Inadvertent Trigger Points.
Painfully, I straightened my knee to tense my adductor muscles, found the elusive knot causing referred pain down my entire leg and pinching the Saphenous nerve, and began digging in. Woah.
-Note to not-listening self: Do NOT just go to town on it!-
Taking pretty much the all or nothing approach that got me injured in the first place (years of repetitive movements without appreciation for a severe deficit in gluteal strength leading to significant quad dominance and overworked hamstrings -> read: massive imbalance), I went to town on the sucker, determined to work it out so my life could recommence. Apparently I had months of glute strengthening exercises to do and I needed to get started!
Freeing oneself from years of cyclical chronic dieting, and even more so the case should you have fallen further and developed an eating disorder, is a bit like working out a trigger point. Most understandably, this is because dieting is like giving yourself a trigger point in the first place.
It’s an inadvertent trigger point. Of course it is- they all are! Who would develop shockingly painful knots on purpose?
Myofascial trigger points: Sensitive areas of tight muscle fibers can form in your muscles after injuries or overuse. These sensitive areas are called trigger points. Pressure on a trigger point causes the muscle fibers to shorten and be painful to the touch, and pull on other surrounding muscles, tendons and nerves. And this can send “referred pain” radiating out to other areas of the body. When this pain persists and worsens, doctors call it myofascial pain syndrome.
Chronic dieting is like giving yourself a trigger point or three, and an eating disorders is like myofascial pain syndrome.
Neither arrive overnight; most are, in fact, years in the making. But it is a single place, date, and time when you first feel the pain. By the time you start to feel the effects, your body has been unhappy and unbalanced for a really long time. And the worst thing is, the more you stretch them and keep living with them, the tighter they get.
Now back to my leg:
Fortunately, we had heaps of weird (mostly blue and grey- who knows why) physical therapy tools in various cupboards and wicker baskets throughout the house. Maybe this is actually unfortunate, as who has this kind of expensive stuff if they haven’t been injured a lot?! Anyhow…
I started with the massage gun. It’s a great little jobbie with all kinds of attachments (of which I only use one, so not sure why the enthusiasm?). I nearly vibrated my leg off, took a break to use it on my neck which led to a weird buzzing headache so I think that’s not a good idea, and revenged the sore spot of leg again.
Next I dug at it with the massage ball usually used for my sore feet. The prickly rubber spikes distracted me from the intensity with which I was forcefully pushing. I rolled it around a bit per Hubby's instruction- he knows I obsess and I think he was afraid I might leave a permanent dent in that one spot midway up my thigh. Then back to the massager and I added a roller stick into the mix this time too.
Stop, eat dinner, repeat.
Next morning- OMG.
I gave myself trigger points, and from them, radiating pain and a pinched, searing nerve, over a long time. Why did I expect that I could work it out and be ready to run (I mean start my glute exercises…) in one day?
Answer: because it’s me, and that’s how I am.
Did it work?
Answer: not whatsoever.
When you’ve abused your body for, in many cases, years, you can’t fix it overnight. It takes patience, like watching one of those hourglass timers filled with sand. Fortunately, or perhaps actually unfortunately, you didn’t feel the pain through all those years. For a spell you may have felt excited, in control, enjoyed endorphin highs, loved fitting into those jeans again (even though the style is only seen on Golden Girls reruns now), or even a feeling of false confidence without having to give tribute to the false part.
But that’s all over now. In my blog post about the quasi- hammock I wrote about some of the issues that can arise when dieting gets out of hand. The medical problems stemming from eating disorders are immeasurable, some unfathomable. (If you know, you know.) Metabolic adaptation, which I discussed in my post A Perception of Lack, is just one part of it. Deep at the mitochondrial level, every cell in the body starts to scramble before puttering out when nutrients are withheld and homeostatic balance is disrupted; adjustments and sacrifices have to be made.
Fortunately our bodies are incredibly resilient.
In medical science, physical resilience refers to the body's ability to adapt to challenges, maintain stamina and strength, and recover quickly and efficiently. It's a person's ability to function and recover when faced with illness. It’s not just our physical bodies that need healing though. Wounded more deeply, and often at the root of our challenges, our souls are resilient too. Going through change is incredibly tough. Recovery from chronic dieting and years of identifying yourself with an image, number, or way of life takes dedication and perseverance.
My leg couldn’t be healed overnight with brute force and stubborn grit. I tried. After a few days of gently working on the knot I started to feel a smudge of relief. It was just enough to walk around a bit and pick back up a few dreams for life that, in my mind, I’d permanently set aside (I can get a bit extreme in my thinking when I’m stressed lol). But it wasn’t a time to be cheeky or proud. My body was distressed and imbalanced. Just like years of malnourishment had, at one point, rendered me low in minerals, hair falling out, no energy that wasn’t from stress hormones, with dry skin and crumbling bones, years of neglecting my glutes and focusing on strength training what was already pretty strong (does this even make sense?) had caught up to me.
I found myself, yet again, committing to a long endgame with paying more attention to balance in my life.
If you are on your recovery journey, or have decided “enough is enough” and you want your life back from the gilded cage of dieting, be patient with yourself. Keep taking steps and don’t look back, as alluring as the lies can sometimes remain even after lessons have been learned. Believe in your resilience and pay attention to the little things. Focus on your goals… the real, bigger picture, true happiness goals. But mostly listen to your soul guiding you toward freedom and never give up.
Trigger points don’t last forever if you address them properly. If you’d like, I’m willing to help you work out your knots.
