Losing weight with knee pain

Lynne_Harkness
Lynne_Harkness Posts: 1 Member
edited December 2024 in Introduce Yourself
Hello, I'm new to the group and am trying to lose quite a bit of weight to reduce knee pain and avoid another knee surgery. Any ideas on exercises that would help me? Anyone in the KCMO area?

Replies

  • Panini911
    Panini911 Posts: 2,325 Member
    you don't actually need to exercise to lose weight. while exercise is great for fitness and mental health, weight loss is about eating at a calorie deficit.

    Can you maybe ask your health team what is safe to do? is walking ok? swimming? but again you don't HAVE to do anything for weight loss.
  • manderson27
    manderson27 Posts: 3,510 Member
    Weight loss is due to being in a calorie deficit. Put your stats into MFP for a reasonable amount of loss per week depending on how much you need to lose. Then eat to the calorie goal MFP gives you.

    You don't need to excercise to lose weight, however, of course exercise will give you extra calories and increase your fitness, stamina and flexibility.

    I have Osteoarthritis in both knees and hips and find that losing the weight really helped with the pain. I walk and swim for excercise when I can. But have to avoid anything with any impact such as jogging or leaping around in classes as this causes flare ups and makes the pain worse.

    If you have had your knee pain diagnosed then perhaps it is worth discussing what you can and can't do with a physiopherapist they should be able to give you some insight.

    If you have not had it diagnosed I would suggest you do so as until you know exactly what is wrong then you can't be sure what exercise is safe for you.

  • Carmen_TX
    Carmen_TX Posts: 39 Member
    I am exercising through knee pain as well. I focus on upper body and an exercises build strength and muscle while avoiding putting stress on my knee. The only lower body strength training I do is my physical therapy exercises. When I do cardio, I typically use the elliptical machine, because it’s low impact. Swimming and cycling can be good choices too depending on your interests and specific knee issues.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,673 Member
    Lynne_Harkness wrote: »
    Hello, I'm new to the group and am trying to lose quite a bit of weight to reduce knee pain and avoid another knee surgery. Any ideas on exercises that would help me? Anyone in the KCMO area?

    It depends on what your specific knee issues are, and as others have said, a physical therapy referral is the best approach to figuring that out.

    I have at least one diagnosed torn meniscus (and I'm suspicious about the other one), plus some osteoarthritis. Physical therapy helped me learn to modify my routine movements for walking and stairs, to put less stress on my knees. Expert advice plus cautious experimentation let me know what exercises worked, and don't . . . but that can be very individual.

    I've learned that high impact and torque/twisting movements of my knees are a problem, but I can apply good muscular force in straight-line hinge motions of my knees. I row (on water when I can, machine when I must), take spin classes, and bike. (I don't do things like basketball/tennis - twisting and impact; running - impact; dance-y stuff - twisting. I am able to swim, but don't enjoy it, so rarely do it.) There are some weight training exercises I can do, but others don't go well so I avoid them.

    Weight loss, which is mostly a function of balancing eating with activity (by managing the eating), helped reduce my knee pain severity & frequency by quite a lot.
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