The All Clear

For the woman the eight questions stopped, when nothing here is the answer yet.

You answered the questions honestly and the programme did not open. I want to be plain about what that means, because a website telling you no about your own body is a horrible thing to read, and it is easy to hear it as a verdict.

It is not a verdict. It is a date you do not have yet.

Why you were stopped

Four answers close the training itself. Not one exercise, not one piece of equipment. All of it.

• A doctor has told you not to lift, or has set a limit on what you can lift.
• Blood pressure that is not under control.
• Surgery in the last six months.
• Pregnancy.

The programme you came here for is lifting, and there is no version of it that is safe to hand you while one of those is true. So I am not going to sell you a gentler one and call it a solution. A gentler programme is still a programme. What I can hand you is two that are not lifting at all, and those are further down this page.

What has to change, and who changes it

If a doctor drew the line, only that doctor can move it. Not me, and not you. Take them the Doctor Briefing, ask them plainly whether resistance training is something you may do, and ask what they would want to see first. If they say yes, come back and answer the questions again. The door is not locked from our side.

If it is your blood pressure, that is a treatment question, and it belongs with the person who treats it. I am not going to tell you anything about your medicine. Ask them what your numbers need to look like before you lift, and ask them to tell you when you are there.

If it is surgery, it is a calendar. Six months from the operation, not from when you felt better. Your surgeon may want longer for what you had done, and their number beats mine.

If it is pregnancy, it is also a calendar, and afterwards is a conversation with the person looking after you.

What is worth doing while you wait

This is the part nobody tells you, so I will.

The floor, the light, and the shoes

A great many of the broken bones that happen to women with thinning bone happen in a fall, at home, on an ordinary day. You cannot train right now. You can make your house harder to fall in, and you can do that this week.

Walk each room and look down. Loose rugs, trailing flexes, the edge of a mat that lifts. The stairs, top and bottom. The bathroom. The bit of floor beside your bed that you cross in the dark.

Then look up. Is there a light you can reach before you walk, or do you cross a dark room to get to the switch?

Then look at your feet. Slippers with no back, smooth soles, socks on wood. Those are three of the easiest things in the house to change.

The appointment you already have

You will see someone before you see me. Go in with your questions written down, because they go out of your head in the room.

Worth asking: what am I allowed to do now, what am I not, and what would you need to see to change that. If you have had a scan, ask what it said in words rather than numbers, and ask what the plan is.

If your medicines make you dizzy or lightheaded when you stand, say so out loud at that appointment. Do not change anything yourself. Tell the person who prescribed it.

Eating enough of the right thing

Older women often eat less protein than the amount used in the trials of resistance training in this age group, and muscle is built out of it.

You do not need a powder or a plan. You need protein at breakfast, which is the meal most people skip it at. Eggs, yoghurt, milk, beans, fish, meat, whatever you actually like and will eat again tomorrow.

Calcium and vitamin D are worth raising at that same appointment rather than guessing at in a shop. Ask what you are getting from your food first.

Keep moving in the ways you are allowed to

Ask what you may do. For many women waiting on one of these four, walking is still fine, and the answer comes from their doctor and not from a website. Whatever you are cleared for, do it. The wait is not a reason to stop living in your body.

When something changes, come back

Answer the eight questions again. Your old answers are kept, nothing is overwritten, and an honest new answer opens what it opens.

If the thing that stopped you is gone, the programme is there. It has been there the whole time.

Two things you can start today

There are two other programmes on your account and you did not pay for them. Neither is training and neither asks a single thing of your body, so nothing about waiting stops you opening either one.

The Start Button is executive function. Ten installs over two weeks, ten to fifteen minutes each, for the part where you know exactly what to do and cannot make yourself begin.

The Second Half of the Night is for the 3am wake. One practice a day, about ten minutes, in daylight, for fourteen days. It is for the woman who falls asleep fine and meets the ceiling at three.

They are in your account under Programmes. Opening one does not close the other and neither touches the programme you are waiting on.