With so much going on with accusations coming to light against the Supreme Court nominee and resulting hearings. I'm trying to organize my thoughts to make a good post about consent while also dealing with my feelings of being certain in the past I have done things that have helped this rape culture come about. I have never condoned rape but I can't help but wonder what I have done that helped things get to where they are today. In many ways it was disrespect of a woman I love dearly that started my faith crisis all those years ago.
I'm a couple of days past my injection as I've been sorting out my feelings and thoughts about the stories on the news and social media. I did remember to give myself a shot the other day. I'm starting to feel more confident each week that I can do this without any serious problems. I think one thing I will have to be careful of in a few months is being too confident. I know in other aspects of my life I get careless if I'm over confident about something I'm doing. I want to continue to double check the dosage in the syringe. I want to be sure to wash up and use the alcohol prep wipes correctly. I want to make sure the correct needle is on for the different processes.
So far the only side effect I'm noticing is the injection site gets kind of tender and the first few times it swelled a little. This fifth injection didn't really swell at all and was only tender the day after I gave myself the shot.
As the bad side effect of swelling and soreness seems to be passing I'm hoping some of the good effects will start showing up soon. My next blog post should be in two weeks which will be the beginning of the time I'm finding people saying most men notice some effects.
I am able to concentrate better and my energy levels are increasing. When I first went in to the clinic to start this I was having to stay indoors as the air quality was bad. My wife and I thought the lack of energy could be lack of sun exposure from staying indoors. For part of the last few weeks there have been days of even worse air as the wildfires creating the smoke this time were only about 30 miles away. I didn't want to go out on the good days before, this time I'm hoping to get out more quickly. Some of the physical labor the yard was needing has been getting done. Even if sun exposure is helping, something else has helped me feel like getting out there.
It doesn't take as much will power to do my exercises. I started walking, whether outdoors, indoors on a treadmill we had, or just back and forth through the house, for a few years to try to keep my triglycerides in a healthy range. I very seldom miss of day of walking. I use time to measure if I'm doing my part as my medical practitioner when my levels were first seen to be a problem said it would take half an hour a day for 5 days a week. I eventually worked up to two half hour walks every day. Sometimes when we travel or something I don't get all that time in, but on regular days, twice a day for half an hour.
Every other day I exercise with two 15 pound free weights. I do a series of exercises designed for people over 50 to help maintain muscle mass. Another reason I checked into TRT was I seemed to be loosing mass, even though I was doing those exercises. In the last two weeks my weight has increased by less than one half of one percent. My waist has decreased by a little over two percent. I'm hoping that indicates I've started trading fat around my waist for some muscle mass. The measurement around my thigh also decreased by two percent. My unflexed bicep also decreased a little under two percent. This bothered me as I didn't think I had much, if any, fat stored there. At least for my thigh, I noticed this morning while exercising I could see the muscle better. It would seem I traded a fair amount of fat for some muscle this last two weeks.
This is earlier than I was expecting to see results so this could be just because of the exercise and being a little more careful about what I eat, but I hope it is the beginning of weeks of steady improvement in muscle mass and fat reduction. By no means am I expecting to look like an athlete or body builder, but it would be nice to look and feel fit so I can enjoy my senior years.
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