Search: pelvis

Exercise and a Diet That’s Wise (by )

Those who've been following will know that I am loosing weight - what is kind of weird is that I am still loosing weight even though I am now back up to the 1400 cals that I was eating before with binges of 1600. Of course it is not that weird, having lost a bit of weight, discovering in the process that I can't eat any wheat or barley etc... and having medication for headaches and what not and then the bleeding finally stopping. My pelvis finally settled down and most of the joint pain went so I can do stuff.

I've been running! Yes I know! Six months ago I was having to use the damn walking stick to walk into town and now I have little races with Jeany. I wish I could have done it before but I couldn't, I know because I was trying. Desperately. It took the combination of medication for under laying problems, getting equipment out of my own money that meant I could exercise without putting undue strain on the pelvis and could exercise at home so I could rest when needed, a 1000 cal diet for about 3 months during which time I was dizzy with white spots in vision, neaseatingly hungry and Mr McGrumpy Pants, and last but not least discovering that there was something else other than cow and soya that I was allergic/intollerant/having an immune response to.

To be honest I don't think I would have managed it without Al or the nurse or the money to eat properly and buy special equipment or if I'd had a full time job. In fact one of the things that became apparent to me was that everytime I have tried to go back to college I have become really ill again. It could just be the added strain but I don't think so because it was also taking me 2 weeks to recover from parties and the common factor was bread.

At home we didn't tend to eat it, but at parties there were sarnis and college there was packed lunches or bought sandwitches. I've done a couple of parties now without eating any wheat and it has not taken me two weeks to recover!

So this is all great, but you know I'm not actually that excited by the weight loss itself - what I am excited about is getting fit and doing stuff. So I am currently aiming to go to the climbing wall for a me climb once a month - and yes that is lame but it takes a while for my muscles to stop aching and being all fatigued enough to do a proper climbing session. It has been amazing to be able to climb again - I suck at it and it is frustrating because I remember being better but I think I'm doing well.

I have a Dr Who Walk/Run-athon which I am working my way towards and of course the exercise bike 🙂

Last night I did a 7 min work out with Alaric though I skipped a couple of the exercises though one of those was because I was still planking and this time I had to stop not because of my c-section scar or my stomach muscles but due to my shoulder! I did not even attempt the side planks but Al did.

(Shoulder is an old stunt biking accident - the same one where it turned out I'd broken my pelvis not that I knew it at the time).

Then we have the chin up bar - now I got this bar about 2 years ago and Al installed it and I was really trying with it. First off I couldn't even reach it with my hands, then I reached it and held on but couldn't lift my feet. Alaric on the other hand could bring his knees up to his chest but not do a pull up - we both wanted to do climbing again and it seemed like a good thing to train our upper body strength.

Eventually I managed to lift my feet off the ground - just a fraction. I was so excited though it really was nothing and it wasn't with my arms it was just trying to lift the legs using leg muscles and handing by my arms.

I am now 2 years later at the same point Alaric was in the beginning - I can pull my knees up to my chest and for the last 3 days I have been able to lift myself slightly with my arms. Yesterday I sung on the bar which was ACE, I lost my grip but did not crash to the ground but landed on my feet and my pelvis did not hurt! Stuff like this has been so painful for so long that mainly the last few months has been about testing limits. Amazingly I've only ended up with ouchy hip twice - though I am having a... erm... wee wee problem. I'm kind of just padding up and ignoring it and then showering as soon as I've had a run etc... TMI I am sure but I also know this is a problem a lot of women have and it needs to be talked about!

Alaric can now do 3 pull ups 🙂

I've caught up to him with the planking - now I need to do the same with the pull ups!

Also one day I would still like to do a full marathon - I had resigned myself that this was one life goal I could never reach but now very much I am starting to think it is back on.

Kind of should get some running shoes...

12 years… (by )

So today I went to the Drs to see how the weight loss was going and stuff, I was convinced I had piled it on over Christmas I felt a lot stockier than before Christmas and to be honest I ate a lot reaching 1600 on alot of the days. This is about the 1400 stable and 1200 weight loss that I sorted with the nurse. 1600 is what I was eating before I went to the Drs, the amount I was eating and wondering why my weight was creeping up as everyone knows women have 2000 calories a day - unless you are me. I am short, had a boarderline thyroid for a decade or so and as it turns out have the lighter Asian skeleton like my dad (as well as the afro-carrabean spin from my mum) - add in the low mobility and I was screwed.

But between tablets and the discovery that I can't eat wheat and sticking to the low calorie counts to loose the excess weight, I have been loosing weight but I seriously ate some food over the holiday and then my birthday and so on.

So imagine my surprise and delight when I go and find I have lost weight, not much but I have lost weight still. The key being that due to pelvis being a lot more stable I have been out doing more stuff, doing running games with the cubs and even managing a 20 minute climb. And then they said my bloods were all good, all the tests were normal!!!

That is the first time that has been said to me, no not sures, or a bit high, or oooo that's not goods or it's boarderline or here's a tablet to help control this. So amazing!

And that is the first time in about 12 years possibly more.

One of the conversations I had with the Dr recently was that I don't know what energy level I am supposed to have - I've not had "me" energy since I was 18, I don't think 30+ normally have the same the energy as a teen so I have no idea if I am back to normal or not and to a certain extent I kind of don't care either as I am so much better than I have been for so long. I feel a little bit sad that that bit of life is kind of missing for me but at the same time I have the girls and though maybe I could have taken them to more things if I'd been weller I also know they love snuggly time watching films and colouring and stuff and I still took them to parks it was just some days I couldn't and when I did it was the outing for the day.

Interestingly I came home thinking about what I was doing last time it looked like I might get better with all the back treatments and exclusion diets at Chelsea and Westminster. That was like 12 years ago as was me trying to get a PhD place, the one I really really wanted was with the Open University, but it relied on Beagle2 landing and collecting data. It didn't happen, the beagle disappeared and today I watched the press-conference live of how they've found it sitting there on the surface of Mars. It made me smile, bitter sweet and poetically lovely.

Maybe when I have a cyborg body I can fly to Mars and say hi to it 🙂

Of course with hindsight I think it was for the best for me, I became so very sick and my friend who got the PhD funding did far more with the chance than I think I would have because fundamentally I am a shyer person and just not as good at Chemistry and form filling!

And anyway I am not sure I wouldn't be in a similar place to were I am now anyway.

2015 is kind of gearing up to be an amazing year.

The Chronically Ill and Missing Stuff (by )

As anybody who has spoken to me recently will know I was looking forward to this weekend, I had the night of dangerous writing which to be fair was only a maybe as I needed to see when my practice sessions and stuff where, and the Writing Retreat.

But this week had been a bit rough but I thought I was managing it ok, and I had already had to do damage limitation and not go to my Chuffing It class. Friday I felt a bit odd but in a way that could have been nerves over doing a new show for the first time a school and the first time on my own too!

I really enjoyed the shows and the kids were great but in the car on the way home I got really sick, well not really sick but suddenly very flu-like very chronic pain flare, even my pelvis hurt. I was scrubbed out and didn't make it to Bristol. Then I spent today napping and having warm baths and stuff.

Then this evening I find that due to being out of it yesterday afternoon and evening and really and truly this morning - I'd missed the writing retreat which I was desperately trying to be well enough to go to.... tomorrow - yeah somehow I managed to get my days confused and I only found out after getting an email saying how unfair it was of me not to turn up as there was a waiting list.

This is something that happens to chronically ill people no matter how much you try, regardless of how much you make sure that you pay for things you do not go on etc... people just do not understand and one of the things that was hard to learn on the pain management course 10 odd years ago - is that you can't really expect them too either.

From their point of view you are just being awkward.

It doesn't help that now I have a extra food issues and they had gone to extra effort to cater for that.

Of course if I had known I wasn't going, I would have let them know but I didn't and I am uber hacked off that I missed it - not that I could have gone even if I had been with it enough to realise what the day was!

It's the same mechanism by which the chronically ill lose friends as people think the last minute cancellations are excuses for "I don't like you".

And annoyingly it may be flu but equally due to the arthritis symptoms resurfacing we looked at the breakfast I'd been eating this week. It turns out that some porridge contains a thing called spelt - this turns out to be a kind of wheat - it never occurred to me it would be it oat based stuff and I was only having it as the nurse had increased my calories and it's frosty icing mornings :/

A Possible Break Through (by )

So the diet... yeah that thing the Dr sent me to a special nurse for, well it has been a strange roller coaster.

Last Monday I was in tears, I didn't make it to Jean's Drama group, I got half way and felt for too woozy, I had stars and felt sick. I gave up for fear of passing out on Jeany who is still only 9 after all. We had tea in the Morrisons that was across the road and Al had to get her to rehersal. I was not so annoyed about being hungry or anything like that but more mega frustrated. It seemed that in trying to make things better I was crippling myself again and that was a huge huge step backwards.

I'm not sure if it was the food or the chronic fatigue or the fact I'd forgotten to take my headache / blood pressure tablet but it was the day I found hardest with the 1000 cal a day diet anyway. Week two was much harder than week one and this was week three - it didn't look good - how could I look after the girls?

But then Tuesday dawned and I lost the savageness of hunger, I was still hungry but it was ok and not like the fighting I must eat I've had around pregnancy and hormone stuff. And my energy was fine. I decided if I hadn't lost weight by Friday I would stop and try my friends full 100 hundred diet/exercise thing.

Then Wednesday happened, I got up and it was toddler climbing day, I wasn't hungry, actually not hungry, I had breakfast anyway because I would be walking a good 6 miles during the day min and had two hours of catching a three year old, although she actually does independent climbing now (she did sulk as she wasn't allowed on the big big wall this week). It is autumn and early morning has a bite to it so I grabbed my coat, the coat that has failed to do up around me since the last part of Moos pregnancy. Infact it has no buttons as I tried to do it up when we went to see the first hobbit film and the strain was too much and I did a Bilbo getting into our car much to Al's amusement as we had spent the whole film going "O my! I am Bilbo!".

The coat wrapped around me, if it had had buttons it would have done up with room to spare - I don't weigh myself as with the water retention etc it always seemed pointless and something you could get obsessive about ie to get an idea on my weight I would be looking at having to weigh myself multiple times a day etc... not healthy.

Basically my stomach had stopped sticking out and being hard at the top, people who hadn't seen me for a few weeks instantly noticed the difference. I also got through the entire session without pain, and then struggled to eat lunch and then walked home with min pain and then got stuff ready for Cubs and ran cubs as Mr Alaric has had to have ouchy tooth stuff done but more on that later. And we got home and I was still going!

I felt really good, my shoulder was on fire and the pelvis was a little creaky but everything else was gone.

Thursday was the same and included a trip to Bristol to see Science Show Off and stay with friends, they commented on how well I was looking and the energy levels and I felt good. I still had to use the stick but that that's not the same as the tiredness or the arthritic pains etc...

Friday I walked to the Watershed from my friends house after staying up half the night writing and ordered a gluten free lunch - just incase because you see the easiest way for me to get my calorie count down low was to cut out bread. We know I have some issues with wheat from when I was being tested for intollerances and stuff 10 yrs ago - the biospies were inconclusive but from the results of the exclusion diets they thought I should avoid white mono grain bread and eat multi-grain. But my aunt turns out to have Coeliacs and I kind of didn't want to break the spell I've found.

Wheat products are def. causing bloating - enough that Alaric notices, but that doesn't mean it's the gluten and of course it could be a mix of blood pressure tablets and controlling blood sugar better by not having bread products etc... What ever it is I just don't want to tip the balance again!

I managed to walk around Bristol with a giant wooden robot thingy on me! And though I had to then use the stick to the station it was amazing to get that far. I then got a very confused staff member trying to sell me a child/teen ticket for the train home and bumped into people who didn't recognise me due to "looking so well".

This happened again on Saturday as I ran my first workshops on my own with the girls in Cheltenham, it was tiring but would have been for most people, again issue with people taking double takes and almost walking past me.

I am hopeful, trying not to be too so as the fall back will then be worse but if it is just gluten or wheat or the yeast or some such then I could get rid of everything except the actual physical damage to my shoulder, back and pelvis! From what I've read everything from my can't eat milk to the collegen deficiency to the aneamia to my mouth ulcers maybe due to this.

I'm still currently on the 1000 cals a day but am now enjoying the increased energy, I am actually starting to think I can sort this out, I talk to the Dr again tomorrow. PLEASE WORLD.

Exercise and a Diet that’s Wise…. (by )

I'm just over two weeks into the 1000 calories a day diet the Drs put me on, there is a 200 calorie buffer which is just as well otherwise I would have been down to one meal whilst I was at the Science Festival. It isn't much different from my normal diet except I've basically cut out bread and goat / vegan cheese.

My friends have sent me lots of recipes and I am eating more fish.

The diet was annoying at first, then I got more energy which was amazing! Then I got a cold, I'm on number two now complete with mouth ulcers 🙁 Normally I drink loads of fruit juice but erm... calories. So I have been measuring the fruit juice out and watering it down with hot water to make special teas which are included in my cal count.

My energy has kind of flopped again but I think this is due to the popranolol which I have started to prevent the headaches etc...

Right shin is aching slightly so I may need to look at the exercise regime again 🙁 I'm currently aiming to complete the 10, 000 steps a day plus do 1 hr on the exercise bike. Dad fixed the peddles with blocks so I am no longer over reaching and hurting my knees on the thing. It still could do with being more recumbant. Due to a friends cat emergency I still do not have a treadmill but there is one waiting for me! It will be essential for the winter months when walking outside becomes painful.

Things I've found the hardest have been being out at events and meeting up with friends - I couldn't have the scampi and chips as it was more than my daily allowance though fortunately our friend works in the place and knows how to sort the calories so got it scampi with salad - I actually did not know you could do this in restaurants. I also couldn't have the pasty from the services which was over 800 cals 🙁 This has made long car journeys a little hellish especially finding that even the M&S salads tend to be loaded with dressings etc.

Also the calorie information on packaging, if it is there at all, is really dam confusing! They will mention "portions" with out indication of how much of the pack you hold that is, or they will give you 100g and not always the weight of what's in the pack, even when they do give the pack weight or portion size you have to do maths. I worry that I'm getting it wrong.

I am starting to struggle, my body kept me awake last night with hunger, pains in my stomach and I am a whimp for mentioning them I know, also for some reason the ulcers in the bit between my stomach and gut have decided to flare up too as is the acid reflux I get - it maybe coincidence.

A strange side effect has been that Alaric has forgotten to eat a couple of times because I have no calories left and have skipped a meal, this then means he skips a meal and he can't afford to do that. I think I've worked out the calorie budget now so that I don't have to skip and avoid this problem.

From observations I think it is bread that causes alot of the bloating that comes and goes randomly. Which is interesting.

I am finding the thought of a low calorie diet for the rest of my life quiet depressing. I was already hacked off that everyone else seems to by chocolate bars and stuff all the time and not be fat, but I have what I have and I don't want it to get worse. Insuline intollerance and thyroid problems are feed back loops and have thresholds were you can deal with them with diet instead of drugs. I want to deal with them without drugs

Add in my frame ie bone density and structure and height and gender and age and hormones and no wonder I wasn't shifting any weight. I have issues with chronic pain and fatigue and a pelvis that likes to act up sometimes making any and all movement painful and/or impossible. These are not good combinations and the pelvis again is a feed back loop. The heavier I am the more likely the seperated pelvis stuff is, to act up and make walking hard.

turns out my 1600 cal a day was a no go, the 2000 cals a day for a woman is not for women like me, the cake is a lie! To maintain weight and not put it on I am looking at 1400 cals a day max and the 1000-1200 cals is to loose weight.

I am hoping against hope that loosing some weight will take the loading off of the pelvis and make exercise easier. I want to do climbing again - it perhapse isn't the most sensible choice but if the pelvis stabalises a bit it is doable and would be fab for over all fitness. The bleeding has settled so that I can now go swimming for two weeks out of every four so I should be doing that, not that I can currently think of how to fit that in :/

It's also a money thing - swimming and climbing and belly dancing and Krav Maga all cost money and clash for that matter and that is before you take Jeany and Mary into account. The money issue has been a big thing with the food to - to eat healthy costs a butt load more than eating stodge that fills you up. This sucks, fortunately we are in a much better place to deal with this now than we were but in general for society it is a HUGE issue.

Anyway I am basically hoping I can loose weight and then exercise more and in so doing maybe up the calories I am allowed... maybe.

Another thing is that I am not on my own with this, Alaric is helping though is concerned as he thought I wasn't eating enough to begin with. There is also the fact that I've watched two friends fight with similar issues and are starting to win!

One of them is taking up extreme sports in a life changing time which you can read about here and the other has taken up walking for charity and you can still donate here!

My friends Elizabeth, Becca and Buko have sent me wonderful recipes to help as well and I've made the staff at the climbing wall (where Jean and Mary go climbing and have have rehersals) promise not to serve me certain foods and so on.

Stats wise I am coming up to 200 Km on the recumbant exercise bike - I think that is over 100 miles. This is basically since the beginning of the summer when I got the thing - intially I was only doing 10-15 mins on there. I am trying to do an hour a day on there. I still keep failing and end up doing half an hour instead but I am now adding in sprinty bits and last night I actually got up to 30 km per hr 😀

According to the pedometer I am doing over 10K steps each day and about twice a week get over 20K, once a week I get to 27-29K but this was over the summer with outings with the girls and activities to get them too - term time is slightly different although this week I have already had to walk into Gloucester twice and will be doing it again tomorrow.

I climb about 400 stairs a day on average - some days are up in the 700's and some are down below 300, stairs are something that really really hurt on bad days so this isn't that surprising. Minutes of activity range around the 130-280 range but I know for a fact it does not register any of the arm movements when I'm allotmenting etc...

5-10 kilometers a day apparently with calories burnt ranging from 600 to 1670 though there are spikes for the larger numbers.

The gamification is working well with pushing me to complete the goals on the pedometer and I am steadily populating myland (an app on my phone connected to the pedometer) with creatures - I can now generate gems in game and so on.

A big thing for me has been realising that I am allowed to moan about this stuff, one of the things I was finding depressing was the issue that I am complaining about dieting when I know there are people out there without enough food to live. That sucks big time but me not being able to express myself and my frustration is not going to help them at all.

Also realising that I am in a position to as it were "waste" food has been very helpful. I was bought up to finish everything on my plate but actually I can't afford to do that and we have chickens and cats and a wormery so nothing is actually being wasted as such. I can't get those left overs to people who need feeding - if I could I would. It is basically impossible to gage if the girls are actually going to eat or not and that's ok because the issue isn't that we are wasting the food but rather that there is no food at source or accessible to those who need it (the latter being a horrible horendous issue that is actually present in the UK as I speak).

I am finding it hard though, fatigue is up and the drive to eat is growing, I have another week before I go back, if I have not lost weight I will cry because you know I am weighing out my damn food and exercising into pain and not being able to sleep due to hunger. It had better work! Also I am aware that I have lost my sense of humour at the moment as my mum found out when she tried to joke with me over the fact I was measuring out my breakfast.

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