I've never been strong like you, being of a naturally skinny build,
but in my youth I believed I was uninjurable, indestructible, and
immortal. It took a couple of very serious injuries, one of them to my
back, to knock sense into me. The back injury was regarded by docs as
unrecoverable from, but I did manage to recover. It took twelve years
of a carefully graded exercise programme before I was able to cycle
over cobblestones or dance or lift heavy awkward furniture again.

If my experience of very similar back symptoms to those you describe
are any guide then you need to stop completely having anything to do
with any kind of weight lifting which puts force through the back, and
if you're overweight that includes your own weight which you need to
get down. Then you need to accept that rebuilding your back strength
is not just a question of building muscle strength, you've got to
rebuild bone and cartilage and ligamnet strength. That takes years of
starting with very lightly loaded exercise such as walking while
carrying no weight at all, and with the emphasis on varied movements,
such as walking on uneven ground rather than flat sidewalks.

Walking up stairs and hills, provided you avoid tiring or hurting
yourself, was particularly beneficial for me.

I'm no back expert, but it's now clear to me that neither were nearly
all of the professionals I consulted when I was suffering. The advice
which worked for me to recover the mobility my docs said was
impossible without a risky operation is the advice I'm repeating here.

In my non-professional but long suffering experience of bad backs, it
would be wise to stop highly repetitive big muscle building exercises,
even if the exercises don't load the back, because if you develop
extra upper body strength you'll then have bigger stronger muscles
with which to wreck your weak damaged back again with what seems like
a simple easy movement.

I note you mentioned in another post that you hurt your back by
failing to use proper form when putting down a bucket of water. That's
what I mean. If you need to use proper form to stop damaging your back
it's too weak and you shouldn't be developing even stronger muscles
with which to damage it.

My back was once weak enough that lifting a dictionary carelessly out
of a bookshelf could put me in agony on a sofa for weeks. Today,
although I'm not a strong man, I don't need to give a damn about
proper form for lifting, because my muscles including my back are all
in tune with one another with respect to strength. Anything I can
lift, including buckets of water, I can now lift any way I like. I've
made a point of developing my strengths in a co-ordinated way so that
is possible.

Don't take my adivce without checking it out, but do consider it
carefully. I've seen you now so often complain about having hurt your
back after doing things which I learned were certain killers for my
own back damage.

There are folk on the weight lifting newsgroups who are good at
understanding these things.

I'm worried that if you keep up with this big muscles weight lifting
stuff while your back is so damaged you could do yourself more injury
than you'll be able to recover from. It gets harder to recover as we
age, and neither of us are chickens any longer.

I'm trying to encourage you to treat your damaged back with more
respect, because if you treat it with unusual respect and
consideration you may find, as I did, that you will be able to recover
unexpectedly well from it.

The secret to recovering better than the expected average is to behave
better than the average sufferer :-)

If it does progress for you girls, I do hope Byetta will be easily available
for you by then.  Jan, you really are going to have to slow down one of
these days, and not have so much exercise available for yourself.  I know
you know what it is like when you *do* slow down now; like you said about
slowing down once the kids are off in the morning.  If you stop then, it is
so much harder to get the rest done.  It gets harder each year, too, and you
still have a *few* years of Jasmine, too.  ;-)  Like it or not, your energy
level is going to be compromised.  Been there done that with Ash in my 50s.
I was 47 when she was born, and though I kept up, it took an extra ump in
the mornings (and mid-nights for feedings, illness, etc. - your recent &
possibly increasing experiences (if I know the age group) ;-/ ).

I noticed on the Byetta list that too many wanted the Byetta to do all the
work for them rather than put forth their effort with good dieting.  I think
that is why I had such good results with it in helping me with my Prednisone
hunger, and pp control, and a1c reduction.  It bothered me to see women come
on there wanting it just for weight loss, they were not diabetic at all, and
we diabetics could see our insurance companies not wanting to cover it
because of misuse (this was back in its first year).  I haven't been around
the lists in quite some time now since I'm on Symlin, so have not heard
anything.  ASD is the only place I have been.  ;-)

Billie