[CrazyLo]

For the past month, I have started exercising to lose all of the weight I gained in the psych unit when I was psychotic. I've never been able to run because it hurts my legs and ankles (I was born with crooked legs). So I've been walking on the treadmill...a lot. I walk for over 2 hours a day and then do some strength exercises. But last Saturday, I hurt my foot while I was walking. It was so painful that it still hasn't recovered...I am limping and walking slowly, unable to exercise. My therapist says it is because I have been overdoing the exercise, and so that is the consequence (becoming injured).

Have any of you who exercise or over-exercise had related injuries...how did you cope? I'm going nuts. I wasn't only addicted because it was making me lose weight, it was addictive because it gave me a high, gave me permission to eat more, made me feel good about myself...made it easier to sleep at night. I am feeling so restless now, having to stay off of my foot. It's driving me nuts! I don't know how long my recovery time will be...I'm hoping it is healed within the next week and half. Is that an unrealistic desire?

[Skeezyks]

Hello CrazyLo: I don't know if I really have much to offer here. A few weeks ago, my right shoulder began to ache. (I'm right-handed.) Gradually it spread down my arm as well. I don't know what I did to it. I keep hoping it will go away, but so far it's not. This is doubly a problem for me because the only way I can sleep is on my right side. And laying on my right side in bed, aggravates the pain in my shoulder & arm. Fortunately, I guess, I don't do any exercising that this pain prevents. My main form of exercise is walking... mostly around our neighborhood with my dog. I used to do some yoga & I had been thinking about trying to reinstitute my practice. But I've tried it & it is really painful.

I could not say if your hope to be healed within the next week & a half is realistic. It really depends on the type & extent of the injury. I would think that, if it doesn't heal soon, you may want to have it looked at by a doctor. It could be that you have even sustained a hair-line fracture. Or perhaps it's just a sprain. Sprains themselves can take a long time to heal.

In the meantime, my thought would be to find some other type of exercise that will not put additional stress on your foot. Swimming, of course, comes to mind if you have access to a pool. But, really, if not being able to walk is causing you as much grief as it sounds like it is, I'd encourage you to have it looked at by a doctor. At least then, you'll have a better idea of what it is you're actually dealing with. And this, in-&-of itself, may help to reduce some of the anxiety you're feeling.

[CrazyLo]

Thank you!

The pain is on the top of my foot, near my toes. It doesn't really feel like a sprain, and it did not bruise or anything so I don't think it's a fracture. I've been trying to put ice on it throughout the day and take ibuprofen. I'm supposed to see my doctor on November 3rd, so if it's not better by then I'll ask her to look at it.

[BlueGreenTabbyCat]

I have an ED which has an exercise ...*tries to find the appropriate word...* obsession involved. I've also had injuries.

Like you I had my exercise daily at a gym (one of several I rotated with to prevent being told to leave for being there too long). I got a pain in my leg, I went to my Doctor who thought it was a fuss over nothing. I was limping a lot, just told myself to pull myself together and ran until I couldn't. So cutting a long story short, by complete fluke an orthopaedic doctor sent me for a scan which showed my entire leg was inflamed. He did another different scan and it turned out that pain I had in my leg was a fracture all along! I had been running on a fracture for 2 years! It's made worse when I knew myself that it actually wasn't as painful as it had been so obviously had already healed...

I was banned from running (not that they could stop me, but I was able to see not just the fracture but other injuries and worn out joints). I was warned if I didn't reel it in I'd need knee replacements and there was only a 50/50 chance they'd work.

That scared me. If I was wheelchair bound I'd lose the very thing I took pride in; my independence and my entire life would change. Food would be the last thing I'd be able to control if someone else was cooking the food let alone not being able to exercise.

I did cut back. I needed to anyway- I had no life, wasn't getting any younger and I hated exercise just as much as I did before I started. This was not how I wanted to spend my life. I needed at least a chance to carve out a better life for myself or I'd just stay doing the same thing and never get out of that hell hole. I tried to look at cutting the exercise as a blessing in disguise.

It wasn't easy cutting back, I had to take an immediate jump down on my hours, I'd had to do something similar before when I had a grade 2 sprained ankle (blew up like a balloon- couldn't even wear shoes!). I learned that it was the impact causing the injury (you'll find impact causes most injuries). I could take up other forms so long as there was little or no impact. If your feet leave the floor or surface, with the exception of swimming, it's an impact exercise. Limit things to the cross trainer, the bike, swimming...etc and you limit the damage.

Know that your exercise is only as good as your rest.

If you exercise, the science of it means your body creates lots of little micro-tears in your muscles. You rest and these heal. Depending on how deep they are you may feel DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) which is just your body's way of saying you've caused a few more microtears which it needs to heal. If you don't rest, you don't heal and your body does not become stronger. Instead it releases more of the stress hormone cortisol which itself is the hormone we feel when we are under attack. It puts our bodies in a sort of flight-or-fight mentality and we will crave more sugary foods, we will sleep less and feel irritable and (this is the bit that motivated me to keep an eye on it!) it leads to your body choosing to lay down body fat on your stomach and lower torso more so than anywhere else. This is because it's trying to store whatever calories it can, it thinks there is going to be a famine or some sort of danger and that food may be scarce so it stores the calories it can (slows down your metabolism and becomes hyper-economic to ensure there will be a calorie surplus; your body will always be one step ahead of you whatever you throw at it.) It stores this excess body fat in a place closest to your digestion organs so that it wont have to work so hard when it needs to use that stored energy.

If you want your life back or just don't want to live like this any more; this could be a good thing. If however you're hell-bent on finding the most painful way to live, then this is just going to be an added string to your bow. It's just another way to hurt yourself and believe me; I've been there and spent years there, running with pain purely because it hurt.

OP if you want a game plan on cutting back bit by bit, first of all, write out how much you know you do for a week. Hours, times, machines/exercises...etc however you want to monitor it but for the purposes of making things easier; monitor it by one thing only.

What I did is then cut back by 10% over the week. This could be any % you choose, maybe you could go for 15% or 20%, whatever works, whatever you feel able to.

I was terrified my weight would go up but actually it went down. I couldn't get my head around why my weight was falling despite me eating the same (being AN at the time I was fanatical about weighing and measuring so I know I was eating the same amount as I had been.
Then I read up on why and it made sense;
When you use your muscles, for any reason (walking thought to marathon running, spinning, swimming....etc) your muscles create a fluid which is a by-product of being used called lactic acid. Lactic acid needs to be flushed though your muscles because it is an irritant and will break down your muscles if it isn't broken down so your body requires water to increase your fluid levels so this fluid can be flushed through.
Now you must have seen those guys at the gym who look really pumped up and muscular after doing weights? Or noticed that post exercise you look more toned than you did that morning? That's because your body has pumped fluid through your muscles. It's a form of water retention. It lasts up to 48 hours depending on your body and what you have done.
If you were to cut back on your exercise and not go to the gym, your body wouldn't be creating this lactic acid and the fluids wouldn't be requested to flush it through- so without that fluid caught in your muscles your weight will go down.

Your probably thinking "but I just walk/don't do very much". If you are exercising at all, your using your muscles, the muscles will be flushed through with fluids as they are being used and the longer you use them, the more this happens but also, the more cortisol your body creates (hence the push for 20-30 minute routines rather than hours and hours long routines). So if you were worried about a weight jump; it's unlikely. Yes over time if you cut back majorly you will see an increase in your weight IF you had been eating enough, but your already talking about heading back to your pre-treatment weight so I'd barter that you're already restricting. I doubt you'd see that much of a difference overall.

Take it a week at a time, monitor how you feel and most importantly; GET HELP! Sit down with someone, make yourself accountable with what you do and what you try. For me, I cut back 10% every time I made a new step, got used to where I was and then cut another 10%....eventually I'd gotten to a manageable position and worked to make sure my weight maintained so I didn't feel the urge to increase things.

I hope you manage to work something out but for me, I still see an injury as a hidden positive; if you want to get out of the exercise rut and you want to make things change, here is a little nudge to escape.

[CrazyLo]

Very informative! Thank you. I will need to ponder over this for awhile.

[eskielover]

I was working with abused stallions cleaning stalls then in their new location cleaned out the round pen. Drug the muck bucket thhat weighed more than I did, up a hill to the manure spreader. Ended up hurting what felt like a shin splint. 2 weeks of pain & it messed up my ballroom dance lessons I do 3 hours a week.

I use Arnica gel on all sore muscles & bruises. It makes amazing difference & I take ibuprofen for the inflammation. Beware of continuing to exercise with an injury it can make it worse. I didn't realize I had a compression fracture in my back & kept on doing...it kept on compressing & getting worse