It took me years to get to the point I am at now. The fibro makes you tired and you hurt, so you don't want to exercise. Besides, I had spent most of my life avoiding exercise. But because my family has such a bad medical history--heart disease, type II diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.--and I have been on meds for high blood pressure and cholesterol, I knew I was headed in the same direction.

I was also very overweight, which aggravates all of the above. In the end, because I didn't want to die at a relatively young age, I decided to do a program through my gym that helps you develop healthy eating and exercise patterns. One breakthrough was finding out the best time of day for me to exercise. Unlike many people with fibro, that was early in the morning. I don't sleep well (another symptom of fibro) and I get up early. Trying to go to the gym after work wasn't happening. I was always too tired and hurt too much. But early in the morning was great.

Maybe your mom needs to go through the kind of counseling that I went through. Hearing what you need to do from nonfamily members sometimes works better. And eventually you start to feel better and that motivates you to do more. When I started I found walking 10 minutes at 2.5 mph was hard. Now I start at 4 mph and can do some runs at 5.5 and I do 45 mins to an hour on the treadmill. I wouldn't have believed that if you told me at 50 that I would be riding a bike for more than 20 miles at a time and doing 5K races.

Maybe a gift certificate to try out some gym services would help. A lifestyle trainer rather than just someone who works out an exercise program might work better. It also helps to have a gym with a lot of older members. Young things in spandex usually put off older exercisers, at least at first.

I hope your mom can get through this. As my rheumatologist says--fibro won't kill you, you'll just wish it did!