A Weighty Matter

The 21st century Battle of the Bulge
(Courtesy o5com @ Flickr)

OK. Those are not my feet, but you get the idea. We are a land of overweight people, struggling to lose some of our largess instead of our pride. The timelapserunner has never thought of himself as fat, but at one point on the timeline of life, this marathoner wannabe tilted in at the tidy sum of 187 pounds. On a 5'7" frame, that was not an altogether pretty sight. Funny, I didn't 'feel' fat then. It took seeing the number on the scale and recognizing that I had 'gone where I had never gone before' to set off the alarm bells in my brain.

None of us benefit from being overweight; it's hard on us for all the obvious health reasons. But some reasons are less obvious than others. For example, did you know that the force on your hips and knees when you're walking is 1.5 times your body weight. Start running and the multiplier jumps to 4 or 5. That's a lot of stress on a runner's moving parts and not exactly what a runner wants to feel at each pounding of the pavement. Add extra weight and, ... well, you get the picture.

The timelapserunner identifies with all those who've been fighting this battle of the bulge. His weight has been up and down for years as he moved back and forth from the couch to the street and back again. A recounting of just the past four years should convey the impression that both the big and little upsets in life can have a profound effect on managing one's weight.

A chart of timelapserunner's weight over the past 4 years

We started a speed walking program in the summer of 2008, a program that gradually progressed to jogging but came to a sudden halt coincident with a rare snow and ice storm that year. I went out to run, nearly broke my neck slipping on the ice and didn't lace up the exercise shoes for another two and a half years! The hope is that the yo-yo-ing will now stop and we've actually made a lasting lifestyle change in the past fifteen months. Only time will tell.

Online BMI Calculator results for this week's weight

At this point, we will be grateful for what we have and for what we are able to do. It's a blessing to be healthy enough to walk, much less run. So, gratitude is the operative word.

We've moved our body mass index (BMI) back into the high normal range (i.e., a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal) for the first time in recent memory and that is a good thing too. However, Jeff Galloway cautions us to not be fooled by the myth that training for a marathon will simply vaporize the pounds, especially the fat pounds. Therefore, I'm not setting any new weight targets anymore. As you can see in the chart, my weight has pretty much stabilized. If it stays there, great. (Perhaps a few less chips at the local Mexican restaurant should be part of my training plan, however.)

TODAY'S WORKOUT: Another uneventful 3 miles walking at roughly 15:43 per mile. Rain threatened, it seemed ... but never materialized. Not glamorous but hopefully effective.