By Barbara Pierce
“You’re going to have to stop walking so much! Walk only when it’s necessary!”
I was astonished to hear this from the podiatrist I was seeing for the infection on the bottom of my foot.
“Nothing else has worked. Your foot isn’t healing and walking is the cause. So, try to only walk when it’s necessary.”
I went home and stopped walking.
I stopped the exercise walking I did twice a day; I stopped walking to clean house, I stopped going to the places I usually went to. I just laid around reading and watching movies. And spending way too much time scrolling on Facebook.
Two or three months later, my foot was healed. But my spirit was crushed. I was in a deep slump. Laying around for all those weeks had a devastatingly bad outcome.
What happened in that short time was I stopped doing most everything else.
“I should probably do my stretching exercises in a chair,” I thought. “No, not now. Maybe later,” was my response.
Of course, later never came.
“I haven’t heard from Linda lately. I should call her and get together with her,” I would think. “No, I’ll do it next week,” was my response. “Things are slow at the library lately. I don’t really need to go to my volunteer job there,” I thought day after day. “I don’t need to go to that lunch in the clubhouse.” I quit going out and being around people.
When I woke up and recovered from this stupor, I was astonished at how fast the lack of physical activity generalized to everything in my life. I quit doing the things that gave my life purpose and meaning, dropped most of my social connection activities. Scarily fast I went from a reasonably full life to a life of Facebook, movies and books. No real people in it.
My inactivity cycled downward, my reduced movement caused physical deconditioning that made everything worse.
Prior to this, my default emotional state was “reasonably content.” Now, it had seriously declined. I was not really depressed but definitely bored, blah, a state of nothingness, most unsatisfying. OK, probably depressed.
I’ve known that our bodies rapidly decline when we become inactive. I totally agree with the phrase “Move it or lose it.” However, I had no idea how fast everything can get lost. I had a swift and noticeable decline.
Experts say physical inactivity increases the natural aging process of your body. You lose muscle mass and strength, making everyday tasks harder; bones lose density, leading to a greater risk of fractures; balance becomes worse, increasing your risk of falls; your heart and lungs work less efficiently.
In addition, you become at greater risk for losing it mentally, declining cognitively as well as giving you a greater chance of depression or anxiety. I was making it harder to live on my own.
These are enormous stakes!
The data is clear: exercise prevents both cognitive and physical decline better than any other intervention!
And it’s terrifying how rapidly your functioning can decline. It happened to me.
As a physical therapist friend said to me recently: “You rest — you’ll rust!” And being rusty isn’t a good place to be. I got there rapidly. I’ve come out.
How did I escape?
As I was bored-scrolling through Facebook, watching sad stories of homeless dogs ending up rescued, extreme roller coasters (I hate roller coasters), the world’s best water slides (I love water slides), I stopped on a YouTube video as a woman with a hauntingly appealing voice sang: “Where did she go? I want her back, that woman that I used to be.”
The words resonated with me. I wasn’t the woman I used to be. This wasn’t me; I’d lost the best of me. I loved the voice, the words. (As I researched the singer for more, I felt cheated and manipulated to learn that the singer, Jada Monroe, was an AI-generated artist designed to evoke emotions in women.)
“I want to be that woman I used to be!” stayed in my head. “I need a psychotherapist to help me!” I decided. I found one online. His website asked me to describe the problem. “I don’t like the life I’m in,” I inserted. I never got an appointment, but I did get the momentum to keep going. All the possible endings to this life were a non-life, a total dead-end.
I recognized I couldn’t be this way. It was up to me alone to work through the rusty trap.
A new podiatrist assured me walking was not the problem. He healed my foot in a few weeks and encouraged me to walk.
Walking was hard after being inactive; my body protested. “Baby steps,” I thought. “Walk a little further every day.” That worked.
I’ve gone back to the things that gave my life purpose, spending time with friends, volunteer work, regular walking. Inactivity was so very harmful!
Barbara Pierce is a retired licensed clinical social worker with many years of experience helping people. If you would like to purchase a copy of her book, “When You Come to the Edge: Aging” or if you have questions for her, contact her at barbarapierce06@yahoo.com.