Working hard, small improvements.

Trigger warning : I am going to talk about weight loss and assorted stuff.

First, feet. I am still having trouble with heel pain. I can have days were it is fine but other days it is a burning mess. I went to see a GP about them. She agreed I was approaching it well, all the right exercises, including the ones adjusted by the physiotherapist for my whacky hypermobile joints. So she referred me for steroid injections, into the soles of my feet. Which filled me with dread but frankly the cycle of inflammation needs to be broken. I am doing the best things possible with it all, stretches, massage and trying to stay off my feet. But some days even standing to cook dinner is too much.

Next, thigh pain, still there, unfortunately. I'm not game to run it still. I miss buses because of this. The cold does upset it, making itself known when walking in the chill the most. On a positive note, when coming up from bending down and going up stairs, it seems to have lessened. This seems to be down to some muscle building that I have been doing. I have been working very hard at this.

I have signed up with a weight lose program at work. It is eight weeks of Personal Training sessions and looking at my eating habits. The Occupational Health Doctor at work suggested it and I took her up on it. I am honest, I am overweight, I know this. I am not that happy with my body shape but I love food and I love to cook. I eat and drink too much. I have been making small changes because I felt a major immediate change was not going to last. I cut our diet coke in December, I started cutting out my snacks chips/crisps and chocolate in January, and in February I started going to gym three times per week. It seems to be working, I have dropped five kilograms in weight, through exercise and calorie counting. The goal is 20 kg by the end of the year, about 25% of my body weight. I am hoping that this will help with the thigh pain and avoid surgery. It also should help with the long term health of the joint, both metal and bone but I do find it tough that I am going to have to this regime for the rest of my life. I really hate the fact I am so short and the rest of the world seems to be aiming to feed people 8 inches taller than ma all the time. 

There has been a very happy change with my walk too, I went back to physio, they helped a lot, noting I was dropping into the joint instead of using my glute and thigh muscles. This has meant that I was still limping, and I was not happy with that, especially when I found out that both my legs are the same length. The Personal training combined with the physio has almost removed the limp and has definitely removed the rolling gait I had.  The muscles are building up and although my right leg muscles are still weaker than the left but I working very hard at making them even strength. The more I work at this the better the walk should get, removing the 40 years of walking badly. 

So,  there has been a lot of change happening in the past couple of months and I have found it it difficult mentally. My mental health has been very up and down, work has made it tough to with various uber stressful things that could have been avoided. I have found the program beneficial and have decided that I will do another in the summer to keep the body trimming down. The worst bit about this is I am going to have to buy new jeans, urgh I hate shopping for jeans.