Broke ankle no weight bearing

Dang, that's awful - how frustrating!

I've had a few periods when some injury/surgical recovery/illness severely limited activity, but nothing so extreme or lengthy as that. (One was an ankle break, but by far not so major.) It does make life harder, and not just on the weight management front. Good for you for deciding to take positive action, including doing what exercise you safely can when you can.

I started here on MFP at about your current age (I was 59), and was able to lose 50ish pounds without materially changing my exercise routine, just from managing the food side of things better. (But I wasn't doing zero exercise, just didn't increase it while losing . . . but that suggests to me that food alone can help with the weight loss.)

That's not the point, though. My point is that my blood pressure used to be high (as was my cholesterol/triglycerides). Losing down to a healthy weight brought all of that down into solidly normal ranges . . . and improved my quality of life in a diversity of other ways. The BP and lipids have stayed good for 7+ years since, I guess from maintaining a healthy weight. I hope and believe that you'll get the results you're seeking that way, too.

I'm cheering for you!

Take it slow, your not a spring chicken anymore, like myself, and I like the swimming therapy mostly for cardio and burning some energy. Losing weight and exercise is a very powerful influencer for improving all our health markers. Cheers.

gregwself wrote: »

I am a 60 year old male. Broke ankle first of March 2023 requiring surgery plate and 12 screws.

D'oh, that's tough. I am a 60 year old male and three years ago I got a stress fracture in my shin, and stopped all weight bearing activity. Covid hit right then too. I blew up and gained a bunch.

You have a journey in front of you, keep at it.

Two things that come to mind.

1) You have to 100% not shortcut your healing. At age 63 or 65 the healing is not going to be easier. No pushing it, no shortcuts, no making do. Be a good patient, do everything you are supposed to.

That's the easy one.

2) Become a hardcore devotee to MFP, or some other program that changes your eating, so that while you are physically healing you're moving toward a healthier weight.

Any extra gram, ounce, kilogram, lbs., or stone is going to make a lower extremity injury more difficult.

Join me here, we lose three stone and our lives and health and mood and outlook will all be better.

Try more upper body workout also using hand weights and resistance bands as well as seated leg lifts and abdominal core workouts. Videos and tips by exercise physiologist and physiotherapist Mike Kutcher in Better Health are brilliant: one example - he has heaps standing and sitting and combined plus is also on FB community

https://youtu.be/hzYCL86BFH8

I also have this sliding exerciser which gives a great little boost to burning calories and conditioning legs etc you can use for quite a while at one time whilst seated and watching the news, a show or a movie etc from Physios 'Bob and Brad' from Canada

https://www.bobandbrad.com/program/the-fitglide-–-what-you-should-know-

https://youtu.be/NNNIKMUK6To

So good if you have to avoid weight bearing, want to get more blood flow and mobility to legs/ injury, keep moving so do burn up more calories if do consistently and over longer period of time, can go much faster than shown in promo above. IDK if you are able to use those mini cycle things you use when seated or not but if so that is a better option for a bit more cardio

All the best!