July 2023, I am soccer mom supreme. Not only do I cheer, I kickass on the field. Ten year old boys are tough, but I am tougher. Okay, only marginally, but still. I am in the gym every day and I lift heavy. Weights move like butter. I have a knee issue, but it dissipates upon warm up. I also look good. My abs are not as defined as I want them, but they are visible. Either way, I am hot. Middle age is a breeze.
Fast Forward to February 2024. I can barely walk. The bad knee is so stiff it won’t bend. Worse yet, the bad knee is now the good knee because the good knee is even stiffer. I move slowly. I wince when I lift. Full range of motion on squats is a blatant no.
Just 3 months ago I played dodgeball with my son at the trampoline park. I feared slamming into little kids and accidentally hurting them. February I fear kids bumping into me and taking out my knee. I sit on the lounge sofas with the other parents and play on my phone.
My back feels sore too. I can’t get into a comfortable position at night. One way my right knee hurts, the other way my left, another way a pain shoots out of my hip and down my leg. As a result I feel groggy in the mornings. Often the lethargy persists throughout the day.
I am also bloated most days. My leggings feel too tight.
My abs? What abs?
What Happened?
July 2023 I started to write on Medium. It wasn’t much of a change. I work from home. It was only a few extra hours per week. I’ve been writing for years. But my writing was more sporadic. Now it started to be more focused.
Summer ended and the cold weather came. No more running around the field. This opened up a few extra hours. I devoted it to writing. I started a Substack newsletter and a science fiction novel. I still went to the gym daily, but after the gym I sat and wrote. By November I was spending hours per day sitting at my desk.
Something about sitting and writing makes one need snacks. I started to snack more than before.
Then Christmas came. I stayed at my mom’s for a week. It was a special Christmas. My dad took his first steps after his stroke. At one point hospital staff told my mom that he isn’t expected to make any meaningful progress. They insisted my mom put him in a nursing home.
Lucky for him he had a stubborn wife who took him home, and a gym freak daughter who knew that nothing is impossible and found him a rehab staffed with dream big or go home weightlifter physiotherapists who made it their personal mission to make him walk. Yeah!
He was one of the most severe cases they had. They build him up with weights and pulleys. They held him as he learned to balance. My son jumped up and down and clapped his hands when grandpa stood up from his wheelchair for the first time.
There was no skimming on celebrating. And what is a celebration without a grand meal? We cooked up a storm. We over ate. At night while everyone slept, I read and snacked. Is there anything better than eating tiramisu and reading while knowing your family is happy and safe? Nothing like it.
Then A Watershed Moment Came
One February night I was picking my son up from basketball. He was excited. His team won. He ran full force at me with intention to jump on me and hug me as he has done since toddlerhood. In the summer I didn’t wince. Sure he was ten and 110 pounds, but he was my kid and I was strong. This time I yelled “whoa!” And got out of the way. He looked at me all confused. His deflated happiness filled me with sadness. The sadness came with a side of shame and guilt.
How many more years do I have of him jumping on me? He is eleven now. What about soccer in the summer? What if his team is short a goalie again and they ask me to goalie again? I can barely walk, how will I run or jump? His team will be toast! And how many more seasons can I play all out with him and his peers? When puberty hits boys, they turn into beasts overnight. I saw teenage boys play. I’d get trampled! Perhaps this is the last year I can play? This is the last year for soccer super mommy!
Reality sunk in: Writing is making me old and fat. More specifically, sitting and snacking is making me old and fat.
What Sitting Really Does
According to research, spending hours sitting in a chair can damage your body and shorten your life. It decreases blood flow to the legs and stresses the spine and other joints.
An article by Harvard Health Publishing says:
Sitting can also increase pain. Even if you’re reasonably active, hours of sitting — whether reading a book, working on the computer, or watching TV — tighten the hip flexor and hamstring muscles and stiffen the joints themselves. Overly tight hip flexors and hamstrings affect gait and balance, making activities like walking harder and perhaps even setting you up for a fall. Plus, tight hip flexors and hamstrings may contribute to lower back pain and knee stiffness, scourges that many people suffer with every day. Reference to article
If you like musculoskeletal physiology jargon, a rehabilitation trainer explains:
The quadriceps muscle attaches directly to the knee cap and then the knee cap attaches directly to the tibia. This forms a strap. As the knee flexes further and further the strap tightens and compresses the patella into what is called the trochlear groove causing compression within the joint. If it is left in this position for too long and especially if you love to tuck your legs under the chair it is inevitably going to cause problems at the knee. This is one reason why people with knee pain find it difficult to stand up after prolonged sitting and it takes a while for their knees to loosen up. By leaving their body stuck in this position compressing the joint for a long period of time the body will react to this stress by stiffening muscles surrounding the joint to protect it from more harm, which only serves to make things worse as time goes on. Reference to article
Sitting itself can also cause inflammation. And this can cause joint pain and swelling, including pooling of fluid in the legs. Inflammation is associated with pretty much every disease as well as skin aging.
Weight Gain
Weight gain can lead to inflammation.
The excess of macronutrients in the adipose tissues stimulates them to release inflammatory mediators such as tumor necrosis factor α and interleukin 6, and reduces production of adiponectin, predisposing to a pro-inflammatory state and oxidative stress. Reference to article
The Insane Effect Of Weight Gain On Your Knees
A key study published in Arthritis & Rheumatism of overweight and obese adults with knee osteoarthritis (OA) found that losing one pound of weight resulted in four pounds of pressure being removed from the knees. In other words, losing just 10 pounds would relieve 40 pounds of pressure from your knees. Reference to article
Ten pounds adds a whopping 40 pounds of pressure on your knees!
So by sitting and gaining weight I was screwing my joints and sparking up inflammatory processes that would further screw my joints and my overall health.
Now, in theory, I knew a sedentary life is bad for you. As a powerlifter and general gym rat, I know that exercise is important and sitting is bad. I heard office workers complain about their backs and joints for years. Here is the thing: I didn’t expect it to take me down this fast.
But Did I Look Older?
My boobs and booty filled out. My skin felt tauter due to the extra fat. So that wasn’t so bad.
How about my face? Extra fat filled the lines on my face. Did this make me look younger? I don’t think so. Prolonged sitting leads to fluid pooling. So although my lines were filled, my face looked puffy. My eyes looked smaller and my cheek bones less pronounced. Even if by chance this made me look younger, it certainly didn’t make me look better. I missed my non puffy face.
It is often said that you are as old as you feel. I now understand this perfectly. You don’t live looking at yourself in the mirror. You live from the inside. When I am on the field with my son I am not thinking of face wrinkles. I am thinking of moving fast. No matter how wrinkled your face is, in the moment of action you are only what you feel like from within. If you are strong and can move, the wrinkles are irrelevant.
I decided to make some changes.
How I Am Reversing Aging
I decided to fast for 72 hours. Fasting reduces inflammation. Links to science articles here, and here, and here.
Now, I have done this before. Usually after 18 hours I feel a surge of energy. A sense of well being comes over me. It feels like I am being renewed.
If you have never done this before, it is best to start with 24 hours. If you have blood sugar issues, it is best to talk to a healthcare professional before you do this.
I decided to start my day with movement and end my day with movement. No more heading to my desk right after getting up. No more heading to bed right after sitting. At first this meant doing pushups or sit ups as walking hurt.
I started to swim in a warm therapy pool twice a week.
I introduced foam rolling to loosen up my tight quads and glutes.
I started stretching. I always hated stretching. But now it is a necessity.
For every 20 minutes of writing I do five minutes of movement or foam rolling.
At the gym I started warming up longer. I find the elliptical machine easy on my knees.
I cut out all inflammatory foods. No more processed junk or pasta or pizza or fried anything. I was eating clean the year before. And I vow to eat clean forevermore. Except on special occasions.
I built up the courage to step on the scale. It is funny, back in July I stepped on the scale every morning. It was no big deal. Then I stopped. It’s as if I knew that I wouldn’t like the results.
I want to make clear: Weight gain, including fat gain, is the lesser problem here. There are plenty of people that are bigger than me and can move. But it is often a contributing factor if over snacking is present.
Plus for me the weight on the scale matters because I compete in a sport with weight categories.
I got on the scale. 160 pounds. Up 17 pounds since summer. And no, it wasn’t muscle gain.
Knowing where you are at helps you plan.
How Am I Doing A Month Later?
I am 150 pounds as of this morning. Down 10 pounds. That is 40 pounds less pressure on my knees. My back pain is gone. My knee stiffness is down. I can go fast on the elliptical, but I cannot yet run on the ground. It still hurts. Depth on my squat is up too. I can jump a little.
I plan to see a sports doctor about my bad knee.
Goal For The Summer
Reclaim my title as super soccer mom.
Thank you for reading.
Other ways to support me:
You can buy me a protein shake here.
You can send me crypto. Here is a link to my crypto profile with my crypto addresses: karinakarina.x
You can buy yourself a cute bunny notebook on Amazon that I created.
Nicely done! I totally forgot about fasting I used to do it regularly. I think aging is a battle against inflammation and there are some great action steps in this piece. Thanks for the encouragement to keep swinging!