I am in SO much pain. Surely this can't just be because I am fat?

[herewegoroundthebastardbush]

This is really a question either for the medical or for my fellow fatties - I'm 5'6, about 14 stone (😬) and 39. I used to be around 10 stone. put on a lot of weight very rapidly about 5 years ago when my mum died, and ever since then have struggled with binge eating and the weight has continued to creep up.

So the past 6 months or so, I'm in horrible physical pain much of the time. It started with my knees, which have never been great since I went through a phase of running to work on concrete in my 20s (idiot). But now it's not just the odd twinge, I'll be literally limping and whimpering and climbing the stairs is murder. I've also developed a horrible permanent pain in my right foot which the internet tells me is plantar fasciitis. And I can't ever seem to get comfortable in bed as whichever way I lie seems to pull the base of my spine out of alignment and it feels strained.

I have a busy life, two small kids and one is at nursery and the other at school, so every day after work I have to do a very brisk march march up the road to nursery and then turn and walk very fast back to school to get the eldest (about 40mins fast walking - or jogging if im late!) all told. I've started to dread it with a mortal fear as I am in SO much pain - some days I'm literally limping and gasping with it, but I can't stop because obvs then no-one would pick up my kids (partner has the car as works in a different city). That's the low point of my day, but just getting out of bed and standing up in the morning is horrendous too, it hurts so much and I literally limp like a comedy pirate for the first 20 mins of the day my foots so bad.

The one time I went to the GP about my knees, she did the head tilt and talked to me about my weight (didn't even examine my knees), and that aches and pains are more frequent as we age so its important to take care of our weight to reduce that. I agree I am too fat and need to lose weight. I am trying. But I see people far fatter and older than me who don't seem to be in total agony as they walk around!? So is this normal and fixable by losing some weight? Or is there something I should be worried about?

If someone is in pain to start with, they will need painkillers to get them into exercise regularly. If they are in too much pain it will likely not work doing the physio.

As OP gets into the habit of taking regular painkillers she will then be able to do the exercises to help and gradually ease off the painkillers as time goes on. Hopefully seeing weight loss as the weeks go on. Not the weigh necessarily is linked to the issue of painful joints. I know that is not the case for everyone.

Can I add 2 things:

1. If you can, see if there's a very very beginner yoga class in your area. It is amazing to me how much this has helped me. I have ongoing issues and a lot my discomfort is referred pain because I'm walking/lying/standing/sitting "wrong" as a result of my core issue which is my shoulder/arm/neck.

1. Ice. A lot of pain due to various conditions is exacerbated by inflammation and swelling. Icing your knees/hips/foot or wherever you feel discomfort etc will potentially help with that. It does not, of course, cure the underlying condition, but if you can remove or minimise the inflammation, the pain levels will decrease somewhat. Do it twice a day if you can, or at least once a day if you can't. Ice is massively massively underused in this country as a short term, first aid tool. And yet, every physio or Chiro or doctor or specialist I have seen ever, has recommended ice to help. ++

++ also, I once badly badly badly sprained my foot/ankle. Suspected break due to severity of bruising etc etc. But when it happened, while waiting for a cab to collect me to take me to A&E, I was icing it. I then brought the ice pack to A&E and used it again while I was waiting to be x rayed. Doctor told me that normally when they see sprains like this the swelling is excessive and massive but my (unusual in his experience) immediate icing had made a huge difference and he wished all his patients understood this basic first aid... <smug>

Sorry, easily? NICE guidance is as follows:

NICE recommend that Wegovy should be prescribed alongside diet and physical activity support for adults with a weight-related health condition – such as hypertension or cardiovascular disease and a Body Mass Index (BMI) of at least 35, or, exceptionally, a BMI of 30, if they meet the criteria for specialist weight management services.

my BMI is 31.4 and I have (afaik) no CVD, hypertension or diabetes. I'm not eligible. And if you want to buy it (supplies are very low nationally even privately) it's hundred and hundreds of pounds. That is not 'easy'.

I’m the same age and height as you and weigh almost twice as much (ridiculous I know, but for context important). I get the odd twinge here and there but absolutely nothing like this, it seems so unlikely pain on this level is to do with your weight. I agree it might be exacerbating some other condition but it’s not “just” your weight.

They certainly do but as OP is worried about the risk of dependency and currently taking nothing at all she will probably notice an improvement on either ibuprofen alone or ibuprofen and paracetamol together.

I would strongly advise keeping away from Ozempic. Terrible idea. You have enough going on without making the situation worse.

Good painkillers, in order for you to exercise, healthy lifestyle and keep going with the positive mental attitude 💪

I do have a naturally addictive personality (family history there to) hence the binge-eating - if it weren't for the fact I have kids i'm pretty sure I'd be a raging alcoholic, but I need to be present and function so instead it's food. This is why I'm so anxious about regular use of painkillers.

People who are in chronic pain often don't notice a huge difference with drugs like ibuprofen. It barely takes the edge of the pain. OP may need something slightly stronger so that she can exercise.

It's probably been mentioned somewhere in the 16 pages that are this thread, but I would really look into how diet and inflammation are related.

It is not just that you are 'fat', it is that you are very probably inflamed.

The link between inflammation and what you eat is categorical. Eat a load of sugar and processed food and your body will be inflamed and you will have joint pain.

You will be amazed what you can achieve in terms of joint pain relief by just eating non-inflammatory food (i.e. very low carb or even the Mediterranean diet)

Its a few hundred pounds, it's not that much for goodness sake. And if you think you need to lose 4st it's quite a lot. There are also other treatments like Orlistat available. Why ask if you don't like the answer, that 30kg is a lot of fat to carry around.

Plus I had a friend with chronic pain and she became dependant on codeine, and it made her incredibly itchy - I am already very itchy for some reason (no rash, dry skin or psoriasis, just itchy!) and don't want to make it any worse.

Try stretching every day and also buy some magnesium oil if you can. Spray it on after a shower in the evenings, works wonders.

And regardless of the NICE guidelines you cannot just rock up to the NHS and demand Wegovy - they won’t give it to you. I am a serial extreme dieter and regained. I lost 9st at one stage, regained it plus more and then lost 6st. Still obese. I am wary of Wegovy. There are warnings about a link to thyroid cancer. I’ve been thinking of getting it but wonder if I will then be stuck on it for life. My metabolism is very slow. The NHS now recognises this. I eat healthily, exercise a LOT and still the scales betray me. It really is not simple. But also I don’t want to add a new problem which is reliance on this medication.

a few hundred pounds is my family having a Christmas with presents and food. It's the mortgage. It's the gas bill. It is 'that much' to families on a normal income.

It’s around £200 a month - open-ended. That’s a lot to many people! 4st is not THAT much overweight for many women.

A few hundred pounds is a fortune to a lot of people. My word, the cluelessness....

I could have written this 6 months ago. My body was constantly creaking. If I climbed any stairs my knees were in a lot of pain. I'm 5 ft 3 and weighed 12 and a half stone. I do have lipodema which causes issues in my legs. I've lost over 2 and a half stone so far doing low carb. My knee pain and body creaks have disappeared. It may not be the case for you but for me all the pain has gone now after losing the weight. It's crazy how even a little extra weight causes pain.

OP I've been there - post kids I had an absolutely knackered misaligned pelvis (I have PGP that never went away post kid), plantar fasciitis flare ups if I forget myself and wear flip flops all summer (I never learn by this mistake), pain so bad across the back of my hips that I couldn't ever lie on my back because it was agony... had had so many family holidays where I spent them necking painkillers and being unable to even walk short distances without wanting to sob from the pain. I've tried diets, stretching, endless tedious cardio - NHS was never an option because of my high BMI.

I've started doing weight work at the gym - not in the testosterone central free weights bit, but the resistance machines, along with as much cardio as my boredom threshold can tolerate (not much!) - the pain on the back of my hips has gone as I've made gains strengthening all the associated muscles around the area and I went on a short break to London recently and walked miles and miles on nothing more than the odd paracetamol. I also didn't get the blisters on the soles of my feet I usually get because of strange gait overcompensating for everything being so fucked up, misaligned and weak. Not fully sorted out yet - I still have pain on my external hip and one leg much stronger than the other, and my knees are not the greatest (combination of my weight for years, the fact my knees look "odd" to quote the GP, and a previous career as an infant teacher sitting on teeny tiny chairs all day) but the improvement in my function has been incredible.

It's kind of like a knotted up ball of yarn - if you yank at it hoping to untangle all the issues making you be in pain - you'll just end up in a tighter knot - you need to pick one bit and slowly undo the mess that part's in at a time. I'll tackle the weight at some point, but my focus for this has been strengthening the weak areas to support my body so I can get more mobile to begin making gains on the other stuff - and that seems to have worked better than endless hours of "eat less, move more".

From your description of how you feel when you don't binge eat, it sounds like you are trying to self medicate your anxiety with food. Might it help to go back onto medication for the anxiety? If you don't feel like an anxious mess when you are at work, and not eating rubbish, that might make it more manageable?

I am not sure why you are determined to disagree with me. Co-codamol is a useful drug and many people need it to function. However in the OP’s case, given her anxieties around dependence and the total absence of medical supervision I can’t in good faith recommend it to her as a first step.

OP’s pain is seemingly caused by inflammation. It is sensible to take an anti-inflammatory in the first instance.

Of all the replies on this thread, this has to be one of the most insensitive and blinkered of them all. It's around £200 per month to start with, gets more expensive as the dose increases and needs to be taken for a while to work. You think everyone has that spare to throw around?

I'm same height/weight as you OP and I have no knee pain at all.

See a chiropractor; it might very well be something out of sync in your spine and the pain is transferring to your knees. But also go back to the GP and get some bloods done for rheumatoid arthritis etc.

Before my RA was under control I found all pain killers made zero difference, and to add insult to injury I had a small GI bleed (coffee ground" blood-streaked vomit) after taking Ibuprofen for 4 days.

A 10 day course of low dose Prednisone was a miracle cure, it got rid of all the pain in 2 days and gave me a huge amount of energy. Sadly all my symptoms came back after a month.

One way in with Gp may be to ask about an over 40 MOT health check with a nurse. They really push them at ours assume they get paid. Weight, blood pressure, blood tests, check if diabetes or pre diabetic etc. Good chance to ask about referral to other services. I got about 30 mins of time.

Got those one for DS - DD1 favoured some heal tipping gel ones - - did take a few attempts over several months to find what worked for us all.

herewegoroundthebastardbush - it does sound like you have a plan multiple ways forward - so hopefully something with help.

I had terrible foot and ankle pain on long weekend away - I was trying to keep up with DH tearing ahead in boots and later lighter canvas shoes which I later realised both had incredibly inflexible soles. Next time we went away I looked in sales and got some walking trainers and cheap shoes from shoe shop with built in soft support weren't expensive and shoes themselves don't last as long as I'd like - with insoles and it made such a difference - just as much walking DH still tearing ahead but no foot and ankle pain. I realise my needs were always at bottom of pile as money was so tight but it really was a false economy.