a year of losses and gains

For just over a year now, I’ve been working to improve my health and fitness. I’ve been pretty public about my weight loss and about the improvements to my overall fitness levels, often measured by how fast I can run and for how long. Because I believe my journey may be of encouraging assistance to others, I’m writing to share what I’ve learned over this past year.

I have a family history of ulcerative colitis. That plus a steady diet of excess consumption, and my inability to effectively deal with external stressors, first landed me in a gastroenterologist’s office in the winter of 2013. That visit resulted in my first colonoscopy before I even hit 40. To say I was the youngest person in the waiting room for that procedure would be an understatement by several decades. 

Just over six years after my first colonoscopy, I was forced to find a new gastro doctor as the first one had moved their practice out of town. I’d had a concerning flare up and the novelty of talking about internal butt cameras had long since worn away. This guy had the most direct bedside manner I’d ever experienced. I forgave myself for silently thinking he was fulfilling the stereotype of asian-american doctors, because I figured I had liberty for such thoughts, given my own hyphenated-americanism. As I sat there and stroked the egocentrism of my silent bigotry, the doctor punctured my reverie:

“You’re overweight.”

I stammered (and I don’t often stammer): “Well sure, a little, but compared to the average American I’m still on the smaller side, right?”

He gave a quick shake of his head. “You’re going to continue to experience these symptoms as long as you remain overweight.”

“So what do you recommend?”

Admirably, he didn’t roll his eyes or sigh. “I recommend you lose weight. Or, you can continue to take more meds until they don’t work and then we’ll find you different meds. But that will only cover the underlying causes, which are all aggravated when you’re overweight.”

This post-colonoscopy conversation took place in August of 2019. I took the good doctor’s words to heart, and spent all of August, September, October, and November in steadfast commitment to working my way back into running shape. This involved a combination of walking and very slowly jogging. I couldn’t afford to jog more than twice a week without risk of aggravating my knees and back or giving myself an overuse injury to the usual suspects of plantar fasciitis, iliotibial band syndrome, or sciatica. Each of these have messed up prior midlife flirtations with fitness.

Have you ever seen a clapped-out old pickup truck struggling under the combined mass of its driver, passengers, and truck bed full of junk? That’s pretty much how my feet, knees, hips, and back felt whenever I ran more than a couple of times a week. This sucked, because I knew that if I could just run on a consistent basis (read: more than twice a week) I could lose weight and keep it off. I also knew I was too heavy to run on a consistent basis without hurting myself. This was my November 2019 action research question: How can I lose weight relatively quickly and safely in order to get down to a body mass that would allow me to run without blowing something out? 

I call the answers that I found and have since proven the Gospel of Rhythm. Check back next week for what I’ve got to say about that. And, I’ll share the resources I found beneficial for my own learning and progress, as well as a few example weeks from my training logs.