Living with a chronic illness can be extremely debilitating. It can lead to certain activities being very limited. One of the things I am asked about the most when it comes to this, is exercise. How can people with adhesions still manage to work out, without causing more pain and damage to themselves?
Over the years I have been on many different medications, I’ve been too ill to be able to move and also to eat. As a result my weight fluctuated for quite a while. It seemed one min I had this little pot belly and fat cheeks, the next I was being asked if I had an eating disorder! The moment it really dawned on me though, was being asked when my baby was due! Any woman who isn’t pregnant knows that this is our worst nightmare!!!
So I went on the search on how to exercise safely. Luckily I have a few friends who are in the fitness/nutrition industry so I bombarded them all with 101 questions on anything and everything I could think of. What foods are good for weight loss? What exercises are good? And I took on board everything they said, and then tailor made my own program.
Now I am not going to say from then on it was easy peasy, because that would be the furthest thing from the truth! I started working out at the gym and doing yogalates at home but me being me completely overdid it, and found myself in more pain than ever and that put me out for even longer! So it was a case of trial and error. One thing I did find though was that by doing weight training, it put less stress on my pelvis and abdomen as I could focus on certain areas, hitting certain ones harder than others. A lot of people would assume that by doing weight training you would suddenly turn into some He-She Muscle Mary, but that is one of the biggest misconceptions in fitness. Yes, if you train in a certain way then I probably could do that, but that’s not what I wanted.
Diet was the next hurdle. There is no point doing any exercise if your diet is full of rubbish. You would be completely defying any exercise you do. Anyone with adhesions also knows full well that diet and certain foods can be a trigger for a flare up, so everything was again trial and error. It soon became apparent that there never is, and never will be a ‘quick fix’ to weight loss. You get exactly what you put in!
The problem is that people think that all exercise programs are aimed at everyone, again, this is not true! Any type of program should be individual and aimed at YOU. We are all different, we all have different limits BUT having a chronic illness shouldn’t be one of them. Yes it can make it harder but it doesn’t make it impossible. People have said to me that it must be easy for me as I am naturally slim……well I think the pictures show different. Ok, so I have never been extremely large, and yes sometimes the medication can help that BUT in the opposite the medication can make it 100 times worse! I was at my biggest whilst I was on hormone injections, Zoladex. I went up to a size 14, which may not seem big to some people but when you’re used to being a size 8-10, it trust me, it is! So I made a conscious effort to make sure that I didn’t get any bigger.
So if you do have adhesions, or any chronic illness in fact, that shouldn’t be a reason not to keep yourself healthy in all other aspects of your body. It’s just finding out what works, and doesn’t, for you.
Surely if I can do it, then so can everyone. Don’t worry about people around you. Know your limits and just keep going. Yeah, it may take longer than some people to get to where you’re happy. Yes, there maybe people around you lifting heavier and yup, you may get those funny looks in the gym but just remember this………EVERYONE HAS TO START SOMEWHERE! We weren’t all born to be Arnies, HE wasn’t even born that way, he just worked hard!
***PLEASE NOTE I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL AND ALL OPINIONS IN THIS POST ARE FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE. THEY ARE NOT MEANT IN A PROFESSIONAL MANNER. IF IN DOUBT, ALWAYS CHECK WITH A DR BEFORE COMMENCING ANY EXERCISE REGIME***
Diary of Adhesions 