Chronic pain and weight concerns can be really hard to communicate to people who haven’t dealt with similar issues. It’s not just about hurting all the time. It’s about the pain taking up so much of your being, so much of your energy, and so much of yourself that you just don’t have enough to deal with other things. Stuff like anger, stuff like weight gain, stuff like frustration, stuff like anxiety– it’s all tied in together. And none of it lends itself to a 1-10 pain scale.
The limits of “pushing through”
It’s so, so much easier to keep your temper, or to keep from complaining about something, when you don’t have 90% of your self tied up in just being there! Just in being out in public and interacting with people like a normal human being for a little while. It’s so much easier to eat healthy food when you’re physically able to stand at a stove to cook without it causing you worse pain. So much easier to find food you want to eat when you can actually walk through a grocery store.
[We walk] a path that cruel fat-phobic people have never even thought about, much less had to experience. People like that fundamentally do not understand what it’s like to be you or me. They don’t know what it’s like to trudge through a fog of pain, where every single thing you do requires effort, energy, exertion, and expenditure of pain from your finite supply.
Because guess what: as much as we like to Protestant-work-ethic our way into “all you need is to work hard and believe in yourself,” it’s just not true. There’s only so much a person has to give. There’s only so much energy and self that a person can bring to a day. Can you rally and push through? Of course, but can you do that every day? No, absolutely not, and it shouldn’t be something that you try to expect of yourself. You could buy all the adaptive and mobility devices in the world, you can keep as many detailed medical notebooks tracking your care as you want, and you’re still going to hit that wall.
Pain, Weight, Pressure, and Pizza
So when, again, 90% of yourself is dedicated to just getting through the day and doing the things that you need to do, it’s so much harder to bite your tongue, or swallow a criticism. It’s so much harder to say, “I’m gonna force myself to eat a salad even though I hate salads” than to just say “fuck it I’m gonna order a pizza because my life is miserable right now. I know it is not good for me but damn that moment when I first bite into it sure is amazing no matter if I’m hurting or not.”
Sometimes that’s all there is in a day, when you’re hurting so bad you can’t even sit up to watch TV, when it’s just a haze of pain flowing through the days and weeks like molasses. Sometimes that ten minutes of pizza is the best moment you’ll have in the day! Few people deal with days that shitty on a regular basis. They fundamentally don’t get what our lives are like.
Chronic Pain… and Weight as a Function of Pain
When my pain, migraines, depression and anxiety were at their worst, I gained weight. I finally found some treatments and new meds that helped enormously. Guess what? Suddenly I had more energy to spend on exercise, cooking, and trying to change habits in the long term. And I did! I’ve lost a lot of weight!
That weight loss absolutely wasn’t easy, and certainly involved willpower and tough choices. But it’s at least within the realm of possibility! There’s no way it would have been when my chronic pain and weight were both at their worst.
People without disabilities struggle mightily with weight loss, even with the full spectrum of exercise and mobility at their disposal. Take those options away, and obviously, we’re going to have a harder time.
Adding a chronic condition on top of the normal weight loss struggle completely changes the equation. (And that’s true about things other than weight! Combine anything difficult with chronic pain and it’s more than the sum of the two. It’s more like chronic pain acts as a multiplier: insomnia squared. Temper keeping to the third power… you get the point. )
Forcing yourself to exercise is one thing. Forcing yourself to exercise when you know for sure it’s going to make you hurt more in the short term? That’s entirely another.
It can feel like drowning, but there are ways out
It can feel like drowning to think of all the things you know you should do– I unfortunately know this well. And it’s even worse when you’re naturally an introvert or you are dealing with other stuff like depression, anxiety, and ADHD on top of your pain (like somebody I know whose name is Janet).
There is a path through the worst of it, but it’s a path that those cruel fat-phobic people have never even thought about, much less had to experience. People like that fundamentally do not understand what it’s like to be you or me. They don’t know what it’s like to trudge through a fog of pain, where every single thing you do requires effort, energy, exertion, and expenditure of pain from your finite supply.
On avoiding jagoffs and developing community
There is an enormous amount of prejudice and misinformation out there about weight and health. But until I can write a larger piece on the subject:
Please don’t let ignorant assholes make you feel bad about your weight or appearance. Hating on bigger people is one of the few semi-“acceptable” hates left out there, and some shitty people latch onto it. It can be incredibly hard to read some dude on Reddit screaming about CICO (calories in, calories out) and how you just need to get your ass off the couch.
As much as we like to Protestant-work-ethic our way into “all you need is to work hard and believe in yourself,” it’s just not true. There’s only so much a person has to give. There’s only so much energy and self that a person can bring to a day. Can you rally and push through? Of course. But can you do that every day? No, absolutely not, and it shouldn’t be something that you expect of yourself.
But it’s important to remember that most people in the world are not like that. There are people who understand. There are people who don’t understand, but who are kind and who will listen and learn with empathy. You have to surround yourself with those people and treasure them when you do find them.
Sure, in some ways that’s just part of being an adult. But it’s absolutely crucial for someone with a condition that can frustrate efforts to get out or make new friends. I would have never gotten through the last few years without the help and support of friends across the world. Making the difficult choices that lead to weight loss is so much easier when you have a cheering section or someone to do it alongside.
In conclusion:
Assholes exist. But they’re assholes! So as much as possible, try to let their assholery slide off your back (sore as it might be). But caring, empathetic people also surround you. They can help you achieve whatever your goals are, whether they include weight loss or not.
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