Diet. WHAT?
Those of you who know me from high school will remember that when I graduated, I weighed 115 pounds (52kg, about 8 stone). I even made a bet (which I won) with my best friend's father that I wouldn't be overweight on my 40th birthday. By 1998, I was still only at 125. Then I quit smoking, and almost immediately jumped to 140. A heart-disease scare the next year got me into the gym, where over the next couple years I put on another 15lb or so of muscle.
So far so good. 5'9.5" and right in the middle of the normal weight range. But then, somewhere between five and ten years ago, the switch broke. I'm talking about my perfect "I'm full" switch what would sometimes cause me to put down a forkful of food. No longer was it physically unpleasant to continue eating after I was no longer hungry. The weight started to creep up, thanks to all the usual bad eating factors. It only crept up, because I never stopped exercising. By last year it had leveled off in the upper 160s. Not good but not too horrible, either. Then came the broken feet.
The first broken foot, last Father's Day, wasn't so bad because I could still swim. The ankle stress fracture last October was worse, though. It left me pretty sedentary until I started running again this past March. But since I had to start from scratch, I wasn't burning many calories on the track, and my eating habits were still pretty bad. I hit 180, and took the Zeroth Step: "This shit has got to stop". Never mind that by most charts I still wasn't technically overweight for my height and activity level--I was too big for *me*.
(Sidebar: I should make it clear that I'm NOT looking for sympathy. So many people I know have struggled with weight issues their entire lives, and I had 50 years of never having to give it a second thought. I'm just talking about that increasingly rare thing: a completely new experience.)
So for the last 3-4 weeks (I can't remember exactly when I started this), I've been on a 1500cal/day, colorful-food, no-junk diet. It helps that I'm pretty sure I've identified pizza as a migraine trigger. As expected, the first ten pounds melted off. I think that's mostly the no-junk part, because that really lowered my salt intake, so I'm retaining less water. I'm down a total of 14 so far, and it really hasn't been "DIE with a T".
I haven't set a hard goal, though; something in the 145-155 range should be OK. The qualitative goal is to make running easier. Right now it's all I can do to little-engine-that-could my way through a 5K. There's been noticeable improvement: My times are no better, but my torso has become less jiggly--I don't feel like I'm carrying a baby in a sling when I run. Also, less weight means less strain on what Louis C.K. calls the "incurable shitty ankle". Oh, and mitigating my genetic predisposition for heart attacks and diabetes might be a good thing, too.
We'll see how it goes.
So far so good. 5'9.5" and right in the middle of the normal weight range. But then, somewhere between five and ten years ago, the switch broke. I'm talking about my perfect "I'm full" switch what would sometimes cause me to put down a forkful of food. No longer was it physically unpleasant to continue eating after I was no longer hungry. The weight started to creep up, thanks to all the usual bad eating factors. It only crept up, because I never stopped exercising. By last year it had leveled off in the upper 160s. Not good but not too horrible, either. Then came the broken feet.
The first broken foot, last Father's Day, wasn't so bad because I could still swim. The ankle stress fracture last October was worse, though. It left me pretty sedentary until I started running again this past March. But since I had to start from scratch, I wasn't burning many calories on the track, and my eating habits were still pretty bad. I hit 180, and took the Zeroth Step: "This shit has got to stop". Never mind that by most charts I still wasn't technically overweight for my height and activity level--I was too big for *me*.
(Sidebar: I should make it clear that I'm NOT looking for sympathy. So many people I know have struggled with weight issues their entire lives, and I had 50 years of never having to give it a second thought. I'm just talking about that increasingly rare thing: a completely new experience.)
So for the last 3-4 weeks (I can't remember exactly when I started this), I've been on a 1500cal/day, colorful-food, no-junk diet. It helps that I'm pretty sure I've identified pizza as a migraine trigger. As expected, the first ten pounds melted off. I think that's mostly the no-junk part, because that really lowered my salt intake, so I'm retaining less water. I'm down a total of 14 so far, and it really hasn't been "DIE with a T".
I haven't set a hard goal, though; something in the 145-155 range should be OK. The qualitative goal is to make running easier. Right now it's all I can do to little-engine-that-could my way through a 5K. There's been noticeable improvement: My times are no better, but my torso has become less jiggly--I don't feel like I'm carrying a baby in a sling when I run. Also, less weight means less strain on what Louis C.K. calls the "incurable shitty ankle". Oh, and mitigating my genetic predisposition for heart attacks and diabetes might be a good thing, too.
We'll see how it goes.