I freely admit that I have put on a lot of weight in the last 2-3 years. A lot of it is because first I had a very painful knee and needed a knee replacement and then I no sooner recovered from that, and I had a new pain to contend with. This time the pain was in both my legs and was excruciating but actually stemmed from my back with nerves being squeezed and pain shooting down my legs. I had several months of pain and a heavy regime of pain killers including Morphine to get me through till I had my back operation on 3/5. I am still experiencing some discomfort, but slowly things are improving.
The issue for me is multi-faceted. Firstly, I was unable to walk very far at all for up to 3 years without experiencing significant pain. It is difficult to exercise when every movement seems to produce pain. I have been using some diet shakes once a day and keep telling myself I need to do it twice a day. It just doesn’t often seem to happen. I try to be sensible with meals, but sometimes food seems to be the only consolation. The other thing is something that I feel is a psychological block to starting to lose weight. Having had two parents who had Parkinson’s I know that at some point in the journey they experienced significant weight loss and at the end both were so skinny. I sometimes think that somewhere in my brain, there is a little evil voice telling me to enjoy having a bit of extra weight because at some stage I won’t be able to keep it on! The logical and educated part of my brain tells me that it is not a good idea to listen to that evil little voice, but it seems to win rather more than it loses!
Another issue is that I feel that I can’t go back to the Parkinson’s exercise group as it is done in a circuit with other people in the class and most of the exercises feel too risky for my back. Apparently, I may always have a tendency to back issues, plus the recovery can be up to 12 months! So, there is a lot of patience needed here!
So, the outcome is that I have still got a lot more weight that I am carrying than I am happy about. My husband keeps reminding me how far I have come since pre surgery when I could hardly put one foot in front of the other without agony. The fact that I have started to mobilise more and have stopped using the walker and seldom use the stick means I am progressing. He keeps reminding me of that! Thank goodness for the voice of reason that I live with!
I have also started going to the pool three times a week in the early morning and doing aqua jogging. It is basically just walking up and down the length of the pool with a flotation belt on and striding out and using my arms too. I was told by the surgeon that this would be the best thing for my back as well as trying to walk more just around in my day to day living. I feel that in striding out and making sure I swing my arms, that it will help my Parkies too. It certainly can’t harm.
Hopefully, I will start to feel able to walk further soon and in getting exercise hopefully my weight will start to drop. I know it will be a slow process, but hopefully it will all start to pay and I will be able to drop a few sizes in the near future. I do need to remind myself that I didn’t put the weight on overnight and it will not be remedied overnight. It will take time and I need to try to be patient.
Hopefully, my husband will see less of me soon!
My journey with Parkinsons 