The Fat Lady’s Workout

        There are Challenges going across the internet to make you stronger and fit; squats, burpees, marathons.  I find myself excited about the possibility and motivated to enter in.  The first one that caught my eye was the squat, but considering my size and my limitations, I wasn’t exactly squat worthy.  Not wanting to be left out or touted as the fat, disabled woman who can’t do much of anything, I made it my business to enter in.  I needed to find a way to do a squat, howbeit ever so altered, so that I could join in on the challenge.  I found myself standing and sitting in my chair—that lasted all of six times and I was feeling muscles in my thighs and butt that rang out in a chorus of pain.  Then I moved to the walker—stand, squat, stand, squat—yeah, that was even harder.  I put pillows on the bed and sat high then stood up, this would have worked if the pillows had not crumbled to the floor every time I stood.  I leaned against the wall and slid to a squat—once was all I could do of that.  I was about to give up when I saw the ball; the big red stability ball my chiropractor told me to use to stretch my back and just sit on when my back hurt to relieve the pressure.  It’s a big ball, the biggest they make—after pumping and pumping with his foot on a bicycle pump, my husband was having serious leg cramps and crying for the Tylenol and had to take it to the gasoline station to be filled.  Now the ball has possibilities—not only is it high enough for me to sit on without knee pain, it has bounce—serious bounce.  As soon as I got it situated between the sofa and the wall and knew it wasn’t going to be rolling anywhere, I gave it a whirl.  With the walker in front of me for support, I pumped twenty five squats, no problem!  I was so tickled, I celebrate with my favorite “woo hoo!” and ran to my daughter’s room to brag about my accomplishment.  Then to prove it to her, I pulled the ball into the living room to give her a sample of my fabulousness—I did another twenty five and we both echoed in “woo hoo!”  My husband came late to the party wanting to know what I was so excited about, so I showed him and managed to crank out another twenty five!  The celebration continued and I was feeling a bit shaky but less than two hours later, I did the final twenty five squats that had me at the peak of the challenge.  I was so proud of myself I reported it to my Facebook friends feeling like the bad mamma jamma that I knew I was.  Four hours later, I was crying in the shower with low back pain and screaming muscles in my thighs with a popping in my knees so loud is sounded like marbles hitting the floor.  Not to mention the fact that I had a pain in the ass like nobody’s business.  The bad mamma jamma was down for the count, reaching for pain pills and muscle relaxers and praying for relief. 

      So what did I learn from that painful experience?  Did it make me shy away from workouts all together?  No, it filled me with determination—not determination to keep up with the challenges being issued by the younger girls on the web who were jazzed up with excitement and endorphins making fit bodies with their spandex attire and sweat but to create new ones.  Not everybody can do the squats or burpees—which, by the way, I thought was something you did after drinking too much soda.   There are those of us who can barely pick up the things we drop on the floor and an aerobic workout is walking to the door to get the mail.  I realized that I am not the only person who has the physical limitations that keep us out of the gyms and fitness centers—not all machines are created equal and one size does not fit all.  We might be able to buy the walking shoes or the running shoes, put them on our feet and lace them up, but the walking and the running is a goal we find off in the future and in the meantime, we are faced with this question; how will I manage to work out in my condition?  You would think that a woman who was a certified fitness trainer and instructor for years would have the answer to this question.  Oh, I know how to work out, I know how to push someone to get them to give it their best and sweat their way to a stronger, healthier goal.  Problem is, once you get past a certain size and are held back by so many physical limitations—it is not easy to find a workout that works.  So what do you do?  Lose the weight without bothering to work out?  I know many have done this, but honestly  I believe there are so many benefits to working out; moving, becoming flexible and aiding in cardiovascular fitness not to mention the fact that movement promotes mobility.  I believe that as long as we can move something, we can get a workout. 

        So, what does a 400 pound woman who has to sit in a wheelchair a lot of the time who has to hug walls and dodge puppies to walk to the bathroom do to get a workout?  She starts by lifting her legs—gentle kicks, toe taps, knee raises.  Then she adds arm movements, bicep curls, arms over head, arm out, chest flies, elbow lifts—my butt is planted, but I’m moving.  I started doing stretching and breathing first thing in the morning.  Then I added a hand bike, an ergometer type machine that I got from Sears.  I knew I could not walk a mile, but I challenge myself to walk a minute—I know this sounds trivial to the upright and mobile, but to the woman in the chair a one minute walk down the hall and to the front door was a long way to have to go.  I could lie on the bed and do crunches and leg lifts but not nearly as many as I had once done, so I started with a small number and am working my way up.  The recumbent stationary cycle in the garage that I stopped using because it hurt my legs to much to operate, came back inside and I managed to get myself on it and pedaled as long as I could take the pain, which was about five minute.  Then I tied a band with handles to the handle bars and did resistance work for five minutes, then managed to pedal the cycle for another five.  I was amazed at what I could do. 

        Am I saying this is what every physically disabled person who has a knee and back problem complicated by a serious weight gain should do?  Heck no, we are all different and we all know what we can and cannot do.  But I am here to tell you that I was limiting myself and because of depression, feeling badly and thinking my life was over and there was no sense in trying,  I had dug myself into a pit of despair with walls of fear that said “don’t do it, you’ll hurt yourself and maybe die!”  It took being in a support group and having some wonderful, kind souls speak courage to me they motivated me to push myself to do more.  That is when I realized I was not as weak or as buried as I’d made myself believe.  Their challenges, howbeit not suitable for my situation, had pulled something out of me that I thought I’d lost—strength, belief in myself and courage to take a chance. 

        So I don’t do the squats or the marathons, I have decided to return the favor and be the poster child for the big people in the chairs, the ones who sit in their cars for ten minutes or more because they just don’t have the strength to pick themselves up and make the walk inside the house.  The ones who wake up in the morning and can’t seem to move or want to get dressed even to start their day because they know the pain of those first steps in the morning and just don’t want to go there.  The ones who put off simple tasks like standing at the kitchen counter chopping and dicing or even stirring the pot; the pain has become so harsh standing seems too much to bear.  The ones who look longingly at their back yards and wish they could do the gardening, the ones who want to pull the bike out and hit the trail but just can’t stay balanced long enough to get out of the driveway.  There are so many people who have painted themselves into a corner who hurt too much to move and have become sedentary to a crippling point where they would not be able to recognize the person in the mirror if they could only muster the courage to face him.  This is the small portion of society that I want to reach—the hopeless, the self-haters, the ones who search for a spark, a glint of a fire that will pick them up and set them on a path to get their life back.  I make my own challenges, easy to accomplish like doing abdominal crunches and leg lifts.  I write fru-fru poems and post my simple breakthrough that I know are the product of scorn and ridicule by some who think they have risen above my level of fitness and I say more power to them.  But right here, right now in my little corner of the world, I want to make a difference in myself first—and then light a fire under the chairs of the sedentary seemingly hopeless people who can’t see past their inability to the bright future that is still theirs.