Exercise is important for everyone because when you build strength everything in life is easier. When you have a stoma that leaks all the time it can be difficult to get your workout in because sometimes you have too many stoma problems that make exercising impossible. I live with a stoma and try to exercise a couple of days a week, but it can be hard sometimes because there are days when I go all day without a single issue but the moment I start exercising I start having all kinds of problems. Exercise is important for people with Spina Bifida because it can help prevent constipation, but it can be difficult when you have a stoma because sometimes the leaking makes it so bad that you can exercise. Exercise is still possible with a stoma even though there are more challenges and sometimes in order to be able to exercise you need a little more planning. How do I exercise while living with a stoma? In this post, I am going to talk about how I exercise while living with a stoma.
Exercise before you eat breakfast– If you live with migraine disease, I will not recommend doing a fasted workout routine because exercising with no fuel could trigger an attack but when you have a stoma sometimes fasted workouts are your best option. I have a stoma that is connected to my bowel that is called an ACE (which stands for Antegrade Colonic Enema) which makes it easier to have bowel movements independently, but the downside of it is every single time you eat a meal there is a possibility that your stoma will react to it and you’ll be leaking for the next hour. I am not a fan of fasted workouts if you live with migraine but when you have a stoma, I fully support it because it’s extremely unlikely that you will have problems if you have not eaten a meal. I love to exercise at night and am not completely fasted and usually, I wait about two hours after I have had a meal before I consider working out to allow for stoma problems to happen. The one thing you will never see me do right after I eat a meal is exercise because it’s not smart for me to do that and I always run the risk of having a stoma problem and needing to stop my workout which I hate doing! You don’t always have as much energy when you do a fasted workout but sometimes it’s the only way I am able to exercise with a stoma.
Before I exercise, I try to eat a healthier meal– Some people enjoy doing their exercise routine early in the morning when they are completely fasted, but I would rather do my exercise routine late at night after I eat dinner because exercise helps me sleep, and I have more energy after I have eaten. I am very rarely completely fasted when I exercise and usually wait about an hour and a half to two hours after a meal before I consider it because I have found I don’t perform as well when I try to do a high-impact workout without any kind of fuel Since I don’t exercise completely fasted it can be difficult to get my routine done and one of the things that helps make a stoma problem less likely is to eat a healthier meal before I exercise. I will never say no to ice cream because that is my weakness, but if I want to exercise in an hour, I usually will because my stoma can be triggered by anything with sugar. I still eat unhealthy food sometimes because I am not a complete health nut, and I just don’t eat them an hour or two before I want to exercise, but after I am done, it doesn’t matter.
Sometimes I skip my routine- I have tried to exercise early in the morning because workouts where you are completely fasted work best but it’s just not me and I cannot motivate myself to do morning workouts. The struggle I have with exercising late at night is real because sometimes I eat later than I should have and don’t allow enough time for me to have a stoma problem which can interfere with my ability to exercise. I wish I could say that I have never skipped a workout because of a stoma but the reality is skip more than I’d like to sometimes. A stoma changes and saves lives, but it sometimes makes exercise difficult and is the reason I had to skip a workout.
Listen to your body- My stoma does not prevent me from doing most exercises but there are some types of exercises I will not do because of my stoma. You will never see me do a cobra stretch after a core workout because it hurts my stoma and feels like I am stretching something that should not be stretched. When you have a stoma it’s so important that you listen to your body and if an exercise is hurting your stoma, your body is trying to tell you something and you should probably stop doing that exercise and pick something else. There are tons of exercises that are completely safe to do with a stoma and you don’t have to do the ones that cause pain.
Keep it covered- I keep my stoma covered most of the time because I have no idea when my stoma decides it’s going to leak and it’s always a pain to have to change five outfits within an hour. Some days I forget to cover my stoma, and am reminded when I have to wash a cute dress I just bought but I almost never forget when I exercise. Keeping my stoma covered allows me to be able to continue exercising because I can take a break real quick and change a gauze a lot faster than I’d be able to change an outfit. I can quickly change the gauze in between sets or if the problem is small enough sometimes I can ignore it entirely until after I am done. There are some days when I have a big stoma problem that cannot wait an hour, and I have to briefly pause my workout to change an outfit but most days it’s nothing major and it can wait as long as it’s covered.
Exercise is important for everyone, but it can be difficult when you have a stoma because you can’t exercise without thinking about your stoma. When you have a stoma, it can be hard to be consistent with your workout routine because your stoma sometimes prevents you from being able to exercise which is not within your complete control and you shouldn’t beat yourself up if you have to occasionally have to skip a workout. Exercise can be frustrating when you have a stoma, but with the right kind of planning it is possible. The most important thing is to listen to your body because even though something works for one individual, that does not mean it’s going to work for everyone who tries it. There are many different types of stoma’s and these are things that help me exercise with my stoma but might not be helpful for people who have a different type of stoma. How do you exercise while living with a stoma? If you liked this post, please leave a comment below and share it with your friends.
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