PODCAST INTRO: Hey, beautiful soul, and welcome to Dear Body, I'm Listening, the podcast for women living with chronic pain, mysterious symptoms and invisible illness. I am your host, Donna Piper, movement therapist, pilates instructor and chronic illness navigator. The space is for the ones who've tried everything, felt dismissed and are still searching for answers. If you've ever felt like your body's speaking a language no one else understands, you are not crazy, and you are not alone. Here we go beyond diagnosis and let you know what diagnosis you try to seek. We talk about swelling, fatigue, brain fog, body shame, nothing is off the table. We explore healing through somatic spirituality, movement and truth telling, because healing isn't linear, and either are we.
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Donna Piper: This will be my 7th podcast episode, and it is called, My Body Changed Overnight...and Finally, I Got Answers.
Hey, beautiful soul, welcome back to Dear body, I'm Listening. The podcast for women navigating chronic illness, invisible illness and that confusing and exhausting dance between hope and total burnout. If you've ever looked in the mirror and thought, this isn't my body, or if the scale has jumped and the doctors told you just to eat less and exercise more? This episode is for you.
I'm Donna Piper, Movement Therapist, Pilates Instructor and Chronic Illness Navigator. And today, I'm telling the story of how my sudden size shift. Yes, a sudden turn into the breadcrumb trail that led me to answers I never saw coming. So let's get into our first segment, real talk recap.
Let me tell you a story. I was headed to my best friend's 50th birthday party. She's been my best friend since, gosh, 6th grade or before. I'm 54 now, so it was a super long time. We're used to being Girly Girls cute. It's the day where you want to look nice, feel good, show up with some sparkle, except nothing fits. And it wasn't just tight. It was like, I just can't pull these pants up. I can't pull them past my thighs. My favorite outfit in size four dress, nope. And then my backup sizes are a little bit bigger, nope. And what I landed on was an older skirt that I just used, it was really long and had a lot of elastic waist, and a slouchy t-shirt that fit me. That was like a medium, but a larger medium because nothing else fit. And I looked like, okay, but definitely not as cute as I wanted to be. And I didn't feel good. I didn't feel good physically, and I didn't like how I looked. It just didn't look like me. When I would catch myself in the mirror, I was always like, what? Who is that? And I still have that right now, but I still went. And then definitely, when I saw the photos afterwards, I was like, wow. I have gotten so much bigger than I used to be. What is going on? And if it was just about weight, I wanted to get to the answers. I might have just brushed it off, but it wasn't. My body started to turn.
So when you have lipedema as a change as you progress into stages, so I carried most of it in my thigh. It looked like little sausages from my thigh to my knee. I have that fat cup around my knee, and I always thought that was odd. Diet, exercise, all the things never really changed. But once I got bigger and expanded, my bones had to shift, so my feet and knees kind of turned away from each other, and that led to lots and lots of pain. I must have had bone spurs forever when I was dancing, but I never felt them. So the weight and the bone spurs. How I've been turning out, it started to really impact how I walk. So it hurt to get out of bed. It hurts to walk. I couldn't do anything without pain. Wash dishes, do anything, and with all the brain fog and all the other things that come with it, and the pain that I've always had, and I didn't realize that later on. But for over a year and a half, walking felt like a punishment. It really is. I would want to go do things, but it was just in so much pain. And anyone that's had any soda, bone spurs are like little tiny horns. When you have the X ray in your feet, they're very, very painful. I'm not exaggerating when I say that my body changed over night. And if that hadn't happened, I probably would have never figured out what was really going on.
Okay, second segment. So this is a segment that I like to call, The Body Detective Files. So let's rewind before the size shift. I already had whispers from my body, gut issues, fatigue, migraines, random allergic reactions. I chalked it all up to stress, getting older. I was always told that it's probably your age, it's probably going into menopause. But when they always did my blood test, my hormones were perfectly normal, and I wasn't really going into menopause. That was like for the last three years. They've been saying that five years, really. I don't know how it is today. But when my body started screaming through the swelling, the weight gain, the pain and the mobility loss, I had no choice but to listen. And then that's when the discovery started unraveling like a mystery novel written in medical jargon. So once I found a doctor, and it was a long process, but I wanted to learn more about the edema I felt so I searched lymphatics and found Dr. Perry Nickelston. I always say his name wrong, but Stop Chasing Pain. I mentioned him before on the show, and I took his courses about lymphatics. He had some resources. And it really wasn't changing my body, and I still thought I just had swelling. I didn't think I had lipedema. Never really heard of them as I know of cancer. People that I've known had that because of their lymph nodes, but I never thought that. I thought that my body was just swelling, and I didn't know why.
So in that resource, he gave me a nutrition book. I was like, I have been vegetarian my whole life. I've eaten really clean most of my life, no sugar, no caffeine. Decades of not eating well and not having any of the stuff. So I was like, well, maybe I'm missing something with the food. Let me see what they suggest. And I'm a chronic sucker for any sort of diet because I've always thought, oh, maybe I'm just missing something in my diet. My legs were always heavier. Maybe I'm just not finding the right nutrient, or whatever. That was not the case. But once I found the doctors, I was like, you know what? I'm just going to look it up. If I have to go to another state, I will. Since the pandemic, there's a lot of online things. Maybe they still have an online consultation. But it happened that Dr. Emily Iker was in Santa Monica, which was like 10 minutes from me. So once I went to her, that's when everything started to unfold.
So first, it was the lipedema and my strange shape in my thighs. The fact that my weight wouldn't budge no matter how clean I ate or how much I moved, the pain to the touch, the burning at night, it's not just that. It was a disordered fat, a condition, a real one that I have never heard of before. I mean, I read it in the book. But I was like, oh, I don't have that. So that's when I really knew. Then the second thing that I learned, all my bloating, gut issues, brain fog and also pain, but when I would eat, my stomach would swell, constipation issues, all of that had to do with mast cell activation syndrome. And I realized that I wasn't sensitive, and my immune system was just in overdrive foods that I thought were healthy, like avocados, lemons, olives, were triggering my body inflammation, the brain fog, the rashes and the crushing fatigue, and then it came to hypermobility, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. All my years of joint pain, knees, the cracking back, hips, all is just, I don't know, probably I started seeing a chiropractor when I was 18. So into my 50s, and it never stuck. Every time the adjustments happened, I had to chronically get adjusted. Now, I've learned a lot more about that. We'll talk about that on another show.
It's just because I was too flexible and my connective tissue was too stretchy, and my body was working 10 times harder just to stay upright, then came the last chronic fatigue syndrome. I wasn't lazy or undisciplined. I couldn't understand why I had crushing fatigue. I really couldn't think of taking a shower would tax me. And when I did take it, it would tax me. The thought of making dinner, doing basic daily activities was really just daunting. I found out that I have a cellular energy crisis, and the only real cure is some radical rest. And luckily, Dr. Parent who has this technique, the Parent Technique that he has devoted his life to, or his work life to really figuring out the toughest cases would come to him, and he has this process of physical test that he does to put you through and a questionnaire. And then I was lucky enough to find a Parent practitioner near me, so that flipped everything about my inner dialog about how much I should be doing? Why I couldn't do it. So it's been a process, and I'm still in the middle of all this.
I have to say that even though I didn't enjoy going from a 4, 6 to a 10, 12, I wouldn't have known any of this. If that actual weight gain didn't happen within a month, and it was rapid, it sounds extreme, but literally like five days, five pounds overnight. One day, then the next, and then there was a few days break, and then again. So I crept up a significant amount. I had crept up 35 to 40 pounds within a month, and that is crazy. And then that's when the bone spurs kicked in, and then my ability to walk without having issues or getting up without pain, I was like, this is not okay. And this sudden shift was my wake up call. And as painful and scary as it was, I'm grateful for it now because it cracked me open up to the truth, to science, and to healing. So all these things, I was just going to live with the pain. And then pray that someday, my legs and weight would kind of rebalance itself. I probably would still be doing the same thing if I didn't find all these things. And now, I think I'm on a real healing journey, even though this isn't easy because a lot of doctors don't know about it. It's expensive.
You have it like a whole other puzzle. It's not just finding my triggers, because I still haven't found my triggers after a year and a half, almost a little over a year and a half of looking for them. Changing my diet, figuring out what is causing my inflammation. So I'm still not there yet. But if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have discovered like, oh, I'm not just fat. There's something metabolically wrong, or something significantly wrong with my body that it's processing things, or lack of not processing that gave me some peace, even though it was daunting emotionally. The moment she told me that I had lipedema, I cried in relief that she just recognized and validated me. But also like, she's like, you have the one that's kind of the worst one. She's a very cute doctor. I enjoy her frankness, and it's a hard one to figure out. There's lots of different theories about conservative treatment, surgery or not. But basically, it's not just you doing a couple things. Typically, you have to do a lot of things. And with all this going on, because I have the chronic fatigue element as well, it's significant. So if you also have that, or have any of these symptoms, or had some mysterious sort of weight gain, or the opposite, have maybe been on GLP-1, and your body has shrunk in all these different areas, except maybe your thighs, your arms or something, and then you could see how your body is, I suggest to look for different doctors in your area that might be able to diagnose you for lipedema or any of these other conditions.
And then now, we're going to go into segment three, Ask Donna. So this is my segment called, Ask Donna, where I get questions from friends, family members, and listeners. So this is a listener question, and it says, Donna, I gained 12 pounds in two weeks. My doctor told me to eat less, and exercise more. Calories in, calories out. Maybe cut out some sugar and eat some things, but it feels off. How do I know when sudden weight gain is a symptom and not just a bad week? So first off, that prompted me to tell my story at the beginning. And it is such a good question. Because aside from everything, you pretty much know your body. You know when you've eaten bad, or if something is off, if you're sick, you could usually know the signals of your body. We go to professionals for help, take our symptoms and that information, and put them in a way that we can get some help and relief, right? So always know that your instincts are valid, and it could be a multitude of things.
I'm not a doctor. We're not diagnosing. This is more about like, if these things happen, where to go and check? And fast gain, weight gain in general, typically, it isn't just swelling, things like that, brain fog. If you have a lot of different things, it isn't just really about calories in and out, right? Because I didn't change anything, and my body started really expanding. So they said, oh, maybe I'm not really doing what I said I was doing. How I was eating and how I was moving, or maybe it's blood cancer. So they went through a million different things with me until I found a doctor that actually went with this, knew about this, but just knew too that it could be a symptom. So if you think you have this, that your weight gain is like a symptom, it's not a willpower problem, right? Because calories in, calories out.
Again, for women, they're finding this is totally wrong. Most women under eat, and that is women with lipedema, that is a major thing. You typically don't eat a lot, so you can be anorexic and also still have this disease. Fat on your body. The fat doesn't respond. So if you suddenly gain weight, always go to your doctor and find out what is going on. Do your blood work. And then if you have some of the other things, maybe your legs feel really heavy, or they feel swollen, or kind of burning in the upper thigh, you're exhausted, but maybe you're also wired, you crash in the day, you might have noticed like some bruising or pain to touch in your legs, or skin texture, your joints maybe are more stable, or your physical body has changed? Then find some doctors that might help you because you could potentially have lipedema.
And then don't glass slide yourself, just start tracking so you have information to take with them. So if you can track your food, how much you do your movement, and look for foods that might trigger you, and then what is your sleep and poop situation? Yeah, we're going there because constipation is big with all of the issues that I talked about. I knew I had this gut problem. I always feel constipated, so I've always been looking for something, and they are definitely related to all of those conditions that I had mentioned. There always is a symptom of constipation, and we're going to get it at another show. But if your system is not expelling, and if your lymph system isn't actually working that great, but the lymph system takes out all the garbage, right? So if you're not expelling that, there's a few ways that you do that. But one of them is by pooping. And if you're not pooping, then that stuff's also staying in there, and it's contributing to all the other issues, and that's what my personal story is. Bring this information with you to your regular doctor, or a functional doctor, or your integrative doctor. And preferably if you could do a little research, if they've heard of lipedema, mast cell activation disorder, chronic fatigue or hypermobility, if they're a little familiar, a lot of doctors aren't, so you might have to educate. But to have this information like a little sheet, you could say, this is not just in my head. It's not just that I think. This is what I've been doing and how I've been tracking it, can you help me? And if you haven't heard of these things, can you refer me to someone?
Now, we're on to segment four, so let's get into the Weekly Feel Good Flow. So today's feel good flow is, for days you can't walk far, but still want to get things moving, this really helped me during my inability to walk for a period of time, and especially after I took all the courses on lymphatics. I have a history in teaching the Pilate yoga movement. So this is what really helped me, and I want to share it with you, it's called the Supine Lymph Wave. So it's super gentle for the days that your body is just like, no. No, it's not happening today. But we know that movement helps. So any small movement on the days that you're really needing to rest or not do a lot, a little bit of movement goes a long way.
So this is a variation of legs up the wall with a little bit more of a, so lie on your back, bring your legs up either the wall, a couch, headboard, anywhere where you can be inverted. So always check if that is medically good for you to do this. But if you have no problems, otherwise, this is great for days that you just need a little more support. Then with your hips relaxed, you're just going to gently point and flex your feet 20 times. And what this does, it pumps the cast, and it wakes up the lymph. So we have a lot of different places where the lymph gets pumped. So blood flow goes one way, lymph goes from down, up. So what you want to do is point and flex to get those calf pumps, your calf pumps going. Then what you could do too is just lightly cross your arms. If you've followed me before, I'm really a fan of the Big 6, so a lot of times, I'll do that right when I get up.
This is just an added little extra. So you're there, you're pumping your toes, you've already done your Big 6. And then now, you're just rubbing lightly and tapping your chest right at your collarbones to get that. Just an extra opening here, you could do like a drum beat a little bit just for 30 seconds to kind of get that system going up here, and then begin some deep belly breaths. So deep belly breaths are great for all of these connected conditions. They help pump out that lymph. They help pump out if you have any constipation. They get all of that area in your belly working. So inhale for a count of four, and exhale for six or longer. And just make these as slow as you feel comfortable. Do this for about 8 rounds or more. And then after that, lastly, just take your hands and sweep gently from your knees to your hips. So your feet are up. You just kind of want to give a little bit more movement behind your knees, wherever you can reach. Just allow gently touching your legs to get more fluid going home so it could get into places it needs to. So it could start to either release through sweating, urinating, or pooping. There's a couple more I'm missing right now, but that's it. No pressure, no gear, no leggings required. Nothing. Just listen to your body. Just listen, support, and allow the healing to begin.
Okay, that segment is done. And so now, I'm going to the last bit. If this episode hit home, if you've ever felt betrayed by your body, baffled by your reflection, or dismissed when you knew something different was going on, I hope you feel a little bit more seen right now. That size shift didn't break me. It opened the door to finally understanding what was going on. And if your body's changing fast, don't panic. Get curious. Subscribe so you don't miss next week's episode. Drop, share with a friend who's still stuck in symptom limbo. And if you're craving real compassionate support, you can always reach out to me.
Until next time. Remember that your symptoms aren't just physical, and your healing won't be either. Listen to your body. It's been whispering the truth all along. I hope everyone has a great day, and thanks for listening.
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PODCAST OUTRO: If this episode made you feel even a little more seen, brought you a dose of clarity or pointed you toward your next step, please rate, review and share it with someone who's been quietly carrying the same questions. You can find some more resources, blog posts and healing tools over at donnapiper.com. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Until next time, Dear Body, I'm listening, and I am so glad you're here.
