My Lap Band Journey – From A High BMI To A Normal Weight And Still Learning How to Listen To My Body.

I can take the long drive out to Edwards AFB and back as long as I start my day with a swim.

When I weighed 424 pounds with a BMI of 68.4 my knee hurt, I was out of breath all of the time, and couldn’t walk further than across the room without stopping both from the pain and to catch my breath.  The pain and discomfort I felt were acute, so I could not help but listen to my body.  Since having lap band surgery 6 years ago I have become very tuned in to more subtle signals from my body.  I had to learn when my body was telling me you’re done eating, you’re thirsty, not hungry, and I had to learn when my body was trying to tell me that a particular food was not going to “work” with my band.  If I chose to wait until these signals were at the “acute” stage, it was already too late and I got to suffer the consequences.

Lately I have been learning about another signal that I have been ignoring from my body.  At 424 pounds I was told I had arthritis in my right knee, but I weighed too much to have knee replacement surgery.  I lived with the pain well medicated, and since I didn’t walk much due to my size and other issues, I thought nothing about it.  As I lost weight and started walking more and more, my knee hurt, but the ability to move around was in and of itself, so “freeing” that I pretty much ignored the pain.  I would just rest after I walked and the pain would subside.  I was still around 300 pounds so I was not getting around all that much, just more than before.  When I finally started some real exercise I choose swimming.  I did that because I knew it would be easy on my joints, and since I love the water I also believed it would be something I could keep doing without getting bored.  This was the perfect choice.  I built muscle, strength and endurance at the same time as the pounds kept melting away and there were no adverse effects on my joints.  As a matter of fact, every month I was able to walk further, at the beach, at the mall, at the amusement park because I weighed less and was strengthening my entire musculature. 

After a while I realized that swimming alone was not going to get me the results that I wanted.  Here I was, 60 years old, in the best shape of my life, and wanting more.  I started working with a trainer, with weights and resistance training.  I did this 2 days a week, swam 4 days a week and rode my bicycle or just took the day off on the 7^th day.  Weight training meant warming up first which meant treadmill or elliptical.  For a while the treadmill was fine, but then I found that it required the elliptical to get my heart rate up where I wanted it without stressing my knee.  The treadmill required too much incline and that hurt my knee.  The first new signal that I had to listen to was that the treadmill with a steep incline was not good for my body.  It did not necessarily hurt while I was using it, but it sure did later.  OK, so I would warm up and do my aerobic workout on the elliptical to get my heart rate up and not stress my joints.  This was simple enough.  I had been doing this for about a year or so when I noticed that my knee was really starting to bother me again.  I don’t mean a little, I mean a lot.  I finally broke down and went to the orthopedist who immediately said “you are a great candidate for knee replacement surgery”.  Of course I am.  I am at a normal, healthy weight and in great shape (other than my knee).  Well, he may think so, but I’m not ready yet.  The recovery from joint replacement is nothing I want to put on my calendar at the moment so I need to find ways to prolong this for as long as possible.  After speaking with the doctor we decided to try a series of shots of “lubricant” for the knee joint and see if that would help.  I have started the series and it does help so this is good news.  However, I once again learned that I must listen very carefully to my body.  Just because my knee is pain free for the moment I still have to remember that stressing it will create pain later.  This weekend, after bicycling, walking on the beach, and climbing hills at a picnic on Monday I learned that these tasks, compounded, were more than my knee wanted to do pain free.  What was missing was my normal swimming.  After spending most of the night in pain I swam for 30 minutes this morning and immediately began to feel better.  Now, about 6 hours later my knee is feeling much better.  I don’t know why, but I have learned that I must swim every other day if I am to have a chance at keeping my knee pain within manageable levels.  I can listen to my body easily in this respect since I hate being in pain.  It interferes with the rest of my day!

I just wonder what it would have been like for me had I remained at 400+ pounds.  I am sure I would have probably been unable to walk and would be using some type of wheelchair or “scooter” by now.  I can’t imagine how I would feel since I get so angry at having to restrict myself at all, much less not being able to walk.  I much prefer being able to get around freely, especially if all it takes for the moment is getting into the pool every other day to remain relatively pain free.  I’m willing to listen to everything my body is telling me.

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