"Nic has discovered that there's nothing quite like trying to analyse your gait to determine why your hip hurts, to make your hip hurt more."
We've all been there at some time or other: we've seen ourselves walk down a corridor with reflective doors at the end; we've walked past a group of boys containing the cute one we've been spending way too much time thinking about; walked across a busy intersection where there's a hundred cars waiting at the traffic lights for us pedestrians to cross. You end up allowing a feeling of intimidation to take over, creating an inner panic that somehow your walk looks stupid, or unglamorous, or draws attention to you for all the wrong reasons, and you forget. You lose all memory of how you walked before, and trip, stumble, or walk swinging the same-side arm as leg.*
I've been told that extreme weight loss does extreme things to the body. I usually scoff when someone says that in relation to me, because extreme? Me? Hah!! Well, actually yes. But you see, I look at myself and the first thing I think of is that I'm still enormous and I still have a good few stones still to lose, forgetting that I've already lost the equivalent of a small adult in weight. It sounds contrived, but when you've been one way for so long, it's really, really hard to see yourself as any different, even when you know you've gone through some major metamorphosis or other. So I really do have to get around to the idea that there's some weird crap going on that I have no control over whatsoever, like, for example, the centre of my gravity, how my lessening weight is now distributed in relation to my body frame, and how it affects my balance, my gait, my movement.
So for the last few weeks I've been reliving the over-analysis of my walk by trying to figure out if something has changed enough in the way I get from A to B to cause my hips to complain so much. I've worn my walking shoes, everyday shoes, trainers, tennis shoes, and sturdy boots all on walks of similar length, and ended up coming back with a sore hip each time. And because I was so aware of every single step, trying to gauge whether I was leaning back more, leaning forward more, twisting somehow, limping, putting my heels down abnormally, rolling on to the toe differently in each foot, extending my legs at different angles, or had suddenly developed a shimmy worthy of Marilyn Monroe that was knocking my joints out of... joint... because I was so aware of each step I know I wasn't walking normally. In all honesty, after this experiment I may never walk normally again.
It's obviously not the solution to discovering what the problem is.
It has been suggested by a friend who has lost even more weight than I have, that it may take a while for my body to rebalance. She proposes that muscles have to relearn what they need to do for even simple things like standing up straight. Thinking about it, it makes sense. When I was at my biggest most of my weight was carried at the front, so my back and stomach muscles must have had to work extra hard just to keep my balance. I can imagine that they spent an awful lot of time in a state of rigidity. Now I have much less everywhere, and weight distribution seems to be evening up between front and back, these muscles might have to 'learn' to stop working so hard to support a weight that's not so uneven any more?
Maybe my achy lower back, and grumbling left hip are just symptoms of a long-term body refurbishment. But I think I'll steer clear of shoe shops and groups of boys, just to be on the safe side.
*Yes, yes okay, these are all from personal experience.
We've all been there at some time or other: we've seen ourselves walk down a corridor with reflective doors at the end; we've walked past a group of boys containing the cute one we've been spending way too much time thinking about; walked across a busy intersection where there's a hundred cars waiting at the traffic lights for us pedestrians to cross. You end up allowing a feeling of intimidation to take over, creating an inner panic that somehow your walk looks stupid, or unglamorous, or draws attention to you for all the wrong reasons, and you forget. You lose all memory of how you walked before, and trip, stumble, or walk swinging the same-side arm as leg.*
I've been told that extreme weight loss does extreme things to the body. I usually scoff when someone says that in relation to me, because extreme? Me? Hah!! Well, actually yes. But you see, I look at myself and the first thing I think of is that I'm still enormous and I still have a good few stones still to lose, forgetting that I've already lost the equivalent of a small adult in weight. It sounds contrived, but when you've been one way for so long, it's really, really hard to see yourself as any different, even when you know you've gone through some major metamorphosis or other. So I really do have to get around to the idea that there's some weird crap going on that I have no control over whatsoever, like, for example, the centre of my gravity, how my lessening weight is now distributed in relation to my body frame, and how it affects my balance, my gait, my movement.
So for the last few weeks I've been reliving the over-analysis of my walk by trying to figure out if something has changed enough in the way I get from A to B to cause my hips to complain so much. I've worn my walking shoes, everyday shoes, trainers, tennis shoes, and sturdy boots all on walks of similar length, and ended up coming back with a sore hip each time. And because I was so aware of every single step, trying to gauge whether I was leaning back more, leaning forward more, twisting somehow, limping, putting my heels down abnormally, rolling on to the toe differently in each foot, extending my legs at different angles, or had suddenly developed a shimmy worthy of Marilyn Monroe that was knocking my joints out of... joint... because I was so aware of each step I know I wasn't walking normally. In all honesty, after this experiment I may never walk normally again.
It's obviously not the solution to discovering what the problem is.
It has been suggested by a friend who has lost even more weight than I have, that it may take a while for my body to rebalance. She proposes that muscles have to relearn what they need to do for even simple things like standing up straight. Thinking about it, it makes sense. When I was at my biggest most of my weight was carried at the front, so my back and stomach muscles must have had to work extra hard just to keep my balance. I can imagine that they spent an awful lot of time in a state of rigidity. Now I have much less everywhere, and weight distribution seems to be evening up between front and back, these muscles might have to 'learn' to stop working so hard to support a weight that's not so uneven any more?
Maybe my achy lower back, and grumbling left hip are just symptoms of a long-term body refurbishment. But I think I'll steer clear of shoe shops and groups of boys, just to be on the safe side.
*Yes, yes okay, these are all from personal experience.
