ADVERTISEMENT

She Lost 85 Pounds Walking Her Dogs. Then She Had To Buy Her Old Jeans Back From Goodwill. Luckily, She Found Them.

If you walk to keep the weight off, read this before your next walk.

Carla's dogs still wait by the door at 6pm.

Every night. Biscuit and Moose. Sitting. Staring at the leash.

Six o'clock is when Carla used to walk them.

Three miles. Every night. For two years.

That's how she lost 85 pounds.

I know, because I walked with her.

The walks were what kept it off.

They were the first thing she lost.

And last spring, Carla walked into Goodwill and bought back the jeans she'd donated.

Luckily, she found them.

If you walk to keep the weight off...

If the first step out of bed has started to sting...

If you've ever worried that one bad stretch could undo all of it...

Then please read this.

Because what happened to Carla didn't start with food.

It didn't start with willpower.

It started under her feet. In a place nobody warned her about.

I'm 60 pounds down myself.

And last month, I felt the first sign.

The Hardest Part Wasn't The Diet. It Was What Came After.

Carla worked for those 85 pounds.

She told me once it took "constant hunger and sacrificing all my free time and hobbies."

But the walks were the part she loved.

Biscuit pulling ahead. Moose stopping at every mailbox. Three miles, every night, rain or not.

When she hit her goal, she bagged up every pair of her old jeans and drove them to Goodwill.

I was in the car. She was singing.

The First Step Out Of Bed

It started small.

"Everything felt fine until I stood up," she said. "I had pain in the heel."

Just the first few steps in the morning. Then it would ease off.

So she kept walking.

Then it didn't ease off.

Some mornings her feet felt "like stiff swollen claws."

If she sat for more than twenty minutes, she'd "shuffle for 5 min" before she could walk normal.

"I walked like I was a 90 year old lady," she said.

And then it "slowly took all of my preferred forms of movement, even the most gentle."

Three miles became two. Two became around the block.

Then some nights it was just to the end of the driveway and back.

Some days she was "worn out walking to the mailbox."

"Like Walking On Knives"

That summer, she and her husband took the kids to Disney. A trip they'd saved two years for.

"It felt like I was walking on knifes," she told me. "I had never been in so much pain before."

By day two she was sitting on benches while her family rode the rides.

Back home she described it to me a dozen different ways.

"Like I'm being stabbed by dull knives or stepping on rocks."

"Like the Little Mermaid walking on glass."

"It burns so bad it's numb, and your whole world narrows down to the next step."

She Tried Everything She Was Told To Try

She bought "nice walking shoes with memory foam insoles." "They don't seem to help."

She got custom insoles. "The insoles and shoes did nothing for me."

She got orthotics that "were supposed to be life-changing and somehow made everything worse."

She bought the Hokas everyone swears by. "Stupid pricey," she said. And now she felt "trapped living my life in Hoka shoes."

She took Advil before her walks. Then four at a time. "It has barely touched the pain."

Some weeks it was "4 ibuprofen and 4 tylenol per day." "I'm not supposed to take ibuprofen," she told me. "But I have to."

"Pain meds exist," she said, "but I don't want to rely on them just to function."

She saw "multiple specialists." She tried "all the PF treatments."

Finally, "the best foot guy in the area" told her the options he had left didn't have a good enough success rate.

Her regular doctor told her to "take 2 advils and power through."

So she powered through. After one two-mile night, she was "unable to even move from my bed for two days."

"Exercise isn't empowering anymore," she told me. "It's punishing."

The Dogs Noticed First

Biscuit and Moose went "from walking miles a day to nothing."

At 6pm they'd sit by the door. Then they'd look at Carla on the couch with her feet up.

Then they'd lie down by the door and wait some more.

"My poor pups," she said. "They suffered too."

Her husband used to rub her feet every night. Then he stopped asking if she wanted to go out to dinner. She always said no. And when she did go, she was "a grouch."

"I know he's tired of hearing about my feet," she said.

"When moving hurts, motivation dies fast."

"It's like my body is holding me hostage," she told me one night. "I'm trapped in my own body."

Then The Weight Came Back

Slowly. Quietly. A few pounds a month.

"I was getting so heavy again," she said, "but without hours of working out I just couldn't keep up."

"Gained almost all the weight back over 2 years."

The worst part wasn't the scale.

It was the looks. "People assume you're lazy," she said, "when you're actually just exhausted from hurting all the time."

"Feeling judged. That's the mental grind."

"I feel like such a failure."

At her next checkup, her doctor said the exact words she'd heard two years before.

"You need to lose weight."

Carla laughed. "Cool," she said. "With what body?"

The next Saturday, she drove back to Goodwill.

Her old jeans were still on the rack. Same tag. Same hanger.

She bought them back for $6.99.

Luckily, she found them.

Then I Felt It Too

I'm 60 pounds down. I walk every morning before work.

Last month, I got out of bed and my heel caught on the first step.

Just the first few steps. Then it eased off.

Exactly the way Carla's did.

That morning on my walk, my watch asked if my workout was done because I was going so slow.

I thought about Biscuit and Moose at the door.

I thought about those jeans on the rack.

And I had the same "anxiety around gaining weight again" I'd read about in a hundred posts.

That night, I went looking for answers.

I Read Hundreds Of Weight-Loss Posts. Nobody Talks About This.

I spent that night on weight-loss forums.

Hundreds of people. Same story as Carla.

"I'm stuck in this stupid loop where I can't lose weight because my feet hurt, and my feet hurt because I'm overweight."

"The foot hurts so I stop exercising as much, gain more weight cause my foot hurts, so on."

"I had been in a vicious loop of trying to exercise, injuring myself or struggling."

And then I found the posts that stopped me cold.

They were from people who'd already lost the weight.

"100+ pounds down and in worse pain than ever."

"I feel like I was cheated," one man wrote. "I thought I had dodged the bullet, but it was only flying slower."

"Ironically I developed plantar fasciitis when I lost weight."

"I've lost around 250 lbs and I cannot go barefoot any longer."

"When I walk barefoot on my hard floors it feels like I have less padding in my heels."

One woman said her doctor explained it to her. Your body "has been using fat as extra cushion." When you lose the weight, some of that cushion goes with it.

Another put it in three words.

"You lost your padding."

Think about that.

People who lose a lot of weight start carrying a cushion in their bag so their tailbone doesn't hurt on hard chairs.

"I have a cushion in a bag for going places," one woman wrote.

But nobody tells you to do the same thing for your feet.

So I did something I'd never done in a year of walking.

I pulled the liner out of my walking shoes.

Thin. Flat. Almost nothing under my heel.

That's what Carla was walking three miles a night on.

When she was heavier, it was too little.

The forums said it over and over.

"Memory foam insoles and 'walking shoes' are not conducive to heavy people."

"I find that the memory foam types aren't actually that supportive and I prefer something more rigid."

"Soft, squishy soles make my ankles ache."

Soft foam squishes flat under your weight. It feels like a cloud in the store.

It's not a cloud on mile three.

And when she got lighter, it was still too little.

Because now there was less of her own cushion under her heel, too.

And the custom orthotics? Molded for a foot that kept changing.

"I just don't want to be buying new orthotics every few pounds," one woman wrote. "Insurance doesn't cover them."

That's when it hit me.

Carla didn't fail. Her willpower didn't fail.

At every size, she was walking on one thin layer that was never built to be her cushion.

Heavier, it got crushed.

Lighter, it was all she had left.

You'd Never Sit On A Hard Chair Without Your Cushion. So Why Walk On Nothing?

I know what some of you are thinking.

The forums said it to Carla a hundred times.

"Weight loss is like 90% diet."

"You don't need your feet to eat in a calorie deficit."

They're not wrong about the math.

But walking was never just about calories.

It was Carla's three miles with Biscuit and Moose. Her time. Her proof she was still trying.

One commenter said it best: "Use it or lose it."

And when her feet took the walks, she lost a lot more than steps.

So I asked a different question.

Not "how do I lose weight without walking?"

How do I keep walking without my feet paying for it?

People who lose a lot of weight already know the answer for chairs.

They add a cushion.

But a cushion alone isn't enough for feet. The forums proved that.

Soft memory foam? "Not conducive to heavy people."

Rigid orthotics? "Somehow made everything worse." And molded for a foot that keeps changing.

Soft alone fails. Hard alone fails.

When I looked closer, I realized your foot needs three different things on every step.

Job one: hold the heel. It needs to sit in a cup, not slide around on a flat piece of foam.

Job two: cushion the landing. Right where your heel hits the ground, with padding that doesn't just squish flat.

Job three: hold up the arch. Through the middle of the foot. "Something more rigid," like that woman said. Not a flat floor.

One thin liner can't do all three.

One soft insole can't either.

Carla kept changing her shoes. She never changed what was under her heel.

And there was one more thing I needed.

Something that would work in every pair of shoes I own. My walking shoes. My work shoes. The shoes I wear around the house on the hardwood floor.

Something I could trim to fit, and afford to replace when my feet changed again.

Not a new wardrobe. Not $400 custom orthotics every 20 pounds.

So I went looking for an insole built in layers.

One part for the heel. One part for the landing. One part for the arch.

It took me a while. But I found one.

Three Layers. Three Jobs. One Insole.

They're called Naprelle Cloud Gel Insoles.

I almost didn't buy them. I'd watched Carla spend a fortune on shoes, insoles and orthotics that did nothing.

But these weren't one soft pad. And they weren't a hard plastic shell either.

They were built exactly like I'd been looking for.

Arch support on top, a raised contour along the inside of the foot.

Honeycomb gel in the middle, sealed inside, right where the heel lands.

Memory foam on the bottom, with a U-shaped heel cup that holds the back and sides of the heel.

In Naprelle's in-house test, the full insole absorbed 56% more shock than a regular flat stock insole.

That's the same thin, flat liner I pulled out of my own shoes.

They go into any shoe with room for an insert. You trim them to fit. And when my feet change again, a new pair costs less than one trip to the drugstore for ibuprofen.

They also came with a 90-day money-back guarantee. After watching Carla's closet fill up with things that didn't work, that mattered.

My First Walk. I Waited For Mile Three.

I slid them into my walking shoes the next morning.

Mile one felt normal. Mile two felt normal.

At mile three, I caught myself waiting for the sting.

It didn't come.

The real test was the next morning.

I swung my legs out of bed and stood up.

No catch. No shuffle. I just walked to the kitchen.

I walked every morning that week. Then the next.

My watch stopped asking if my workout was done.

Then I Drove To Carla's House

I didn't say much. I just handed her a pair and told her to pull out her old liners.

She held that thin, flat liner up to the light for a long time.

"This is what I was walking on," she said. "Both times."

She tried them around the block. Then around the block again.

The next week, she texted me a picture.

Biscuit and Moose, on their leashes, at the end of the street.

The time stamp said 6:04 pm.

We walk together again now. Not three miles yet. But every night.

Two more women from our group asked what was in our shoes. They're both wearing them now.

And the jeans from Goodwill?

They're still in Carla's closet.

She says she's not giving them back again until she's sure.

Neither am I.

What Makes Naprelle Cloud Gel Insoles Different?

"Where Can I Get Them?"

They're sold on Naprelle's website.

Right now readers can get Buy 2, Get 1 Free. That's 3 pairs at $19.99 each, with free shipping.

One pair for your walking shoes. One for your everyday shoes. And one for the friend you walk with.

Do The Math On Your Feet

The walking shoes everyone recommends? "Stupid pricey." And you keep buying them.

Custom orthotics? $400. "Insurance doesn't cover them." And they stop fitting every few pounds.

The ibuprofen. The specialists. The days on the couch.

Carla's math was worse. Two years of walks. Then her old jeans, bought back for $6.99.

A pair of Naprelles costs less than one trip to the drugstore for ibuprofen.

What Verified Buyers Are Saying

Try Them For 90 Days, Risk Free

You get 90 days to decide.

Walk every day. Push past mile three. Pay attention to that first step out of bed.

If you're not happy, send them back for your money back, subject to the return policy.

You Have Two Choices

You can keep doing what Carla did.

Buy another pair of shoes. Take two Advil and power through. Shorten the walk. Then shorten it again.

Or you can pull out that thin liner tonight and look at what you've been walking on.

I wish I'd found this before Carla's dogs started waiting by the door.

Don't let your feet take your walks.