Injured achilles, what can I do to maintain my fitness and weight loss?

pampaspony
pampaspony Posts: 3 Member
edited November 27 in Fitness and Exercise
Hi,

So I have been doing two 5-6 mile runs a week in addition to a longer, 8-12 mile run on the weekend and strength workouts on the days in between. This amount of running has kept me the happiest I've ever been as it is so meditative, and as someone who used to suffer from an eating disorder, it's brilliant how this running allows me to eat practically anything, within reason. However last week I injured my achilles and now I am terrified about how I'll be able to continue to lose, or at least maintain, the weight that I have. Even walking down a set of stairs makes my ankle feel really uncomfortable. I work retail as well so having multiple hours of walking on it has really not helped the feeling.

I'm joining a gym so that I can use some of their equipment while my achilles is healing and I'm hoping that I'll be able to use the elliptical until I am properly healed. However I don't really know exactly how much rest I should be giving myself and how much exercise I'm allowed to do. I plan on doing an 8 mile hill workout on the elliptical tomorrow, which doesn't seem like a lot to me, but my mum is warning me to stay off of long workouts. But I feel like if I cut back, some of my ED related symptoms will return. I rely so much on exercising in order to keep myself mentally and physically sound and I am so scared that I'll fall back onto some bad habits, or worse, injure myself so that I won't be able to exercise for months.

So in short - help! What can I do? Do you have any advice?

Replies

  • AllanMisner
    AllanMisner Posts: 4,140 Member
    Three things I would focus on:
    1) Make sure you fully rehab your achilles.
    2) Resistance training may give you the same meditative response (it does for me). Weight training has been shown to be good for fat loss (http://www.older.fitness/9/).
    3) Consider spending some time addressing the ED issue (with a professional if necessary). Fat loss comes from what and how much we eat. If your activity level is lower, your consumption must change.

    Allan Misner
    NASM Certified Personal Trainer (Corrective Exercise Specialist, Fitness Nutrition Specialist)
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