Is Your Weight Gain Causing Pain?

Weight doesn’t cause pain; metabolic health does.

You know the story…

A woman (let’s call her Sasha) has surgery.

Sasha was hopeful her hysterectomy would solve her pain problems, and it helped with some things. But now her back is killing her, and her legs ache all the time.

To Sasha, it feels pretty clear that the hysterectomy set this off.

But her surgeon says otherwise and blames it on her weight.

Sasha is left with the good ol’ fashioned eat less, move more advice. She felt like if only she could lose weight, her pain would go away.

It’s not this simple.

People with extra weight do have higher rates of chronic pain, BUT this difference is negligible when we look at metabolic health.

Across the board, more metabolically healthy people feel better. Whether they’re overweight or not.

The worse our metabolic health, the more inflammation we carry, the more we have pain.

Women often go into surgery in poor health, at no fault of their own. But sometimes, surgery is the stressor that finally throws your body into chronic inflammation.

When we have worse metabolic health, our body carries more visceral fat around the organs (hi menopause belly!), and this kind of fat IS very inflammatory. People with more of this fat generally feel worse and have worse surgery outcomes. 

But it’s not about the number on the scale.

So what numbers can you use to assess your metabolic health?

• Hemoglobin A1C

• Hip-to-waist ratio

• DEXA Scan or other measure of body composition

• HS-CRP

• A full lipid profile

• Fasting blood glucose

If you know some or all of these values, you have some tangible things to work on beyond the numbers on the scale.

I’d love to hear from you. Have you had any of these tests done? What was your experience?

If you know your health isn’t where you want it to be, consider joining the hundreds of clients I’ve helped get their health back on track after surgery. We’ll keep your pelvic floor healthy, but we'll also get YOU healthy.