Excision

Well the chronic ulcerated area on my lower back has been excised and there is little more to say that I haven't said in my previous post. On 21st August 2025, I'll learn if the tissue in that area was cancerous and if so whether the margins of the excised area were cancer-free. There's still the tiny spot on my right arm that needs to be excised as well.

Overall, I feel quite healthy at the moment. I've been doing regular walking and exercising, although nowhere near as much as I should be doing. Cognitively, I feel quite sharp. My weight is about 71kg, which is fine. For the moment, all I can do is wait.

Monitoring My Exercise And Diet

My resting pulse rate is 63 beats per minute and, with light clothing on, I weigh 70.9 kilograms. I've been walking regularly of a morning, at a fairly brisk pace, and covering about 2.2 kilometers. However, yesterday (Saturday 14th July) I had a not so good day. My right shoulder joint had been hurting in the night and I woke up feeling stiff in my fingers with my ankle causing discomfort as well. I also felt discomfort in my chest when getting out of bed.

Today, Sunday, I feel a lot better comparatively speaking. I wonder if it's diet-related. Yesterday I had my usual toast in the morning following by pasta at two different times of the day plus a couple of pastries in between. On the Thursday and Friday prior my bad Saturday I'd two eggs with mayonnaise on toast, even though I'd been advised to eat only the whites of the eggs and not the yolks. Could this have triggered my subsequent discomfort?

I did some very brief and mild isometric exercises for my arms on either Thursday or Friday. Could this have triggered the discomfort behind my sternum? It's hard to say and thus it's probably a good idea to monitor my intake of food and drink as well as the amount of exercise that I undertake. Should I start another Airtable database or should I record the information using some other software, perhaps a spreadsheet? Before deciding, I should carry my phone with me whenever I leave the house so that any distances that I walk can be recorded. My daily walk around the block is about 2.2 kilometres.

For the moment I've opened a fresh document in Google Docs and will begin recording there. I'll see how that goes. I'm rather averse to phone apps or other online methods of monitoring diet and exercise. A simple pedometer is sufficient for recording distance walked.

In Recovery

Following my psychic surgery in Medan to address my thymoma problem, I'm feeling quite good with only some lingering stiffness in my right hand and a sensitive left foot that I need to be careful to not subject to sudden stress. These are the residual effects of my DOMS and it's quite unusual that should have persisted for this long. 

My symptoms bear some similarities to mild gout but I doubt if I'm suffering from that condition. I just don't fit the profile (somebody who eats a lot of organ meats, seafood and alcohol). Here is what Google's Gemini had to say about gout:

Gout is a complex form of arthritis that causes sudden and severe attacks of pain, inflammation, redness, and tenderness in your joints. Here's a breakdown of the symptoms and risk factors:

Symptoms of Gout:

Sudden and severe pain: Often described as excruciating and debilitating, gout attacks typically strike at night and can wake you up. The pain usually affects one or more joints, most commonly the big toe, but it can also hit ankles, knees, hands, wrists, elbows, or even feet.

Inflammation and swelling: The affected joint will become swollen, red, and hot to the touch. Even slight pressure, like the weight of a bedsheet, can be very uncomfortable.

Tenderness: The joint will be extremely sensitive to touch, making even minor movements painful.

Limited range of motion: As the attack progresses, the inflammation can limit your ability to move the affected joint.

Risk Factors for Gout:

Several factors can increase your chances of developing gout:

High uric acid levels: Uric acid is a waste product created during the breakdown of purines, which are found naturally in the body and certain foods. When uric acid levels become too high in the blood, it can form sharp crystals that deposit in your joints, triggering gout attacks.

Diet: Consuming excessive amounts of certain foods and beverages high in purines, such as red meat, organ meats, seafood, sugary drinks, and alcohol (particularly beer), can contribute to high uric acid levels.

Obesity and metabolic syndrome: These conditions are associated with increased purine production and difficulty eliminating uric acid from the body.

Certain medications: Diuretics, low-dose aspirin, and some immunosuppressant drugs can elevate uric acid levels.

Medical conditions: Some health problems like high blood pressure, kidney disease, and psoriasis can increase the risk of gout.

Genetics: Having a family history of gout significantly increases your susceptibility.

Age and sex: Men are more likely to develop gout than women before menopause, but the risk for women increases after menopause.

It's important to note that not everyone with high uric acid levels will develop gout. Conversely, some people with normal uric acid levels can still experience gout attacks.

It's interesting that the Gemini article describes gout as "a complex form of arthritis". I simply don't know what I've got but I've been placed on a diet that restricts the amount of fried food that I consume and that forbids the consumption of many other foods that I was formerly fond of. The details are still being worked out.

I smile when I think how the so-called medical professionals in Australia would react if I said I'd had psychic surgery to address my physical problem. Hopefully I'll never be at their mercy and, if I was, I'd be very careful about what I disclosed to them. It still staggers me how brainwashed the majority of medical professionals are in Western countries and what little real help they are able to offer. 

Meanwhile I have done some walking and intend to do more as my strength returns. I probably will never return to the physical level that I was at before my fall but I can try to arrest any further decline. My weight is slightly under 71 kilograms at the moment which is good. I'd like to stay around that weight.

Umbilicus

Recently I was troubled by discomfort in my umbilicus that has never been the same since it was perforated in the course of my gall bladder operation back in mid-2016. The surgery was keyhole and four perforations were made in my body. The diagram below is not my umbilicus but it resembles it.

Fortunately the discomfort dissipated within a couple of days but it's quite unpleasant while it's active. I don't know what brings an attack on but at least it's relatively transient. Many people suffer from umbilical hernias and mine is very mild. I need to reduce the amount of fatty tissue around my waist so that the pressure on my umbilicus is reduced. I also need to avoid any heavy lifting. Hopefully I can avoid surgery.

The discomfort in my chest also dissipated during my recent visit to Sydney where the temperature was higher but now that I've returned to Melbourne the discomfort has returned. It's worse than it was before. Cold is definitely not a friend of thymomas or thymic cysts.

On a positive note, I did a lot of walking in Sydney and will continue to chalk up the kilometres here I hope. I've yet to resume my leg stretching or hand strengthening exercises since arriving in Australia some weeks ago. I don't know why I stopped but I've noticed that once I do, it's difficult to start again. All that can be done is to start again and once started, I tend to continue. 

My weight has decreased to 74.2 kg, down from 74.7 kg on the 5th July. That's a half kilogram drop in a little over two weeks. I'll try to get down to around 72 kg.

The Big Freeze

Arriving in Melbourne in the depth of its winter and during a particularly cold snap has not proved good for my health. While I did do some walking upon arrival, I found that the cold was affecting my chest and so I've abandoned all forms of exercise. I definitely function better in the tropics and I'm looking forward to returning there.

This is the worst shape I've been in since my affliction emerged toward the end of 2018. Even moving about the city proved too much for me yesterday and I was struggling to make it back home. Since then I've spent most the time sleeping. The fact that I breathe through my mouth exacerbates the problem as the cold air enters my lungs directly whereas via the nose the air has a chance to warm up a little. When I consciously breathe through my nose, I find things are better.

There's so little information available about my condition and I'm not really sure what my condition is. My research leans toward thymoma or thymic cyst but most probably the latter as I have a long history of cysts on head and, as I only learned in 2015, cysts on my liver. "14% of patients with thymic cysts also had hepatic cysts" (see earlier post titled Thymoma or Thymic Cyst) and so there is clearly a correlation between the two. 

Hopefully, the temperatures will be warmer in Sydney in a week's time when we visit and on our return to Melbourne five days later. If this sees an improvement in my condition, then it will be strong evidence that low temperatures exacerbate my condition and are best avoided in the future. On an unrelated note, I weighed in yesterday at 74.7kg. This is the first time that I've weighed myself in a while and this weight isn't too bad considering my recent lack of exercise.

Walking the Walk

I've been walking fairly regularly lately, missing the odd day here and there but no often. The circuit I walk is a distance of 2.3 kilometers and today I timed myself, roughly, at 26 minutes. This gives a walking rate of 5.3 kilometers per hour which is regarded as a brisk pace.

I completed this walk early in the morning, about 7am, but felt fatigued for the rest of the day. I just had to lay down on several occasions. Perhaps I'm walking a bit too fast. I can ease off the pace a bit and still achieve an acceptable speed of 5 kilometers an hour. I need to experiment a little.

I weighed myself this evening and came in at a hefty 76.1 kilograms which is the heaviest I've weighed since my teaching days. It wasn't all that long ago that I weighed in regularly at about 66 kilograms. This translates to a BMI of 23.99. I don't feel overweight but I am nudging the edge of the healthy BMI range:

A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered a healthy weight range for adults, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Therefore, a BMI of 23.99 falls within the healthy weight range.

My recent regular intake of freshly prepared fruit juices fortified with oak milk may have contributed to my weight gain. I should perhaps just add water to the juices. I really would like to get back down to about 72 kilograms and this should be achievable if I start weighing myself regularly again.

I'm regularly completing my hand strength exercises and leg exercises and have added some balance and flexibility exercises as well. My suspected thymoma has been playing up a little lately but this is normal whenever I exhaust myself like I've been doing. 

I need to add more exercises to my daily routine without overburdening myself. Posting regularly to this blog is a way to reflect on my progress. As I've said before, this should be the blog to which I post most regularly but such alas is not the case. So let's include the above data points:

Date: Friday, May 12th 2023

Weight: 76.1 kg at 9pm

Walking speed: 2.3 km in 26 minutes --> 5.3 km/hr.

Resting pulse rate: 66 beats per minute

Post Caffeine

It's been more than a couple of weeks now then I quit caffeine and I can say that I haven't felt this good in a long time. I'm sleeping better, my head is clearer and I have more energy. With our maid gone, I'm finding that just doing chores around the house is sufficient exercise for me. Fortunately, our house has many steps and this is what makes the difference. I'm not roaming around on the one level but constanty climbing or descending. 

It was only a couple of days ago that I resumed my leg exercises after a break of a couple of months. I want to continue these. It was last night that I resumed my faux sit-ups but paid the price today with discomfort in my solar plexus area. Prior to this I'd been feeling very little discomfort. I'm debating whether to continue these or not. As usual I launched into the faux sit-ups at my pre-break levels, ignoring common sense that would have warned too much too quickly.

Normally I weigh myself before breakfast but today, even after eating a breakfast of two pieces of toast and two cups of water, I weighed just 72.5 kg which I'm happy about. Overall though, the increased feeling of well-being is more than adequate compensation for foregoing the stimulation of caffeine via tea and coffee. The world may still run on coffee but not my world. I'm finally free of it. 

Six Weeks of Indolence

After six weeks of holidays, I've eventually returned home and my weight was disappointing but not surprising. In shorts only, I weighed 74.5 kg. I say not surprising because I did very little exercise, even neglecting my leg strengthening exercises with the stretch band. I'm basically back to zero so anything I do from this point on will be of benefit.

Just before heading back home, I had the opportunity to have a brief session with my psychic healer who said that my lungs and heart were not in synch, meaning that my rate of breathing and my heart rate were out of synch. He recommended that I consume three sachets of SuperGoat per day. I was somewhat surprised at this prescription, after all drinking goat's milk sweetened with palm sugar isn't exactly my style. See Figure 1.

However, I have faith in his healing and have been dutifully consuming my three sachets daily for some days now. I can say that I've noticed some definite improvement in my condition since beginning the regime and I'm motivated to continue. My condition, as I've diagnosed it, is a thymoma or thymic cyst but my healer made no mention of kelanjar  or gland this time as he'd done on a previous occasion. 

Figure 1

Meanwhile I need to get my body back into some kind of shape, slowly of course. The goat's milk has provided me with a little more energy to embark on this enterprise. Before I was feeling too lethargic to even begin. At this point in my life, the goal is to simply hold on. Sooner or later, something will carry me off but hopefully it will be quick and, in the interim, I would like to maintain an acceptable level of physical health and cognitive functioning.

HOLD ON

Weight Stasis

Oh dear, it's June 13th and I'm still a little above or a little below 74 kg. There's been no substantial change in over two weeks. I've been diligent in my walking by going for a 30 minute brisk walk each day while trying to avoid snacking between meals. I stopped entering the weights in the spreadsheet because clearly the average was around 74 kg. I would still like to get down to 72 kg but clearly it will be a gradual and lengthy process.

The key is to increase the amount of exercise that I do while eating normally. Apart from the daily walk, I'm largely sedentary. Fortunately, the house that I'm living in has lots of stairs so there's energy spent there just moving around inside. The opportunity for step-up exercises is thus ubiquitous and I really should make more use of this. Every minute of every day is an opportunity to exercise and by exercise I mean something as simple of neck rotations to ward off the ravages of calcification as I age.

Weight Update

Tonight, back in Jakarta, I weighed in at 75.2 kg, wearing shorts. On the 12th May, in Bali, I weighed in at 75.8 kg and two days later at 74.6 kg. That was only a week ago so it’s not surprising that there hasn’t been much change. I caught a cold during my last couple of days in Bali and I’ve only just shaken it off. I was not feeling well at all. Today was the first day I went for a serious walk.

Clearly, if I’m to lose this weight, I need to walk on a daily basis and measure my weight at a fixed time each day. Probably just before breakfast. I’ve created a worksheet in Google Sheets to track my progress. I need this sort of incentive if I’m going to achieve my goal, which is to come in at under 72 kg.

Currently the second column in empty because I plan to begin my record taking tomorrow morning. The weight need only be gradual. Given that I’m around 75 kg at the moment, I have 3 kg to lose. If I were to lose weight at the rate of 0.1 kg per day, then it would take 30 days approximately to reach my goal. This is a realistic time frame I think. By the 22nd June, I will hopefully dip under 72 kg.

Weight Gain

Oh dear. The hotel room in which I'm staying has a set of scales and for the first time in weeks I stepped onto them. Butt naked, I came in at a shocking 75.8 kg, the most I've weighed since my precipitous weight loss in the second half of 2015. Figure 1 does not show my feet, nor the transparent glass scales on which I stood, but it serves as a visual reminder of my slide toward obesity.

Figure 1

How did it come to this? Well, two weeks in Bali marked a decisive break from my normal routine at home. Meals become irregular and there's a tendency to eat more than one should. I have been walking but clearly not enough. The time has come of course to embrace some dietary discipline, reverse the weight gain and head back toward an ideal weight of between 71 kg. and 72 kg.

As for my thymoma, I've discovered in the process of palpation that I have a small area of my sternum that is sensitive to pressure. I hadn't noticed this before. There is a general feeling of discomfort when I move about while lying down but it's hardly debilitating. I've did bring my "elastic band" for leg exercises but haven't used it much at all. Whenever I have lengthy lapses like this, I find that the affected muscles lose their tone quite quickly and it takes some time to bring them back to full strength. The moral is to not allow such lapses. However, sometimes I feel quite weary and use that as an excuse.

My eyes have been giving some trouble and there is a growth on my left eye that is somewhat annoying. It's benign and has been around for a while but has slowly increased in size over the years. See Figure 2.

Figure 2

It shouldn't be too big a deal to have it removed, by laser surgery I would suppose. It's disturbing to see how far my eyes have sunk into their sockets, the inevitable consequences of old age. Along with diminishing eyesight, my mental acuity seems to be in decline although its hard to quantify to what degree. I try to keep mentally active.

Scandalous Scales and Chilly Winds

Scandalous Scales: it came as something of a shock to find that I weighed in at 74.3 kg, wearing T-shirt and shorts on the evening of Sunday, February 13th 2022. As I said in a previous post, it's probably best to weigh myself of a morning. I went to the bathroom, stripped-off and weighed myself again. This time I was 73.5 kg which is still disturbingly high. 

For the past week or more, my exercise routine has been disrupted but things have now returned to normal. Today I resumed my morning walk and tomorrow I plan to spend some time on the mini-trampoline as well as practising some shuffle moves, as outlined in my previous post titled The Septuagenarian Shuffle. I'm determined to get my weight back down to about 71 kg. At the moment, I'm heavier than I've been since heading to Australia in July of 2015. 

Chilly Winds: recently the family visited the mountains at the back of Jakarta and the temperature in the evening was around 13°C, drastically lower than the balmy temperatures in the lowlands from where I had just come. There was also a light drizzle and gusts of wind that added to my discomfort. We were staying in one of the chalets that were dotted around the resort and separate from the main building where we had just finished dining.

As we headed out into the freezing weather toward our accommodation, a particularly nasty gust of wind cut right through me and a wave of nausea swept over me. My legs almost buckled and I needed assistance to get to our accommodation. When I did arrive I was shaking uncontrollably and went straight to bed where my condition slowly stabilised. For me, this was an unprecedented and fairly shocking event.

I can't help feeling that the reaction was the result of my thymoma not responding well to the sudden drop in temperature that my body had experienced because of the wind blast. This then affected the surrounding organs and destabilised the mechanism that controls my body's core temperature. The lesson learned is that I need to wear proper clothing before exposing myself to cold temperatures, especially where a wind chill factor is involved.

I'm now back in the tropics at sea level and all is well. There's no doubt my thymoma has grown but, whether it's self-limiting or becomes more invasive, only time will tell. As I approach my 73rd birthday, I'm certainly not the man I once was. I'm diminished in many ways but I'm still breathing and ostensibly still healthy and active. However, I need to remain aware of my vulnerability and not impose unnecessary stress on my body.

Weighty Problems

First post of the year 2022 to my most neglected blog. Let's compare the number of posts for 2021 against the tallies for my other blogs:

• Mathematical Meanderings: 101 posts
• Alternative Media: 38 posts
• Pedagogical Posturing: 27 posts
• Astrology: 13 posts
• Astrowatch: 10 posts
• Staying Healthy: 7 posts

This meagre tally for Staying Healthy is odd since I spend a lot of time thinking about "staying healthy". I was shocked a few days ago when I climbed on the electronic scales and found my weight to be a hefty 73.3 kg. This morning however, I weighed myself and came in at 72.4 kg. It might be best to weigh myself at the same time each day: just after arising and before consuming breakfast. I don't want to regain the weight that I was before retiring, which was in excess of 77 kg and sometimes nearing 80 kg. I'm happy to be a little about 70 kg.

For this morning's weigh in, the result from this source indicates:

Height: 178 cm

Weight: 72.4 kg

BMI: 22.9 

This indicates your weight is in the normal category for adults of your height. For your height, a normal weight range would be from 58.6 kg ≡ BMI of 18.5 to 78.9 kilograms ≡ BMI of 24.9.

In the bad old (working) days, I was thus nudging this upper limit of 24.9 but soon after retiring my weight plummeted to a little above 63 kg at its lowest. Even this was far too thin and at 58.6 kg, with a BMI of 18.5, I would have looked skeletal. A weight of around 72 kg is ideal for me.

My resting pulse rate is a little above 60, usually 61-62, which seems fine. I haven't had my blood pressure measured for a while but that's never been a cause for concern. Figure 1 shows where I stand in the heart beats per minute game:

Figure 1: source

Exercise-wise I go for a brisk 20 minute walk with my granddaughter most mornings. I complete a sequence of 4 x 40 repetitions of leg exercises with my "elastic" band (which is actually just a piece of pantyhose that continues to stand the test of time). My reasoning is that it's important to keep the base strong in order to support the rest of the "structure".

Most days I also do around 300 partial sit-ups in which I lie on my back and attempt to sit up but don't actually go through with the manoeuvre, instead I just tense (and thus strengthen) my abdominal muscles. I sometimes do a set of 10 full squats but I've been neglecting this of late. I certainly do a lot of neck stretching and rotations in an attempt to maintain flexibility against the encroachments of ossification.

My thymoma, now of three years duration, doesn't cause me too much bother. I'm back to drinking a cup of coffee in the morning and sometimes another cup if I go out during the day. I don't drink tea at all now. I'm careful not to put too much stress on my upper body for fear of exacerbating the discomfort in my sternum. My granddaughter has been doing some psychic healing of the area and this has proven very effective.

Hopefully I will post more frequently to this blog during the coming year.

Caffeine Addition: Progress Report

On 20th September, I made a post titled Caffeine Addiction in which I discussed my then very recent withdrawal from tea and coffee and their replacement with warm water and nothing else. I'm happy to report that for nearly two months I was able to maintain my "sobriety". Apart from an occasional fruit juice and one cup of hibiscus tea, water has been all I've imbibed.

Today however, I was "forced" into drinking a small cup of Americano at a restaurant. The reason for doing so has to do with my sleeping pattern. Over the past weeks, I'd fallen into the habit of sleeping around 9am, waking up in the afternoon and then snoozing again some time in the evening. Overall I was still getting seven to eight hours of sleep but divided into two quite separate parts. 

Circumstances conspired so that today I was still awake at midday having foregone my morning nap. Together with my family, I was in a restaurant and found myself in a severe sleep-deprived state. In order to keep functioning, I ordered an Americano to accompany my meal. The potency of its effect really surprised me. I was instantly alert and able to function more or less as I could have with my morning sleep behind. Furthermore, I was able to remain awake until almost 10pm of that same day.

For the first few hours after the drink, I was quite "high" and come down slowly over the remaining hours. I was reminded yet again of how potent coffee really is. I don't intend to return to my caffeine-drinking days and am happy to maintain my water only liquid intake. Upon waking up at 1am of the next day (having slept for about three hours), I noticed that I had drooled a little onto my pillowslip and that the smell of the saliva had the same slightly unpleasant smell that it used to have in my coffee and tea drinking days.

Figure 1

Since drinking only water, I drool less and when I do, it has a neutral odour. Presumably the caffeine is being excreted via my saliva when I sleep. Overall my health is good. I've managed to go for a brisk, twenty minute morning walk on most days combined with some light exercises throughout the rest of the day. My weight remains constant at around 71.5 kilograms. My thymoma has not been causing me any significant problems. Lying here, typing this blog post, my resting place rate is about 65 which is "good" (see Figure 1).

Somatic Renaissance

I'm waxing grandiloquent with the title of this post but so what. This year, now more than half over, I've made 70 posts to my Mathematics blog and NONE to this blog. This post is the FIRST of the year. The numbers attest to what I already know. I exist largely in my mind and any awareness of my body is largely unconscious.

Unless my tired old body malfunctions, I simply take it for granted. However, increasing stiffness in my neck has caused me to regularly swivel my head about in an effort to break up what seem to be little spurs that are forming in my vertebrae. This motion is essential in reducing the tendency of the neck vertebrae to fuse together. 

Figure 1: source

I can only surmise that the development of these spurs is the result of degeneration due to old age. Cervical Spondylosis is the term for it. See Figure 1. My vertebrae can't be too compressed because I've managed to maintain my height over the years and have not "shrunk" as some old people do. My posture is reasonably good I think. 

So these neck stretching exercises are a daily routine along with exercises for shoulder mobility. As for walking, one of my favoured activities, it's become less appealing. I don't cover my face with a mask when I'm walking but keep it under my chin. Nobody seems to mind but there's always the possibility of encountering the mask mafia in the form of vigilantes or official enforcers. 

Figure 2: source

So I've taken to just a sort of tip-toeing around a confined area as a substitute. This seems to work well enough. Even here, it's easy to overdo things. This very morning I tip-toed around for a little too long and suddenly started to feel nauseous. Whether this was related to my thymoma I don't know but my ongoing affliction plays up from time to time whenever I push my body a little too far. 

I'm temporarily suspended my ten deep squats a day because I started to develop a sore right hip that was impeding my mobility. I may replace those with more shallow squats. I still use the band for leg exercises although I've suspended that as well while my hip is giving trouble. Suspension for too long though is not a good idea as muscles seem to lose their "memory" very quickly as you age, becoming flaccid in the absence of regular reminders.

Figure 3: source

Surprisingly my weight is 70.9 kilograms, so I've not put on any weight. I just feel more flabby. The key thing is to adopt new exercises and activities cautiously and not to try too much too quickly. My propensity to overload is growing daily and may one day prove fatal. Meanwhile, it lives, it breathes, it survives. By "it" I mean this fragile vehicle that for the moment my consciousness is attached to. For how much longer, I don't know.

Figure 4: source

Health Report

Oh dear, my last weigh in was back in Australia on the 24th October 2019. I weighed 65.9 kg. Today, on the 9th December 2020, I weight 71.4 kg. That's an increase of over 8% or, another way to look at, is that back then I weighed 92% of what I weigh now. I couldn't help but notice that the blubber was accumulating and so I took the plunge and bought a pair of digital scales. 

Over the past week, I've been taking an early morning walk of about 2.5 km and I'll gradually increase this distance or maybe go for an afternoon walk as well. I think a reasonable weight for me would be about 68 kg. I was definitely too thin when I was hovering around the 64 kg mark some years ago. 

I'm also thinking of buying a sphygmomanometer to measure my own blood pressure but also my wife's. Her sister, a couple of years younger than her, died recently of a stroke after suffering from high blood pressure for a number of years. She was overweight however, unlike my wife but it will still be a good idea to monitor it.

I also want to start measuring a resting pulse as that's a good indicator of increasing fitness. I could also measure it at the start and finish of a walk. Right now, sitting here and typing this post, it is 69 beats per minute, which is OK. I can record all these details in the Samsung Health app on my Android phone.

Meanwhile I perform my hip-strengthening and flexibility exercises on a daily basis but of course I could do a lot more. One thing at a time however. For the moment, I'll focus on increasing the distances that I walk and monitoring my weight. I know from experience that walking is the easiest way for me to lose weight.