Getting Back to the Life You Had Before an Ostomy

There’s an interesting moment that can happen when you’ve lived with an ostomy long enough. You’re doing something completely ordinary—or maybe something pretty physical—and suddenly you realize you haven’t thought about your stoma for a while.

I was talking with Rob Nunnery recently about exercise, sports, hernias, recovery, and what it’s like to be active with an ostomy. Rob got a loop colostomy in February 2025 and was playing pickleball full-time before his surgery. He came into ostomy life with a solid fitness base and, understandably, had questions about what returning to that level of activity would look like.

I’m coming up on six years with my stoma, so we’re at very different points in the journey. But the more we talked, the more I realized we had arrived at a similar place.

You learn to pay attention to your ostomy without letting it become the center of your life.

The Moment You Stop Thinking About Your Ostomy

I told Rob about something that happened to me at the gym.

I was doing pulldowns with fairly heavy weight. I had my legs anchored down, grabbed the bar and knocked out several reps. I got up afterward and suddenly thought, Dude, you forgot you have a stoma.

I had been thinking about training my back. I wasn’t thinking about all the force that was also going through my core.

Fortunately, nothing happened. But it made me realize there had probably been several times when I could have been more aware of what I was asking my body to do.

At the same time, there was something positive about it.

I had reached a point where my ostomy wasn’t constantly occupying my mind.

Early on, it can feel like the exact opposite. You’re aware of the pouch, your clothes, every movement. You wonder whether something is going to leak, whether you can bend a certain way, or whether you’re going to hurt yourself.

Then one day you’re simply living your life—and you forget about it.

Getting Back to Sports After Ostomy Surgery

Rob was already very active when he had his surgery. He was playing pickleball full-time and felt he had a good baseline of core strength going into the procedure.

His return was gradual, but he didn’t feel like he had to completely rebuild himself from scratch.

One thing we talked about was the difference between controlled and unpredictable movement. With a repetitive exercise, you generally know what’s coming. Pickleball is different. One second you’re standing there and the next you’re lunging for a ball or changing direction instinctively.

Rob said he’s conscious of his stoma during those movements, but he doesn’t spend the entire game thinking about it.

That distinction matters.

Being aware doesn’t necessarily mean being afraid.

Returning to activity after ostomy surgery isn’t about pretending your body hasn’t changed. It has. For me, the goal has been learning to respect those changes without allowing them to convince me that I can no longer do the things I enjoy.

Recovery is different for everyone, so your surgeon, doctor or ostomy nurse can help determine when and how to return to exercise safely.

The Things That Worry Us Most

Rob told me that when he started researching his return to sports, two things concerned him most: hernias and hydration.

Our conversation focused mostly on hernias because I had recently been reading more about them myself.

What’s funny is that I never worried much about getting one when I first got my stoma. I went back to being active and eventually returned to the gym and mountain biking.

Years later, I started reading more about parastomal hernias and found myself thinking, Man, maybe I should have been paying more attention.

That doesn’t mean we should become afraid of movement. For me, it means becoming more intentional about it.

Rob brought up something else I hadn’t really considered. Sometimes he’s more conscious of the risk doing something ordinary—like helping his wife move a table—than when he’s playing a sport.

It makes sense. When you’re preparing to exercise, you know you’re about to be physical. Nobody warms up to move the dining-room table. You just grab one end and lift.

There’s a big difference between respecting your body and being scared of it. I want to stay on the respect side of that equation.

Finding the Right Level of Support

Rob wears a Stealth Belt Pro and told me that when he’s going to be more active, he simply tightens it more than he would when he’s lounging around.

I do something similar.

For me, a little extra compression can make physical activity feel more secure. It’s not about cranking a belt down as tightly as possible. It’s about adjusting the support for what I’m doing.

Rob had experimented with a larger binder-style product as well. He felt it could have a place for weightlifting, but found it too bulky and hot for what he wanted day to day. For him, the Stealth Belt gave him the balance he preferred between support and versatility.

That’s his experience, not a medical recommendation, and support garments shouldn’t be treated as a guarantee against developing a hernia.

But there’s a practical lesson here: the equipment we use has to fit the life we actually live.

Recovery Is Bigger Than the Stoma

Rob and I had different recovery experiences.

For me, recovering from the stoma itself wasn’t really the hardest part. I was recovering from everything my body had been through medically. It was almost like my entire energy system had been drained.

Before surgery, I was mountain biking about three times a week. I wanted to get back to that, but first I needed to get meback.

Eventually, I did.

Once my energy returned, something surprising happened: the stoma became almost irrelevant to whether I could mountain bike.

I got back on the bike.

That experience changed the way I think about recovery. Sometimes we put everything under the heading of “my ostomy” when our bodies may actually be recovering from surgery, illness, treatment, loss of strength and the emotional exhaustion that can come with all of it.

Recovery can be bigger than the stoma.

And that means the stoma doesn’t automatically have to define what happens next.

Life Gets Bigger Again

There’s a strange balance to living well with an ostomy.

You don’t want to forget about it so completely that you ignore your body. But you also don’t want to spend every day protecting yourself from a life you’re capable of living.

Pay attention. Learn your body. Get stronger gradually. Use whatever support works for you. Ask your healthcare team questions when you’re unsure.

Then go do something.

For Rob, that might mean pickleball. For me, it was getting back on a mountain bike. For somebody else, it might simply mean taking the first long walk since surgery, returning to the gym, going swimming or doing something they were convinced their ostomy had taken away from them.

And maybe one day, right in the middle of doing it, you’ll have the same realization I had at the gym.

I forgot I had a stoma.

Not because it disappeared.

Because your life finally got big enough again that, for a little while, it wasn’t the most important thing in it.