year, I even discovered that eating too much melon negatively affected my lab results. Since then, I have become much more careful about rotating foods instead of relying too heavily on any single item. Living with kidney disease often means thinking several steps ahead of every meal.
For quite some time, maintaining my weight has felt like trying to fill a bucket with a tiny leak.
Progress comes slowly.
Sometimes very slowly.
That is why today’s number on the scale felt so satisfying.
It may seem like only a few pounds, but those pounds represent careful planning, disciplined eating, regular exercise, and learning how to work with my body instead of against it.
Now I have one small hope.
That tomorrow’s morning run doesn’t immediately erase all of today’s hard-earned progress.
If it does, I will proceed with the scale and continue our ongoing negotiations.