To Run

It appears that it has only been a little over a month since my last blog posting. I don't feel nearly as badly as I did a few days ago when it suddenly occurred to me that I had a blog at all.

I'm not much of one for goal setting. Don't get me wrong, I continue to try to set goals, it just seems that I do so in vain. The goal setting has significantly diminished in the last few years as I began to come to terms with my personality and life choices. You've probably noticed this, as I've given up speaking about weight loss and getting myself into shape for some ellusive health benefits. You should know that this doesn't mean that I stopped having this goal, I simply changed my approach.

I had to come to terms with some other elements of healthy living before I could really tackle weight loss. I have come to terms with one: exercise. This life adjustment could not have come at a better time. When I began teaching, my stress-stomach and anxiety nightmares from my undergraduate years came rushing back with a vengeance (less so on the stomach front which I attribute to a low gluten diet); and to think that I wasted so much of my time worrying about a little thing like school back then! It was truly silly of me. I will grant you, this level of stress over a job is also truly silly. Exercise saved my sanity when I thought I might lose my mind completely.

I'm sure I must have mentioned bootcamp back when I began, but my posts have been so few and far between lately that I'm certain its time for a refresher. I work out at 5:40 am 4 days a week on the edge of the Willamette River. I am still not the most diligent attendee, but I feel like I have finally worked the program into my schedule so that I am there most days. Its difficult when your friends and significant other have a completely different sleep schedule than your own. I would rather put myself to bed at 9pm every evening, but find it difficult to wind down before 10 simply because everyone else is still awake. Don't misconstrue the explanation for blame; I have no one to blame but myself when I can't roll out of bed at 4:45am on Monday because I've neglected my sleep schedule for two days. Slowly, I am getting used to saying no, getting used to saying "i'm tired" and doing something about it, and getting used to spending more of my evenings quietly and somewhat alone. I'm an introverted person, ultimately its an additional assist to my sanity to live this way. Being alone more has meant a stronger feeling of stability and calm.

There has been one draw back, though. Around the time of my last post, my knees began to hurt. It wasn't just a "oh, I'm a little sore from working out" kind of hurt, but a deep pain that made me stiff if I sat too long and caused me to wince when I walked up and down the stairs. It hurt to walk, it hurt to run, it hurt to sit, it hurt to stand. I am a problem solver by nature, and this was a prime time for my brain to start working it out. I started icing every couple days when the pain was fairly minimal. It helped a tiny bit, but not significantly.

The off week of bootcamp rolled around and I took the whole week off from exercise. Whether it was the lack of movement or the fact that I started carrying a shoulder bag that week (or both), I'm not sure, but the pain became worse. I gave up heels completely (I was only wearing very low heels with broad bases) and bought a new mattress. The pain reduced. Bootcamp started up again and that seemed to help a bit more. I acquired new running shoes and felt a bit more relief. About the same time that bootcamp started back up and I got the new shoes, the school term ended and I didn't need to carry around over 30 pounds of extra weight on my back...

Oh.

Its impressive that I didn't even consider this as a possible cause of my pain.

Its also impressive what a single pound of weight does to the amount of pressure your joints experience. Its a 1 to 4 ratio. For every single pound added to your load (weight gained or weight carried), your joints (knees, hips, and lower vertebrae especially) experience 4 extra pounds of pressure during movement. That's intense! No wonder my knees hurt. Every time i walked a half mile from the bus to school or vice versa, my joints were experienced around 120 extra pounds of load bearing pressure with every step than they would have if I had no bag. This has changed my perspective completely on weight loss goals.

I started out a couple years ago with the general idea of being "healthier" if I reduced the amount of weight I carried. To me this meant less of a chance of cancer or diabetes down the road (both prevalent in my family). But what twenty-something in their sane mind can actually achieve a goal based on consequences "down the road"? Needless to say, I've hovered between 10 and 20 pounds above my goal for two years now).

The knee pain, though... that got to me. Its not that I didn't know that joint pain was a future ailment on "things you can avoid" list of weight loss; my mother is a very tall woman and she would admit to maybe not carrying an ideal amount of weight on her already large frame. She's in pain most days. So, yes, I knew that it could be a consequence. My mother is, however, twice my age and 6 inches taller than I. Why would I think that I had any risk of joint pain? Because I didn't consider my love of running or my addiction to academics when I thought about joint pain, I only considered my upper end of a healthy BMI weight.

I'm working myself up to achieving two goals: losing between 8 and 12 pounds and buying a rolling backpack. The middle schooler inside me that still desperately wants to be the cool kid thinks that the first goal sounds like the easier of the two. Summer term has allowed me to carry less weight and has bought me some time to work up to a bag that will brand me as an old lady. I'm considering something more along the lines of a rolling briefcase... I won't feel nearly as out of place at work with a rolling briefcase.

You might ask why I bother with the 8 to 12 pounds, if I am replacing my backpack. It comes back to that first love that I didn't consider when it came to joint pain: running. I've dreamed of running a marathon since I was 15. I'm currently working my way up to a 5K. Then I'll move on to a 10K, then a half marathon, then a marathon... maybe I'll even do a triathlon if I can ever get into swimming. I'll pay for the running later in life no matter what, but I'll pay less if I weigh less. Simple as that.

Weight loss goals are not something I achieve easily as you might have figured. But if I want to run, I need to do this. And I want to run.