California Blonde - Shortness of breath and chest pain?

GuideMe

Active Member
Hope you folks don't mind my jumping in. I have, sadly, lots of experience with weight...both gaining and losing...and with blood pressure, chest pain, and well...lots of stuff.

Shortness of breath accompanied by pain isn't just because you are heavy and you said you "suddenly" developed high blood pressure. I don't know why your doctors aren't more concerned. That sounds very serious. I have a heart arrhythmia and have had episodes where it felt like someone was sitting on my chest...not pain, but pressure. They did a stress test (which, luckily showed that my arrhythmia evens out with exertion rather than getting worse) and then followed up with a cardiac cath, but all was fine in the end. Better safe than sorry. Have they done a stress test? A 24 hour holter monitor?

With your description of pain in your arms...is it possible that you have spinal issues? I have in my upper back...right between the shoulder blades...and it causes pain to radiate down both arms and in the shoulders. They'll actually crack and pop...but there's nothing wrong with the shoulders, it's in the back. It can also cause chest pain. Just a thought.

Weight Watchers is great, but the flaw is you have to do it forever. Ladies, I don't admit this often, but I am classed as "morbidly obese" (isn't that a horrible term?). At 5'10", at my highest I weighed 328 lbs. So I know what I'm talking about with weight problems. I did WW and lost 100 lbs! I was so excited. Still at 228 but it down to a size 14/16 and I just felt so good! But it was like a little man in my head said, "You're done!" and flipped a switch. A few McDonald's and Krispy Kreme trips later and I was back to 295. Which is where I am today. I didn't' regain the whole thing, but what took me two full years to lose was back in about 8 months. (I did maintain for a year or so.)

CB, it looks like you are about 10 years younger than me. You have time to get healthier...but medical issues do need to come first and foremost. Take care of those and everything else will follow. Wish I had done it 10 years ago. I agree with everyone else...eat a heart-healthy diet and wait to see what the doctors say before going crazy with exercise. Try Yoga or other gentle exercise until then to keep you motivated.

Lil, me too, I am overweight. I was "thin" most of my life but within the last five years, I gained over 100 pounds. I am not approaching 230. I recently been diagnosed with HP and it's scary. I never had to lose this much weight before and feel like I have totally given up.
 

GuideMe

Active Member
CB,I know you want to be thin and feel good again. What you don't realize is that what your friend did very likely put SERIOUS strain on her organs. I don't know many docs who would recommend her routine as esp as she had so much weight to lose. Losing weight that fast,esp that much, strains not only your heart but ALL of your organs and can take years, if not DECADES off of your life

So, so , so , soooooooooo true. I was thinking the same thing when I read that. I remember watching a documentary on a Greek heiress, and that's exactly how she died. When you lose weight or gain weight that fast, you put stress , massive amounts of stress on your organs ( I didn't know that at the time). Especially if you yo-yo , which is thee worst. I gained 100 pounds in one year and i shudder to think of what I did to my organs. I have been even keel for the last five, but still.
 

GuideMe

Active Member
I'm curious, what about people who get gastric bypass or the lap band and they lose all that weight real fast? Are they at that serious of a risk too?
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
Lil, me too, I am overweight. I was "thin" most of my life but within the last five years, I gained over 100 pounds. I am not approaching 230. I recently been diagnosed with HP and it's scary. I never had to lose this much weight before and feel like I have totally given up.

I don't want to make CB's thread about us...maybe we should start a "weight loss" thread?

But, I did want to say, the one thing I know for sure, having done it before, is THIS is one area where you do NOT want to focus on the big picture. Stop thinking that you need to lose 100 lbs. You need to lose 10 lbs. You can lose 10 lbs. Anyone can lose 10 lbs. 10 lbs is easy! Then once you lose 10 lbs you do it again. And again. Until you've done it 10 times. :)

When you have very large amounts to lose, that is the only way.

I've always been large. I'm 5'10" and can't remember ever being under 190 lbs. Regardless of what the "charts" say, my Doctor doesn't want me under 180. So I have 10 lbs to lose...again and again and again...about 12x. lol. I am finding it way harder to get started this time.
 

GuideMe

Active Member
I don't want to make CB's thread about us...maybe we should start a "weight loss" thread?

But, I did want to say, the one thing I know for sure, having done it before, is THIS is one area where you do NOT want to focus on the big picture. Stop thinking that you need to lose 100 lbs. You need to lose 10 lbs. You can lose 10 lbs. Anyone can lose 10 lbs. 10 lbs is easy! Then once you lose 10 lbs you do it again. And again. Until you've done it 10 times. :)

When you have very large amounts to lose, that is the only way.

I've always been large. I'm 5'10" and can't remember ever being under 190 lbs. Regardless of what the "charts" say, my Doctor doesn't want me under 180. So I have 10 lbs to lose...again and again and again...about 12x. lol. I am finding it way harder to get started this time.

A weight loss thread is a good idea. You want to start it or shall I? That was good advice about not worrying about the big picture.
 

Californiablonde

Well-Known Member
Well guess what? My friend who lost all that weight is still working out like a fiend, dieting, and wanting to lose even more weight. She keeps posting a bunch of pics on her facebook page and trust me she does NOT need to lose any more. I told her so, and she brushed me off. She said she is still flabby and hides it well under clothes. The flab she is talking about is most likely loose skin from losing 138 pounds. She is stuck with all that loose skin until she decides or an afford to get cosmetic surgery. I am worried about her. I think she is taking it too far. Her husband, who has always been naturally very thin, bikes ten miles to work and ten miles back, plus works out at the gym every single day for at least two hours. I think she now thinks it's a competition between herself and him. I am worried she may even develop a disorder. She looks great now. She really needs to quit especially if her health is in jeopardy.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Oh, my sister is like that. She was never overweight and had anorexia or bulimia or both in college and still does. She works out every day at 4:30am before work for a good hour and diets if she weighs 100 lbs, which she thinks is too fat. She also LOVES to cook and watch other people eat her delicious cooking, but she herself never sits and eats. This is also a symptom of eating disorders...obsession with food, but not eating it.

You can worry about your friend, but, like our difficult children, you can't make her see that she is too thin now. She needs to learn this herself and get help. My sister thinks she is cured now (shrug).

Also, I have the same hanging skin for losing fifty pounds. I know it won't go away and I can't afford plastic surgery and doubt I'd ever choose it, but at least I'm healthier at this weight. But the loose skin goes with a big weight loss. I think it's worth it. I hope your friend realizes when it's time to stop, Know what I mean??
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
Loose skin from 50 lbs loss... might be able to tighten up, but not with exercise... skin isn't a muscle. But from 100+ lbs? not likely.

(the only thing I've heard works is to go on a 100% fish diet... no other protein source, otherwise "normal healthy", supposed to be something in fish that firms up skin or helps it rejuvenate faster or something)
 

Californiablonde

Well-Known Member
I am a little concerned with the loose skin I will have after my weight loss (I am 5'2 and going to lose 50 pounds) but I figure at my age I'm not exactly going to be wearing bikinis anymore anyway. I wish my friend would be comfortable in her own skin.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
It's more important to be fit than to be slim. Not talking obese here, just that "ideal" weights aren't necessarily ideal. Being 10 or 15 over "ideal" weight is often not a bad thing at all, IF you are fit. And yes you can be fit and still be a bit above "ideal" weight. For those of us with more to lose... better to aim to lose just a bit less and fit better in your own skin, and focus on getting/keeping fit.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
I've lost 32 lbs and already have loose skin on my belly and some on my upper arms.

There's nothing to be done for it besides plastic surgery, which I've decided against. I have a hard enough time with necessary surgery that I won't do purely cosmetic surgery.

The closest I will come is having sagging eyelids fixed when they get to the point that they are interfering with my vision. (heredity is lovely)
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Just for the sake of compassion: We had an amazing biology professor when I was in nurse's training. He took us through the whole four years. Tall, bone thin man, big red nose. Whatever hair he still had left was frizzy.

Red.

And shoulder length!

:O)

But he was an amazingly human being.

Looking for the answers to life and purpose and time like we all do, he'd taken a series of degrees in philosophy before he focused on the real, measurable, provable sciences and began looking for his answers, there.

He was brilliant, and as noted, amazingly human in the way questioning, compassionate, sincerely humble people are. He lectured in such a way that he composed for us complete pictures of how the body works, and of why it behaves as it does. His teaching on obesity, on why some of us (as he was himself) eat whatever we want and are bone thin and some of us cannot smell pastry from a distance without putting on weight is that Nature sets things up, not for individual happiness, but to preserve the species.

Those of us who are heavy are, by genetic design, programmed to hoard every calorie.

By genetic design.

When times change, and they surely will because that is the nature of things, it will be those whose bodies do conserve every calorie (betraying them into obesity now, in these times of plenty) who will pull the human species through the famines and into generations of time.

That is how, and that is why, obesity is happening to some of us.

It is nothing you did wrong.

It is not that people naturally thin are doing anything particularly right.

It's a genetic imperative.

There is no judgment for any of us in how our bodies are genetically programmed.

It's all about the species, not the individual.

I have never forgotten this professor's take on weight issues.

I wish his understanding of the causes of things could be made very public.

There is much suffering around the issue of weight, because we aren't understanding things from the species' point of view.

Cedar
 
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