Diet Scams

Mr. Athletic
I have screwed up my lower back a number of times through acting like a body builder or professional athlete. I used to be able to carry *hundreds* of dollars worth of groceries up the stairs. But then one time I had a small tick in my back and a pop. Thinking nothing of it I continued on my way. On my way to work the next morning my back started hurting more and more along the way until I was laying on the frozen concrete crying. I was in the military back then and they assumed that when I went home with pain killers that day that I would show up for work bright and early the next morning. But I actually found it hard to get out of the bed and go to the bathroom or grab a water. I couldn’t really walk…I could only lean on stuff and/or crawl.

I started getting in shape a few months before I first was in contact with my wife. I had a personal trainer that stacked me to the moon with weights right off the start. I had a pop in my back and the trainer said “pain is weakness leaving the body.” I kept lifting and yet again I had another magical week of broken back.

When I met my wife she was beating me at tennis, so I started serving like a professional tennis player. And that lead to the same outcome…I needed about a week of laying in bed before I could walk again. She was impressed by that serve until I was mr. sleep and totally immobile!

Broken Chairs
About a year after we met my back started hurting again. She was flying out to the Philippines about a week before, and I actually had to push around a luggage rack so I could lean on it. When she was gone and I was home alone the pain was still immense. I switched out my Aeron chair for her chair and within a day my back was better. The Aeron chair had worked for years, but the cross member back support broke and with it gone my back had no support until I changed chairs.

Just recently my back started hurting up a bit again. My computer got a blue screen of death, and while I was changing out the computer I saw one of the chair’s 5 small wheels fell off. After I fixed that my back started doing well again. My wife, being an eternal sweetheart, bought this wedge thing that is supposed to support your back by encouraging proper posture, but after about a day of using it when I woke up the next morning and went for a walk I found it hard to stand up straight (leaning forward quite a bit). I got rid of the wedge and all was well once again.

Lots of Travel
I try to catch up on everything before we travel. This often means a couple trips down to the recycle bins and/or garbage coupled with a few trips of bringing stuff down to the car. I still have that pig-headed mindset of trying to take everything at once and a couple times while traveling my back went out. Once it was in the Denver airport on our way to NYC. We were supposed to do fun stuff in New York City and I let my wife down because it was excruciatingly painful to walk for the first week there. Luckily my back healed on our anniversary day. After losing my back 2 or 3 times on travel I now know to slow down a bit.

Being Overweight
I still am ***way*** overweight, but my back hurts surprisingly little for how much I have been sitting down and how little I have exercised. As long as I don’t try to be too athletic and don’t sit in a broken chair I do well enough most of the time 🙂