This is a post I have been dreading writing, but I feel it is something a lot of Fibro warriors think about. Fibromyalgia weight loss is not the easiest thing to do and I know a lot of us struggle with this.
My Fibromyalgia Weight Loss Story
I am really being vulnerable with this story and admitting out loud that I am overweight. That is very difficult to say. I think many women struggle with this reality.
My weight journey has definitely been a roller coaster ride. Twenty years ago, I was very skinny and could eat anything in site. After marriage, I got comfortable with life which led to gaining weight because all of a sudden I was eating three meals a day. I tackled that and didn’t get back to the skinny version, but I was happy. Pregnancy was the next weight gain but for an amazing reason. I had a C-Section, so it took longer to lose weight. However, I was never healthy after my daughter was born.
I had several surgeries in my daughter’s first ten years of life. The final surgery was my hysterectomy ten years ago. I lost a lot of weight within a year of that, but I don’t think it was a healthy weight loss. Fibromyalgia had started, and I believe I was depressed. A diagnosis was never given but looking back I had all the tell-tale signs of depression. I simply stopped eating to try and lose weight. I was eating maybe once a day and living on Coke. Not Healthy!
Thanks to COVID and the pandemic, I weighed the most I have ever weighed this past summer. My daughter was home from college and baking every single day which was awesome but not for my waistline. I am slowly losing that weight and focusing on me again.
Food and Weight Loss
Diet is a four-letter word to me and many others. I have tried Weight Watchers more times than I can count along with many fad diets over the years. The key is to remove the word “diet” out of your vocabulary. I have started changing how I eat but mentally I am not thinking of it as a diet nor am I thinking about it being a restriction. When I was able to adjust my thought process to that, I have seen a huge difference.
I was able to stop sugar without a single problem when I wrapped my head around it not being a diet. I am not 100% perfect and I do allow some because I do not want to restrict myself. Restricting myself will cause me to binge and eat all the sugar I can lay my hands on. You might ask why I picked sugar when there are other foods that Fibromyalgia patients more commonly chose to eliminate. For me, sugar was my biggest demon and I thought it is the easiest to figure out how to eliminate.
Your plan needs to be easy to figure out. That was another huge hurdle that I have learned. We already have brain fog to deal with why add a complicated eating plan to learn. We already have to manage our Fibro and daily life. If we add something complicated to the mix, we tend to get overwhelmed. Do not do this! You want to feel better and help the brain fog. Small bites at a time will benefit you in the long run.
My suggestion to any one with Fibromyalgia who wants to tackle weight loss is to pick one thing at a time. Give yourself 8 weeks to feel comfortable with that decision and then add something else. You can chose to eliminate certain foods, decrease serving sizes, change the times you eat during the day, and even the number of times you eat in a day. There are a lot of options and they will be different for everyone. Eliminating sugar from my diet has helped me but that may not help you. Find what works for you and if it can be a permanent change versus a short term change.
Don’t Exercise – Just Move Your Body
Obviously, movement of any kind will attribute to losing weight. This is very difficult for chronic pain warriors. For myself, wrapping my mind around it not being a workout and understanding just moving would help has benefited me greatly. I am an all or nothing type person and a perfectionist. I felt if I am going to exercise then it needs to be running a 5K or in the gym lifting weights for an hour. A simple 10-minute walk was a “failure” in my mind. Now I rejoice if I make 10-minutes around the block. I watch my step count and I increase my daily goal based on how my body is responding to my previous days. Fibromyalgia warriors don’t just walk there are so many options that you can try, and this subject deserves an entire blog post.
The key is to eliminate the thought that you have to exercise or workout. A lot of people have negative connotations related to those words and you might feel like I do. Wrap your head around simple small steps towards movement everyday. Try a 10 minute stretch, a 1,500 step goal, vacuuming or sweeping the entire house without stopping, or anything else small. Start small, monitor your body, and stay with that for a week or two. If everything is going well increase to 15-minutes, or 2,000 steps, or laundry and floors in one day. Move and monitor and increase. You CAN do this!
How You Feel is More Important
I have learned that the number isn’t what is important. How I feel is more important than anything else. When I was at my heaviest, I wasn’t even happy sitting in a chair. I could feel all the pounds mentally weighing me down and was so unhappy that I did not want to engage in life. That was causing me to not want to leave my house and not want to interact with coworkers at the office. I dreaded having to be in meetings where a table or desk wouldn’t be in front of my body. Sitting in my boss’s office in just a chair gave my tremendous anxiety.
I have lost eleven pounds which isn’t as large of a number as I would want to see BUT I feel better. I am happier and more confident in myself. My Fibromyalgia seems to be more manageable without those eleven pounds. I have put a lot of things in place so I can’t say that the weight loss has been the sole factor that has contributed to less flares, but my flares have definitely decreased since losing that weight.
Be Healthy versus worrying about the number
If you are worried about your Fibromyalgia weight loss then please stop worrying about a number on the scale! Learn what makes you feel good and what your body can tolerate. When you start feeling better the weight will come off or it won’t, but the important thing is that you are feeling better!
I still have roughly twenty pounds to lose but I am not pressuring myself. My concern these days is how I am feeling and if I am happy with what I am doing.
