Hey Everyone!

My name is Nikki. I am 20 years old and I live in a small suburb in Maryland. I am completely new to this kind of thing so just bear with me

Here's my dilemma;

I was a gymnast for about 10 years (only 5 years out of that 10 I was competitive, and I was not very good) and pretty much destroyed my left ankle. I had sprained it more times than I can count, dislocated it once or twice, and had a tiny rupture in my achillies tendon. All of this lead me to end my gymnastics "career" when I was 15. Since then I haven't had too many problems with my ankle, only minor ones here and there.


Back in November I was at work (I work(ed) at a gymnastics gym as an instructor) and I stepped off of a landing mat the wrong way and my ankle completely gave out on me. I didn't really think much of it because it had happened to me before in the past many of times, but this time, my ankle swelled up almost instantly like it did when I dislocated it. So I went to the doctors and he said that I had a severe sprain (grade 2 in one of the ligaments and grade 3 in another) in my ankle. He then referred me to have Physical Therapy and come back to see him in a month or two.

Well, January comes along and I'm not doing much better in PT, so he does a stress test x-ray and says that my deltoid ligaments (the ligaments that are on the outside of your ankle) were stretched and partially torn to the point that it was like I did not have ligaments, and that my Calcaneofibular Ligament (the ligament that goes from your heel to your ankle) was completely torn. The stress test had shown that my ankle was more than twice the "allowable" limit of range than a normal ankle. He then told me that I had to have surgery (I think it was called Brostrom Repair or something like that) and the sooner I had it done, the better I was going to be.

So on March 9th, I had the surgery. Everything went fine according to the doctor and that there were no major complications.

So, my question is; What can I do to shed the weight that I put on from being off of my ankle for the past 7 months? I am still doing Physical Therapy and I have been trying to do what my foot/doctor allows me to do. I've changed my diet, and I've only been gaining weight. I am not allowed to do a whole lot of cardio that could jeopardize the repair and there's very little conditioning that I can do that doesn't hurt (in the bad way).

What should I do? Any and all advice is very much appreciated!! I realize that's a lot to read, so I'm sorry if that was too much/detailed.

Hey Nikki,
I think people are not replying because you are asking something that possibly only a doctor could answer. I just thought...well... it may be rubbish... how about the swimming pool? I'm not talkin breast strokes and heavy duty swimming, just doing some aerobics while suspended in water? Water provides more resistance than air, and you don't have to stand or sit, which could hurt your ankle. Maybe immobilise the ankle, get into the pool and swim using your upper body only?
I wish you all the best with your recovery!

Yeah, I'm gonna try swimming. But I really truly appreciate your response! Thank you so much!

I think the swimming is a great idea. But, I think you could still lose alot of weight with just food alone. Just take this time to really concentrate on your diet. And I don't mean diet like fad diet. I just mean diet as what you eat for health. Take this time to really get your food plan down. It's hard to do food and fitness but with you, you can concentrate just on the food alone and really do well at it. Good luck whatever you do!