When the Body is a Lying Bastard Who Shouldn’t Be “Listened To”

Dispatches from physical rehabilitation.

Following the dramatic loss of a third of my blood, I recovered medically but not functionally. I couldn’t find a rehabilitation programme without woo or enforced group bonding, so I invented one. I am spending four weeks alone in a lodge in Devon, with a gym, a pool and a physiotherapist called Matt, making physical recovery my full-time job. Readers here for Enlightenment rationalism and liberal principles should ignore me for four weeks while I conquer putting my socks on.

Wednesday 2nd September.

I wake up and immediately began rethinking the idea that an appropriate response to having difficulty walking to the shop on the corner is to travel 6 hours via tube, three trains and a cab to the middle of nowhere.

The husband conveyed me and my suitcase as far as Paddington and we arranged assistance to transfer. I settled in with an audiobook. Sophie Hannah’s new Poirot is excellent.

I was met at my destination by a cab driver and remembered how much I love the West Country dialect. “You’m” (you are) is particularly nice and I’d like to adopt it. Unfortunately, I am from Essex, regularly voted the second ugliest accent in England (thank god for Birmingham).

The lodge is perfect. I particularly love the bedroom with one wall of glass overlooking the forest. A week’s food arrived shortly after I did. The drive to nest gave me energy so I unpack and put everything away and established a reading corner with lots of murder mysteries, a lounging space for watching true crime, paleoanthropology and historical fiction and a table for building a model toy shop, because this is a thing I do now. I regard all this with satisfaction, revel in the solitariness of it all and collapse in a heap.

I regain the energy to move on realising it has become dark. Movement is both difficult and painful. The quiet now feels more threatening than tranquil. I can no longer see into the forest from my lovely big window, but become aware that anybody or anything in it can see me and I cannot currently run. The lodge suddenly strikes me as perfect for filming the kind of horror movie in which I yell at the protagonists for thinking a lonely cabin in the forest was a good place to stay. I have an intense longing for the husband. I close all the curtains and call him. I tell him I don’t miss him at all and am glad to be away from him. He tells me he’s equally glad to be rid of me and to get off the phone because the exotic dancers have just arrived. I feel much better knowing I am loved and missed and go to sleep.

Thursday 3rd September

I wake up early and have tea on the patio overlooking the forest and the lodge is beautiful and cosy again. There are other lodges, a social hub, a restaurant and a leisure centre. Imagining myself on the set of The Evil Dead last night may have been an overwrought reaction to fatigue.

A cab arrives to take me to Matt’s physio clinic/training gym. They’d told me to allow an hour to get there even though it is only 14 miles away. I now understand why. The entire route is made of narrow, winding, single track roads. We’re fortunate to get half a mile before encountering another car or a farm vehicle and then somebody has to reverse to a “passing place”. Everybody generally seems to know which of them should do that, but on one occasion, there was a standoff where we sat for ten minutes with the two drivers glaring at each other until the other finally backed up and my cab driver declared victory. In between passing places, he goes very fast and then slams on the brakes when he sees another car. Fortunately, I can have my spine realigned at my destination.

Matt is great and goes over the plan. He has laminated it and informs me this makes it official and incontrovertible. I solemnly agree. When working together, we will be focusing on the practical movements I cannot currently perform and in between those, I’ll be following instructions on building strength and stamina. The Boss Level of regaining independence is being able to get myself up off the floor.

To this end, Matt informs me we will be starting with a supported lunge-like movement. I tell him my body will not do that and then demonstrate my body not doing that. He spends 10 minutes jabbing me in the legs with a plastic thumb and a rolling pin and then my body does that. I am to perform specific stretching exercises and roller my own legs for the next few days. I am also to walk no more than a mile and stop if I become breathless, perform strange poses in the swimming pool but not swim and lift weights that are almost weightless. Apparently, we are raising the floor of my stamina and endurance before making any demands on it. I have been overwhelming my systems and causing them to crash.

I go back to the lodge feeling great and enjoying the new flexibility of my legs. The man is clearly a genius and his warnings that I will have difficulty moving after this session and need to follow strict active recovery advice seem entirely unfounded. Two hours later, I attempt to walk to the kettle to make tea and find my legs unwilling to support me. The man is clearly a monster and I am broken forever. Only the urgent need for tea propels me onwards. I collapse on the sofa and call reception to tell them I would like them to fill the hot tub after all. I watch Harlots for the rest of the evening while intermittently standing and attempting to kick my own bum as instructed. I then crawl upstairs (literally) to bed.

Friday 4th September

I emerge from sleep feeling very low and tired and walking at all is difficult. I find myself feeling quite frightened to be this weak and limited. I blame myself for this. I did not voluntarily lose so much blood but I could have done much better at doing gentle exercise and not eating so much while dealing with it. I was already very overweight before that and not nearly as fit as I could have been. I am also inclined to think my limitations today are really a matter of pathetic laziness and lack of discipline and I should force myself to move. I have promised not to do this, however, so I spend more time kicking myself up the bum on the patio, which feels fitting.

I realise that I am feeling lonely. This is not a feeling I am accustomed to, because usually, even when I am alone, I am connected to people on Substack and social media. I text my four closest friends pretending to be fine and feeling positive so as not to make a fuss. They are not fooled. The two women encourage me to be kind and compassionate to myself and talk to myself the way I’d talk to them if they were in this position. The two men focus on immediate problem-solving and long-term goal orientation and offer jocular encouragement. I am reminded (yet again) that psychological sex differences absolutely exist and that I love them all.

Restricted to the lodge, I spend the day researching high-protein, calorie controlled meals and arranging to have ingredients delivered next week. I do not think my usual rotation of four different kinds of mashy gloop will inspire me to stick to a healthy diet. Soon there will be lean beef stir fry, salmon and potato fishcakes, prawn linguine and Spanish omelettes. I feel better after this and read the latest Ruth Irons domestic thriller before having an early night.

Saturday 5th September

I awake on Saturday feeling good, gingerly test my legs and find them functional. It has also stopped raining! I arm myself with a map of the resort and set off to explore and specifically to find the gym and familiarise myself with the machinery. On my way, I locate the deer hide. The deer themselves appear to be highly skilled at hiding. I call in at the restaurant and check their afternoon tea menu which is perfectly satisfactory! I am now feeling a little tired so I head for the gym.

Unfortunately, the gym is located on the top of a mountain. I bravely scale it in stages and arrive in the lobby only to collapse in a sofa and be unable to form words. It seems Matt has been speaking to them about my arrival and they were accepting of this. After half an hour I am able to stand up but testing machines is out of the question so I take photos of it in order to watch videos of any I am not familiar with before I next attempt mountaineering.

I make my way back to the lodge and am restored by a virtuous tuna pasta and several gallons of tea. I spend the afternoon working on my model and, on standing, discover that my legs are, again, staging a protest. This seems like a good time for more stretching and testing out the hot tub.

I uncover the hot tub and survey it. Entry appears to require some clambering and it is, by this time, dark. I have visions of myself being eventually found floating face down. I call the husband so he can stay on the phone until I am safely ensconced in it. He cheerfully does so and also informs me that he’s taking advantage of my absence to put his feet up and do absolutely nothing. This means he has embarked on a major renovation or gardening project that he thinks I will be happy about. I’m not sure when we developed this code, but after 25 years, we speak it perfectly. The hot tub restores some flexibility and produces sleepiness so I make my way to bed.

Sunday 6th September

I sleep very badly and on trying to get out of bed, find that this was overly optimistic. I eventually make it to the kettle and spend the morning on the sofa in a fug of groggy stiffness, regretting the exuberance of the previous day. Matt reminds me of the “not overdoing it” rule for which there I have a (laminated) sheet of very specific instructions while heroically avoiding I-told-you-soism for which I am grateful.

I fall asleep for the whole of the afternoon after which I feel better and virtuously perform precisely 20 minutes of active recovery from the sheet, watch trashy true crime on YouTube and go to bed.

Monday 7th September

I wake on Monday feeling absolutely great and full of energy. I “listen to my body” and it informs me that it is raring to go and could, in fact, run a marathon. I am sceptical of this and inform it that it will be walking directly and slowly to the gym where it will perform precisely 20 minutes of exercises on leg machines and then walking slowly back.

On my second journey to the gym, I discover that it is not on top of a mountain after all. It is situated at the end of a moderate and short incline. The perception of Saturday was clearly influenced by a fatigued body. Today, my body is behaving like an overexcited Labrador and powers up the incline straining at the leash. It is reluctant to stop walking when we arrive and insists we should do three circuits of the building and then head straight for the cardio machines. I tell it sternly that this is not the plan and to “sit” (on a leg press and perform a moderate number of sets at a lighter weight than I feel capable of).

My body continues to insist it is strong and capable throughout the prescribed stretches, exercises and more stretches and urges doing more but I ignore it. This was a good move because after the prescribed 20 minute rest, it then informs me my legs are made of porridge and walking back is entirely beyond their capabilities. It also insists that it needs a big, greasy burger and chips (fries). I march it home, ignoring its protests and feed it large quantities of lean protein and tea, whereupon it tells me it now needs sleep and puts that into effect immediately in complete disregard of our sleep schedule.

I feel quite low on waking and still extremely tired. I spend the evening watching a documentary about morbidly obese bedbound people in an attempt to remind myself why I am doing this and reassure myself that things could be much worse, while feeling vaguely guilty that this was exploiting other people’s misery and dignity.

Tuesday 8th September

I wake anticipating another crash day as this seems to be the pattern, but instead my body insists it is fine and needs a walk. It is a bit more restrained than the day before - perhaps a more mature and well-trained Labrador? - but I am disinclined to trust it. I take it for a gentle 15 minute walk on flat ground and enjoy it.

I still feel a little low today and spend the morning adapting my diary for Substack. I had made a rule of “absolutely no work” while focusing on fixing my health but really miss writing and feel quite alienated from myself when not doing it. This seems like a fair compromise. I am still focusing on my body and the conflict I am having with it exists whether I write about it or not! I feel a lot more “myself” when I have spent a couple of hours writing.

At lunchtime, my body again insists that it needs a walk so I agree to walk for just ten minutes and have a sandwich on a bench with an excellent view and then see if I am up to any further walking.

The answer to that is “no” and it soon becomes clear I need to go straight back. On the way back, it becomes clear that I need to go straight to bed and I do so, immediately falling into a sleep that my FitBit recorded as “deep.”

I wake feeling very cold and shaky even though the day is warm and my body insists it needed carbohydrates and tea. Beans on toast restore it significantly but I continue to lie on the sofa feeling like a blob of cold porridge.

It strikes me forcibly while lying here that the advice I keep receiving to “listen to my body” may be complete and utter bollocks. My body is demonstrably a lying bastard. It insists it is tired and needs rest when it actually needs exercise. It asserts that pizza and chocolate will make it feel much better when they make it feel horrible. It declares itself to have the strength and stamina of an athlete at the peak of performance when it is actually a fat, middle-aged woman recovering from a serious health crisis who needs to listen to her trainer about moderation, pacing and rest.

I decide I am done “listening to my body.” It has proved itself to be a thoroughly unreliable narrator. I am, instead, going to go with empirical evidence and sound reasoning based on that evidence. If my body insists it needs rest when it has actually been sitting around for three days and has nothing measurably wrong with it, it is being ignored and taken for a walk. If it demands to be allowed to race up hills and jump on elliptical machines when it has only had four hours sleep, its heart rate variability is poor and the plan says “Active Recovery Day. Go for a 15 minute walk at a moderate pace and then stretch” it will be told to shut up and stick to the programme.

At the end of this first week of physical rehabilitation, I find I am feeling decidedly grumpy with my body.

On reflection, I decide this is probably not fair. My body has, after all, put up with 52 years of me mostly forgetting it exists and treating it as a mere vehicle for my brain. It has consistently done its best to cope with whatever I have thrown at it. It has dealt with being significantly underweight and very significantly overweight. It has tolerated being required to move me about for very long shifts of demanding physical work as a care assistant and had to function for long spells of being almost entirely sedentary while I get lost in some project as a writer. It handled regrettable quantities of illicit substances and hazardous activities during its misspent youth. It went on to produce something of way more value than any product of my brain - my daughter. It also replaced and repaired nerves in my head following three stroke-like incidents and has repeatedly had to try to function on little to no sleep. It really is a very forgiving and quite astonishing machine and it is not at all clear that it should not be filing a grievance against me. In fact, I rather think it is.

Matt informs me this first week of full-time effort to restore my physical fitness has been much more successful than I appear to think and I am expanding my capabilities and raising the level of my endurance as intended. My body is actually responding very well to the effort I am putting into giving it what it needs to recover. I need to be patient.

This does not, however, mean that its signals and assertions should be accepted uncritically. It quite clearly both overestimates and underestimates what it needs in different ways and at different times, and what it wants and feels like doing is not always what it should have or is capable of.

Recommendations to “listen to my body” are therefore trite and annoying and need to be, at the very least, qualified. Humans have had bodies that signal needs and drives for millions of years, but it is only relatively recently that we’ve been able to feel fairly confident that a new human will survive into adulthood and, likely, old age. It does seem that science and reason have a significant role to play here.

I propose a collaboration between body and intellect. I commit to listening to you better, body, and trying to meet your needs much better that has historically been the case. I have, indeed, missed very important and accurate signals like “I am a mammal that requires regular sleep.” I shall endeavour to stop doing that. You, in turn, need to accept that I will absolutely overthink this whole recovery thing, but that this can actually be quite useful. I will compile data on how you respond to what we are doing here and research what is and is not good for you and apply evidence and reason to this joint endeavour.

I accept Matt’s assurances that this first week has been a success and go into the second one with optimism that we are on the right track. Work with me on this, please, body? Onwards!

Edit: Apologies that the original version of this has repeated text. I am writing on a mobile phone in a lodge with intermittent WiFi and had some problems transferring a final draft!