Back pain + a few other questions

Hey all, got a couple of quick questions for you.

Just a little bit of essential information:

Height: 5'10
Weight: Pushing 210 lbs
Gender: M
Age: 18

Right well basically about 2 and a half years ago I weighed around 170-180 lbs, but went through a long period of depression, anxiety and couldn't get much exercise and over-ate junk food a lot. This lasted about a year and a half and resulted in me putting on about 30-40 lbs. Over the past year, my diet has still not been great but I have joined a new football (soccer) team, started going to the gym, but over the recent weeks I've improved my diet.

One thing I have noticed as I started to train is I've been having some issues with my lower back. It has only really affected me when I have been jogging, so much so after 5 minutes the pain is unbearable, but oddly enough not when I play football. As I have begun to train a little harder (must stress that I don't think I am overtraining) it's become worse, so much that I can feel it constantly as I go about my daily business, it doesn't really hinder me but I can feel it.
Now, my theory on this is the amount of weight I put on in such a short amount of time, since I have never been anything but Under/Normal weight before this my back is probably not used to the pressure. During the time I put on the weight I led such a sedentary lifestyle, which could contribute to my theory. There has been no specific incident where I have wrenched my back or something to antagonise this sort of injury. So what do you think the cause may be? And could you give me any advice before I waste a day sitting in my doctor's waiting room? Or do you think the problem will persist untill I lose some weight?

Onto another question, I play football at a reasonably high level but have always been injury prone even before my diet was diabolical. Is there any sort of supplements I could take I could take to help with the problem? (I currently only take multivitamins, omega 3 and green tea (to help with weight loss))

And a random one, is there any serious adverse effects of taking too many antioxidants? I know antioxidant supplement can have side effects, but I'm talking about using too many of them possibly having an effect on the immune system?

Cheers in advance guys, even if you just took the time to read it.

quote HBK619

Losing weight will take stress off your joints and likely help the situation, so diet is going to be important.

If you were sedentary, you likely sat down a lot and developed some shortened hip flexors which probably caused some anterior pelvic tilt.

Can you do a plank hold for 2 minutes?

Try doing the couch stretch 2-3 times a day to stretch out your hip flexors and do the plank twice a day until you can do it for a comfortable 2 minutes. Also try doing some glute bridges and bird dogs, 2-3 sets of 10-20 reps each should do it. This should correct the problem (as well as if you change your sitting posture) by stretching out your tight hip flexors, activating your inhibited glutes (ass muscles) and strengthen your core.

In the 70s they figured out aging was caused by oxidative damage, and anti-oxidants from food prevented this. So people started mega-dosing vitamin a, c and e, trying to be healthier. It turned out that while getting the recommended daily amount of these vitamins from whole foods is good, getting supra-physiological doses from supplements actually made people die younger. So, try to get your anti-oxidants from whole foods, as there's likely beneficial components to whole foods that haven't even been discovered yet, and take a multi to cover your bases, but don't start taking vitamin c tablets or something like that.

Thanks for the advice, I'll try doing the stretches today.
Is it an idea to rest from my football a little bit? The pain is getting pretty intense while I play. I'm going to try exercise with less impact, such as swimming to lose weight.

As for antioxidants, I was just curious since I have seen them heavily advertised all over the place. I won't invest though, I'll just try and add a bit more nutrition to my diet.

Thanks again HBK.

quote HBK619

Yeah it might be worth taking a little bit of time off from football to try and let it heal, but some moderate intensity exercise may help, as well as doing the stretches and exercises I mentioned.

Well it's been a few weeks now, I've dropped a few pounds but my back is worse if anything.
I'm getting closer to 2 minutes on the plank, but I can't do the couch stretch at all, I'm ridiculously inflexible. Bird dogs and glute bridges seem to aggrivate my back more than anything.

I've noticed my stance is a bit weird, my ass seems to stick out and I seem to naturally lean forward with the upper half of my body, which I think supports your theory?

Also, in terms of losing weight, I'm struggling to do a lot of compound moves; squats, deadlifts and barbell row are the worst, but I know I need to do weights to avoid muscle loss. Obviously I'm not going to do them moves if they are going to make my back worse, so do you have any other suggestions?