Chronic Illness and Weight Loss

Hi, you really need a good pat on the back losing 87 pds with have RA. I have another form of it called Fibromyalgia and second hand know how much pain you go though on a daily basis. I dont take anything anymore as i am afraid of what the drugs are doing to my liver and kidneys. Using Celebrex was the best thing for me to do but now i just suck it up and go on. There are mornings where getting out of bed is an issue for me because of the pain. I get up and go for each and everyday. You will feel so much better if you can exercise but working those kinds of hours is really hard. I wish you luck and hope you do better but right now you are doing fantastic more than i can say for myself.

Hi. I have chronic back and hip pain. Exercise really helps me. I use a stationary bike and rent good shows to watch while exercising so I don't get bored. I bet if you tried just a few minutes a day and built up, it would really help you. It's too bad that you work so many hours, must really be hard to find the time. I understand though, it's a tough balance between exercise and pain. It's easy to fall into the trap of telling yourself you're better off without it. Good luck. I hope you can make it work, finding time to exercise and sleep.

I have IBD. I have to be very careful about what I eat and watch for hidden triggers when we eat out. I have found that exercise does helps, even if it's just walking slowly. I know it won't matter what I weight, this problem wont go away. I have found, for me, working out in the morning is much better.

Good luck!

Chronic back and hip pain here. My doctor is doing x-rays and treating me for osteoarthritis in the meantime, which is a huge step up from getting psh-awed from every other doctor for the last year. Which is understandable, since I'm only 21 and female and complaining about chronic back pain like an old man.

But seriously, if I stop moving and start just sitting for even a few days I lose control of everything. Incapacitating pain for weeks, inability to stand, sit, or walk, muscle spasms, the whole bit. It sounds like a lot of other people here have the same thing worse than I do so I guess I don't have to explain it. I used to mope around feeling sorry for myself and I just got out of shape and gained tons of weight from comfort eating, which caused even more pain in the long run. So I suffered through it and started doing light body weight exercising to build core and spine-supporting muscles and walking 1-3 hours per day to keep moving, and eventually I felt much better. I was still in pain every day, but it was much more managable, even with just regular ibuprofen.

I recently started a job where I'm half field work and half lab work. The field stuff is really great. It's 8-12 hour days of hiking and digging holes, which is still hard on the back but much better. The other half are terrible 8-hour days in a chair, which brought the pain and spasms back. I'm trying really hard to walk as much as possible (I force myself to drink a ton of water so I'll have to walk to the bathroom more often, lol) and take stretch breaks, but it's a challenge every day and I mostly grit my teeth and wait for field days to feel better.

So the moral of my story is keep at it to lose weight and be active, because it WILL make a difference, even if it seems impossible now. And you've lost so much weight so you know you can do it! If you move your workout to the morning could you not just save that time from the evening and go to bed earlier? Because you don't want to be sleep deprived, for sure.