Overcoming Lifelong Problems

In the last few years, I’ve finally isolated some particular health issues. It has made me realize that lifelong problems are not always what we think they are. Sometimes we HAVE lifelong problems because of underlying issues that we have not identified, and solving them isn’t the simple matter others think it is. Identifying the problem is half the work. Finding a solution that works is the other half. Once those two things are done, DOING it is often the simplest part.

I’ve battled weight and activity problems for half my life. It is only in the last few years that I’ve really begun to understand why, and what has affected that. I slowed down in activity because it became uncomfortable. The world labels that as “laziness”. And so did I. In fact, I didn’t even really grasp that certain things actually HURT. I just knew I did not like doing them. My self-esteem took a beating, because in labeling it as laziness, the blame was all on me, and somehow I convinced myself that if I were just more determined, I could just change it any time I liked, in spite of repeated efforts and failures to do so.

When I learned that I had Crohn’s Disease, a lot of things fell into place. This disease is much misunderstood. You can have it for decades before the classic symptoms appear, and in those years, it can cause you to retain weight instead of losing it (rapid weight loss is one of the end-stage symptoms). It causes malabsorption – the intestines become damaged, and do not absorb nutrients efficiently. You can become low on many nutrients – and it does not show up on blood tests, because none of the levels are critical, they are just chronically low. Some of them trigger your body to think it is in a state of starvation. This causes two primary negative effects:

1. First, your body hangs onto weight. If you diet, then you can lose for two weeks, and then you’ll gain it back even if you maintain the diet, because your metabolism will adjust to use less. Your body already thinks it is in crisis mode, and weight loss signals danger.
2. Second, exercise is very difficult. When you start to exercise, your body does NOT respond to release resources to the muscles. Instead, it withdraws them. This is, again, a crisis response, designed to make you STOP. If you don’t, it hurts… a lot. This also causes exercise induced asthma, chronic fatigue, and a range of other symptoms that range from unpleasant, to downright painful.

Before I learned to control my diet for Crohn’s (not like the doctors recommend, but something quite different), I had daily headaches, significant arthritis pain, frequent bowel discomfort, hormonal problems, and a range of other things going on. I also had sleep apnea for years. It is very hard to maintain normal daily activity around that. Those things have all come under control, one by one, and my ability to do things has steadily increased.

I’ve recently begun to tackle the exercise issue – I’ve been walking on and off for two years now, but cannot do so year round, the weather simply does not permit it. So I’ve had to figure out how to do so indoors for much of the year.

It has been a complex thing, because it seemed that if I exercised regularly, even a little, I got weaker, and it got more painful every day. I’ve been researching how to adapt a program to allow me to improve, and I have finally got the pieces together in a way that will allow me to make progress. I’ve also figured out some of the keys to losing weight – and it is not what is commonly recommended. It actually involved eating MORE, not less, but WHAT I eat has to be carefully controlled.

This has really taught me some lessons about judging other people, and even judging ourselves! We often label people and make judgments based on surface appearances. We can’t possibly know what is going on underneath. We call problems weaknesses, when they may in fact have a basis in health issues. We judge families, businesses, and appearances. We assume that if a thing is easy for us, that it must be easy for everyone, never considering that what we enjoy doing may be a difficult or painful thing for another.

I’ve learned that when I have a problem I just seem to fail at over and over, to go back and look for a reason. Sometimes I can find a factor I had not considered before, and when THAT is dealt with, the visible problem is them simple to solve.