Staying Healthy While Immobile

My view for two weeks

One of my biggest concerns going into this whole surgery recovery ordeal was making sure I was able to stay as healthy as possible. Because of the pain that led to the surgery itself, I've fallen out of exercising and into some bad comfort habits (I'm looking at you, Cheez-its) and unfortunately find myself weighing in at the heaviest I've ever been. While I am really looking forward to being mobile again and being able to return to physical fitness, I didn't want to wait to get the jump on being healthy. Here are the measures I've put in place to stay healthy while I'm still stuck on the couch.

Exercise What You Can
At least until Wednesday, I am on 23 hour leg elevated rest. That said, I need to give my shoulder a little bit of work to keep it from getting too grumpy, and I want to avoid my leg muscles atrophying too much while I'm stuck on the couch. Here's the exercises I'm doing in some combination every day:

• Leg circles
• Donkey kicks
• Ballet leg lifts
• Seated toe touches
• Modified push-ups
• Modified plank
• Seated arm raises

Keep Track of What You Eat
If you're anything like me, you eat when you're stressed or bored. That means that being stuck on a couch for two weeks would be the perfect opportunity for me to eat my weight in Goldfish. Instead, I was careful to stock the fridge and pantry with healthy snack options; pears, applesauce, Greek yogurt, and string cheese are my go tos. And I make sure that everything I eat goes into MyFitnessPal. This has actually been a good chance for me to manually input some of my recurring recipes so they are easy to plug in when they come up. If you'd like, you can add me, my profile is jeip14.

Mental Activity

As much as the other two pieces here are very important, this one is probably the most vital to making it through the recovery in a healthy way. I am not and have never been the type who would enjoy a beach vacation. I love reading, but I also am an active person, and hours (or DAYS) on end of just sitting is not easy for me. I'm working hard, then, to find things to keep my brain active while I'm stuck on the couch. Here's a list of some of the activities I've been doing:

• Finger knitting scarves (maybe I'll do a how to post next week?)
• Watching videos on Khan Academy
• Formally writing up my recipes
• Finally writing the thank you notes from our wedding (bad manners to have waited so long, I know, but hopefully our guests understand that I was planning on filling some of this time!)
• Plowing through various tv series on Netflix and on demand (Unpopular opinion, I don't like Gilmore Girls)
• Reading, reading, and more reading. I have shelves of books I've never touched, and am actually hoping to write a couple of reviews
• Laying out plans for my history cooking blog
• Planning out my training schedule for the half marathon!