Day Thirty-six: bits and pieces

The GP was sympathetic last week, if not exactly brimming with advice. She had not dealt with PGP before but after prodding and poking a bit, during which I attempted not to terrify the other patients waiting outside with too much screaming, she agreed that I needed referral to physiotherapy. My next challenge is therefore to find a therapist with specific PGP training, who is also covered by my health insurance.

I also got a lovely email from a lady at the Pelvic Partnership with lots of helpful advice and support, including this:

Some people are enormously overweight and don't get PGP, and other people are stick thin and do. Carrying excessive weight doesn't help the joints and muscles to cope, but it's not the cause of the misalignment or rotated joints which almost always turn out to be the cause of PGP.

Exercises, crutches, support belts and painkillers can help relieve some of the symptoms but as they do not address the underlying cause of the pain; they will not "cure" PGP.

So I feel quite justified in kicking up a fuss for some treatment now!

In the mean time, I have officially retired my size 20 trousers. I put a pair on for work last week and they looked so ridiculous I had to take them off again. Luckily I have lots of size 18s saved from years ago to keep me going, and I generally wear a lot more dresses these days anyway. I think I might keep one or two of the biggest items at the back of the cupboard to remind me where I have come from.

I did a little review of my goals. I hadn't reset my 10% after adjusting for the new scales, and am delighted to see I'm only 3 pounds away from it. I've added in some other milestones to my tracking document, measuring progress in different ways such as amount lost in stones, pounds or kilos, or as a percentage, and hitting certain round numbers weights like getting below x stone. Once I hit the 10% goal my next marker will be a total loss of 2 stone - four additional pounds needed for that one. After that I can set my sights on getting below 15 stone. All these different ways of looking at it are just a few pounds apart so I can feel a real sense of achievement as I take small steps along the way.

I've settled into a fast day routine of not eating at all during the day, and then having a small meal in the evening. I don't think I'm hitting 500kCal in that one meal, probably less than 400 and I'm full up. I'm really noticing that I don't need to eat as much in between now too - two meals a day is enough most days. I'm sure if I was going more physical activity I would need more, so fingers crossed I can get some treatment that will let me make that a reality.