I am one of those people whose weight fluctuated dramatically over the years. I have documented most of this in previous posts, but I will provide the short version here. I first gained substantial weight while my ex-wife was pregnant with our first son. Our second son a few years later pushed my weight up and my belly out.
Shortly after he was born, I lost a chunk of weight but was still heavier than I would have liked. In 2009, I quit smoking and my weight shot up dramatically. I reached the heaviest of my life that winter, tipping the scales at nearly 280 pounds. Then the first overall lifestyle change ocurred. I found cycling and running and healthy eating and dropped over 100 pounds, leveling off at 168. I didn’t stay there long. A slow march over the next few years got me back up to 220.
In early 2015, my ex-wife and I (still married at the time) exerienced an extended split. During that period, I found Intermintent Fasting, or IF. I also set a goal of running a marathon, which I completed in January of 2016 at Walt Disney World. Between IF and the constant running, I got myself back down to 190 lbs.
This is me right after completing my first marathon
Shortly before the marathon, I reconciled with my ex and returned to much of my former lifestyle. Again, the weight began to creep up. In 2018, the same person who turned me on to IF introduced me to the Ketogenic diet. I was aware of Keto prior and I even knew a couple of people who made it their primary lifestyl choice, but I didn’t really understand it. But it worked. I started 2018 married and 225. By fall of that year, I was 174 and divorcing (it would stick this time).
Over the last few years I have wandered in and out of Keto, Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescaterian, IF, and “eat whatever the hell I want.” I go on benders with candy and bread and wine and beer. The latter two are, what I believe, the primary culprit of why I have gained so much weight back. I also believe, as there are more and more studies to show this, that being keto for so long messed up my metaboilism. I will not get into the science of it here, but essentially your body forgots how to properly process sugars, akin to diabetes.
So between the wine and beer and bread and candy, I am once again creeping on 230 pounds. It is a new year. It is time for change. New Year’s Resolutions are a joke and we all fall into the trap because they are so often impossible to maintain. Yet here I am, about to attempt one.
In three days, I leave for Florida to compete in The Dopey Challenge. I going to run 48.6 miles over four days way too heavy. I have no idea what is going to happen, but I do nto want to do it at 228 pounds like I am this morning.
I am going to begin by fasting. I normally follow The Warrior Diet, which is a twenty hour fast with a four hour eat window. That is not going to cut it this week. I going to attempt a 30 hour (at the time of writing this, I am already 11 hours in) fast followed by a 36 hour fast. This should knock several pounds off. When you are running that much, a few pounds can make a huge difference.
I will keep you up date on the progess as the week develops. Wish me luck.
It is no exaggeration to say that many of the choices I was making ten years ago were killing me. My food intake was horrific. I never exercised. Stress over life, marriage, and employment was as high as it could be. I was also a two-pack-a-day smoker. Today, all of that has changed. I have become a fitness junkie, substituting nearly all of my bad habits for good ones. Of all of them, running has had the most profound affect on me. Here are the three ways running changed my life.
#3 – Running kept me away from smoking
On June 15th of 2009, I made one monumental choice that fundamentally led me on a healthier path. I quit smoking cigarettes and I did it cold turkey. I would love to say that my entire life turned around in that instant, but the truth is that things got worse before they got better. My weight ballooned because I replaced the cigarettes with food. It was actually candy and high calorie snacks that found my stomach. Eventually I hit my maximum weight of 279 pounds in December of that year.
Beginning in January of 2010, I fundamentally changed my diet and began to workout incessantly. I started with a recumbent stationary bike, but by late Spring I had started running as well.
Running with my oldest son before my first 5k
Starting a running regimen was infinitely harder than riding a bike for me. Running’s cardiovascular requirements are, at least for me, much more demanding on the heart and lungs. My heart rate would regularly be high, in the area of 185 beats per minute. On top of that, my lungs would burn. I was only a year out from smoking at that time. While that is a significant time to allow the lungs to heal, it takes longer for the vascular system to rebound and achieve proper function.
My early running days required a constant internal struggle to stay the course. The pain of adjusting my body to running and the difficulty in staying motivated were real. There is no way I would have been able to continue running if I was still a smoker. As a matter of fact, I likely never would have started running. By maintaining running as a part of my life, I never desire a cigarette. I haven’t wanted one in years. I love running too much to risk my ability to do it effectively.
#2 – I get by with a little help from my friends
When I first got involved in running in 2010, I knew no one else that ran. I always ran by myself. My first 5k was that summer but I had no one at the start line for encouragement. When I finished that race, I did know someone at the finish line. It was a woman I went to high school with. It was nice to commiserate about the run and discuss future events.
Somewhere along my fitness journey, someone told me about a website they used to track their fitness and stay motivated. It was called Daily Mile. Sadly, the website shut down in 2019. I could write a whole story about what was great about the site, but let me just paraphrase by saying is was a Facebook for athletes. You posted your workout and race results and your friends and others could comment on them.
Jeff and Michele Richardson have been friends for years. We met through Daily Mile
Through that website, I connected with runners and cyclists from around the country. Most importantly, I formed friendships with some local athletes. A few of those people have become close friends and remain so to this day. These local people I connected with were often at the same races I was attending. Soon, I was participating in meet-ups and casual conversations at all my events.
Fitness is a journey without a defined destination. Along the way, there are times you feel less motivated than you want to be. There have even been times for me over the decade that I have stopped working out altogether. It is my cohort in fitness that has always nudged me back into it. By maintaining a connection with athletes through social media and fitness groups, I always find my way back to my path.
On my Tech Tuesday post this week, I emphasized how much I hate treadmills. While I admit they serve a vital purpose, I would never in my life choose the treadmill over the road on a nice day. Running on a good trail or safe road is the superior choice 100 times out of 100. Not only is the physics of the process more beneficial to efficient training, the scenery is better as well. I find peace and tranquility on a slightly foggy morning in the woods. That never happens on a treadmill.
One of the greatest joys I have had in running is competing in destination races. The problem with running a 5k or half marathon near home is that I often know the route intimately. There is nothing new for me to see. It is a glorious thing to get to see a different city or country and run somewhere new.
I have been lucky in life to be able to attend a number of runDisney races over the years, starting in 2016. In January of that year, at the age of 40, I ran my first full marathon at Walt Disney World in Florida. The 26.2 miles took me through all four parks featuring some exciting glimpses of backstage areas. Over my many trips to Disney, I have run at almost every one of the resorts as well. New Balance sponsored a series of designated running trails at nearly all the resorts on property. Each one has its own charm.
Everywhere I go, I try to get a run in. I ran in California while visiting Disneyland in 2018. I have run in the Bahamas on Castaway Cay while on the Disney Cruise. That is their private island and they offer an official 5k on the morning of the arrival there. I have also run countless miles on the fourth deck of The Disney Dream, which is the cruise ship I have sailed on several times.
My 2019 Marine Corps Marathon post-race pic
I have run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. twice. The sites and sounds of that race rival anything else I have participated in. You run through Georgetown, Potomac Park, The National Mall, Crystal City, The Pentagon, and end in Arlington National Cemetery. There are very few events as awe-inspiring as that marathon.
I have run the boardwalk in Virginia Beach, home of the annual Shamrock Run, but never during that popular race. Central Park and Times Square have been backdrops of several runs for me. The hustle and bustle of New York City has an amazing way of spurring you on to a faster pace.
The hilly jungles of Saint Lucia are perhaps the most difficult I have experienced. The tranquil wonder of that island exceeds any other place I have visited. With that said, its oppressive heat and agonizing slopes make it a difficult place to run.
Slow down with a run
Travel is the best way to vacation. Unfortunately, we are often in a hurry to reach our destination. We jump from cab to plane to bus to train. We rush past people in the street to be the first in the door, first to get a table, first to take a picture, and the first to get on the plane to go home. While we are supposed to be decompressing and relaxing, we often speed up even more.
Take the time to jog around the places you visit. A thirty minute run is the perfect way to see the intimate details of your environment that are lost in an Uber. I like to run before my family wakes up. Seeing the sunrise on the ocean or behind a mountain is the most amazing way to start a day.
If you are just reaching a point in your life that you are considering running for health, these have been just three reasons running has changed my life. There are countless other ways it will change yours. Run for your health. Or Run for new relationships. You can Run to see the world. Run for any other reason you can think of. Just Run.
In last week’s Fitness Friday post I recalled my history with weight gain and how I began my fitness journey. I will not recount the whole thing here for the sake of time, but I encourage you to click the link and check it out. The short version is that I reached my max weight in December of 2009. I tipped the scales at 279 pounds. The breaking point for me was a double whammy. It started one day that fall when my oldest son walked up to my ex-wife and pushed out his belly and said to my ex-wife that he wanted to be fat like his Dad. The straw that broke the camel’s back was walking into the bathroom one morning around my birthday and seeing actual stretch marks on my stomach.
In January of 2010 I made the decision to restrict my calorie intake while working out as much as I could. I bought a recumbent stationary bike and got to work. By the end of that spring, I was riding the bike three hours a day. That summer I started running and ran my first 5k in August. In less than one year I lost 100 lbs.
This is me jogging warm-up with my oldest son before my first 5k in 2010.
Over the years, I gained a lot of it back and then lost it again, and then gained it back again, and then lost it again. This is not an uncommon cycle.
I believe I have finally found a semblance of balance. While I am not at what I would consider an ideal weight, my other fitness markers allow me to feel content. I currently weight around 200 lbs depending on the day, but I have struggled with some diet choices in the last year. I will talk about that in further detail in Step 2.
Our weight and its effects are a uniquely human anomaly. We often gain weight at an alarming rate all whilst denying the obvious and explaining it away as a temporary change. For example we will proclaim that we always gain weight in the winter. It’s just winter weight, after all. Or we will put on ten pounds during the holidays and tell people that we do this every year and it will come off on its own. Worst yet, we will dismiss the weight gain as a unfortunate reality of getting older.
Losing weight has the opposite effect on our psyche but it is actually more devastating. As we lose the weight, we fail to sense the progress. Our need to be thin clouds the positive changes. Once we accomplish our weight loss, we will look at ourselves in the mirror or in pictures and still see a fat person. The absolute worst thing generally comes from our loved ones. When they see us with a dramatically different appearance, they will often tell us we look too thin. We look sick. This has a tragic effect on the mind. We often allow that mind-trick to derail our willpower and we slip back into old habits. And the weight begins to come back.
Have faith you can do this. Here are the five steps to go from fat to fitness.
Step 1: See your physician
It is important to note that I am not a doctor. I am also not a certified trainer, a nutritionist, or a dietitian. All I am is a person who has a long history with weight issues and I have had success transforming my body. With that said, before you attempt any weight loss journey, consult your physician. The first step is to get a full physical and have your labs checked for any possible health concerns.
Seeing your physician is paramount before beginning any fitness journey
Once you and your doctor have a clear understanding of your health, you can discuss what the best first steps are. If you are a life long smoker and have developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, you may not be able to run. For those of you that have extensive osteoarthritis, you may not be able to run. If you have diabetes, there may be dietary restrictions you have to follow. The benefit of having a clear understanding of you health is that you can compare your numbers once you have accomplished your goals.
When you get the green light from your doctor to begin your journey, you may want to find professionals to help guide you along the way. The first two that come to mind would be a personal trainer and a nutritionist. There is something important to keep in mind when choosing your health and wellness professionals. Personal trainers and nutritionists do not require any former schooling. There is also very little regulation of their industries. Be sure to consult family and friends to find a reputable professional that will be a good fit for you.
Step 2: Decide on a diet and stick to it
Before you ever step into a gym or start walking for exercise, you need to begin eating right. There is an expansive number of dietary options out there and they all have their benefits and detriments. As I stated above, when I went through my initial weight loss journey, I subscribed to the idea of Calories In / Calories Out. That is the idea that if you burn more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. This is common sense, in theory.
The reality is that the metabolism of the human body is unbelievably complex. It depends on a certain balance to maintain health and while you may lose weight quickly through starvation, the body will make evolutionary hormonal changes to ensure it returns to its set point. What that means to you is that if you starve yourself to lose weight, you are practically guaranteed to gain it all back.
During a period of effective weight loss a couple of years ago, I found lasting success with the Ketogenic Diet. The Keto diet, as it is often called, requires you to avoid carbohydrates at all costs. With most plans, you must remain under 35 grams of carbs a day. With Keto, even protein should be reduced with fat becoming the primary source of energy. I will save the science of Keto for another post, but I have had success with it. As a matter of fact, I am currently living a Keto lifestyle.
The ketogenic diet has brought me a lot of success but you need to find the diet best suited to you
Other eating lifestyles that many people have healthy success with are Whole Food and Plant Based diets. These are both self explanatory. Separate from food intake, another type of lifestyle choice I advocate for is Intermittent Fasting which is otherwise known as IF. This requires you to go for extended periods of time without eating. We all fast for a period of time every day. We do not eat while we are sleeping, thus the first meal of the day is called breakfast. In other words, we are breaking our fast. There are several methods, or IF protocols you can follow, but try them until you find one that is best for you. The longer the fast period, the better the benefits. I participate in The Warrior Diet protocol. This entails a 20 hour fast period followed by a four hour eat window.
Step 3: Begin an exercise routine
When I lost the weight in 2010, I was incredibly out of shape. I was still strong from my years in the Marine Corps, but I had nearly zero cardiovascular endurance. When I first bought my stationary bike, I would be exhausted after less than thirty minutes. By that summer, I was easily pedaling away for three hours at a time. In the summer, I started running. At first, I could not effectively jog for more than a half of a mile at a time. By the end of the summer, I ran a rather fast 5k.
Fast forward ten years to today and my fitness is at its peak. In 2019, I participated in 26 events. They were a mix of running and cycling. I ran 10 Half Marathons (13.1 miles) and 2 full marathons (26.2 miles). I rode my bike in five charity events that were 100 miles a piece. Three times in the last four years, I have participated in The Dopey Challenge at Walt Disney World. This is four races over four consecutive days. The runs consist of a 5k (3.1 miles), 10k (6.2 miles), half marathon (13.1 miles), and a full marathon (26.2 miles). That is a total of 48.6 miles in four days.
The 6 medals I received for the 2019 Dopey Challenge. Four races and two challenges. A total of 48.6 miles.
You can get there, but it won’t happen overnight. You have to walk before you can run. I hear people say all the time that they don’t like to run. I agree it is an acquired taste, but trust me when I tell you that if you keep doing it, you will fall in love with it. They call it the runner’s high and it is a real thing. It is an endorphin surge that occurs in the brain in response to long periods of high cardiovascular activity. If you get there, you are effectively hooked on running.
The reality is that not everyone can run. You may have limitations from a previous injury or arthritis that restricts your ability to bear the weight and impact of running. If that is the case, get on a bike. You can get an amazing workout on a bike without the strain on your joints, whether you ride on a trail or on the road. If cycling is also not your thing, swimming is a wonderful full body workout that takes all the gravitational effects off your body. This may be especially helpfully if you begin this journey morbidly obese.
Step 4: Set realistic goals
Once you decide to get started with exercise, set a realistic goal and work toward it. Depending on your current weight and health, setting a one mile walking goal may be it. If you have been healthy in the past but declined in recent years, perhaps a 5k is a good goal. If you are more ambitious, set a half marathon as your goal. Regardless of your goal, keep your eye on the prize.
Your exercise journey is not complete if you reach your goal. That is the time to set a new goal. Health and fitness is a lifestyle. Once you start to live it, keep living it. I did not run my first full marathon until I was 40. It doesn’t matter how old you are or how heavy you are, set a realistic goal and get to work.
Setting a weight goal is difficult. We all have an ideal weight, based on national health standards or past weights where we felt our best. But I will caution that weight isn’t the most important marker. Health and fitness and your measurements are the primary benchmarks of success. Instead of focusing on pounds, aim for a clothing size. How you look and feel is infinitely more important than what the scale says.
With that said, weigh and measure yourself often. Track your progress in the app of your choice. I have used a number of them over the years. I am currently using Samsung Health to track my health markers and I use Strava to track fitness.
Strava is my app of choice for tracking fitness
In a future post, I will break down some of the apps I have used over the years.
Step 5: Join a group or several
In today’s fitness world, there are all kinds of groups you can belong to. There are peer social groups like Meetup that will organize runs, bike rides, or hikes. There are local run groups all over the country that schedule group runs and sponsor event training. Nearly every city has a cycling club that offer weekly rides of varying difficulty. There are even online groups that you can join that are effectively all over the world. I am a member of several of these groups. Regardless of the race I attend, there is someone from one of those groups there.
RWB is just one of several running groups I participate in.
The best thing to do when you are getting started is to find friends that are into fitness and tag along with them. Eventually, they will introduce you to groups and you can find the best ones for you. The primary benefits to these groups is that they provide a sense of community and they also help to hold you accountable. That is invaluable to achieving success.
I have done all of this and you can too
They often say that it is about the journey and not the destination. This is especially true when it comes to your health and fitness journey. The last ten years of my life have provided the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I have had pitfalls along the way, but I have always returned to the correct path.
It will be hard at times but it will also be hugely rewarding. You just need to stick with it.
As you are preparing to begin your fitness journey, please know that the first step you take will be the hardest. Everything gets easier as you do it.
Have faith you can do this.
Christopher Hess, LMT
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Note: Over the next week, I will be introducing readers (however few there are) to the new format of The Daily Octane. Each day will be the topic reveal for that calendar day going forward. Additionally, I will provide context for why I feel I have ANY business even writing about the subject.
I was never really thin as a child. I wasn’t exactly fat either. Rather, I existed somewhere in the middle of the road. Taking a gander back at yearbook pics and such has led me to understand that I was fairly nondescript. In High School, that can actually be a good thing. Best to not stand out either way. I played some sports in school. In the 7th and 8th grade, I tried to play basketball. That was at the peak of Michael Jordan’s career and everyone wanted to “Be Like Mike.” I was no exception. I was also not tall, athletic, or talented. In the 9th and 10th grades, I wrestled. I was actually decent at the sport, even pinning a kid from a rival school in just nine seconds in a match. That’s a true story and also the highlight of my wrestling career. I likely could have done more, but I spent the majority of the time academically ineligible. Why? Well, I had a love/hate relationship with homework. I golfed in high school as well. My Grandfather was an avid golfer. He was good, too. I spent a number of years idolizing that man and golf was a way of getting his attention. It didn’t work. He never once even asked me to golf with him…
Scholastic sports aside, something profound happened to me in the Spring of 1991. I was in the second half of my Sophomore year of High School and had a love affair with movies. As most kids my age at the time, I was a huge fan of The Two Coreys. Corey Haim and Corey Feldman were in nearly all the influential movies of my youth. While their stories are tragic when viewed through the lens of hindsight, at the time they were my heroes. Enter Prayer of the Rollerboys!
Something about this movie struck a chord with me. I am not sure if it was the post 80s dystopian aesthetic, or the young Patricia Arquette’s natural sexiness (I was definitely deep into puberty) or the rebellious actions of the protagonists, but something excited me to no end. As is human nature, I wanted to emulate something I loved. I wanted to get Rollerblades.
Over the next couple of years, I formed a passionate love affair with the sport of in-line skating. I skated for fitness, I skated for sport, and I skated for fun. I watched the X-Games on ESPN and tried to mimic their moves (often with tragic consequences). To be wholly truthful, I got really good at it.
Shortly after High School, I joined the United States Marine Corps, where I began to travel the World. And everywhere I went, I brought my skates. I skated in North Caroline, Florida, Okinawa, Thailand, and California. I skated everywhere I could right up until the popularity of inline skating dwindled. I started to notice that when I was skating around, I was the only person skating around. That led to awkwardness, which ultimately led to a painful decision to stop altogether.
When my second wife (these are stories for another time) got pregnant for our oldest son in 2002, I started gaining some weight with her. When she lost the pregnancy weight after he was born, I didn’t. When she got pregnant with our second son in 2005, I gained even more weight with her. When she again lost the weight after he was born, coincidentally I did not. In 2009, in response to her constant harassment, I chose to quit smoking. On June 15th of 2009, I smoked my last cigarette, totally cold turkey. What I didn’t quit was the oral fetish associated with smoking and over the next several months my weight ballooned to an all time high of 279 lbs. That was my weight on my birthday in 2009 at the age of 34. Worse yet, when I lumbered into the bathroom to shower on the morning of my birthday, I saw in the mirror something that shocked me to the core: I had stretch marks on my stomach.
It is not easy sharing this picture. This is not even my heaviest. This is three weeks into the process when I finally found the courage to step in front of a camera.
The first thing that happened next was nothing…
Depression set in. Despair set in. The reality for most people that become obese is that really don’t see it happening. It actually comes as a surprise one day. They tend to trick their own mind into ignoring the signs as they are gaining the weight. I was no different. Lucky for me, New Year’s Day was right around the corner. And that is the time for resolutions.
I bought myself a recumbent stationary bike and began to exercise. I also took some advise from some gym-rat friends of mine and began to eat lean protein, rice, and vegetables. I began to track all of my calories in software on my computer (smartphones were still a few years off).
Before you applaud the next part of this story, it is important to note that I did this COMPLETELY the wrong way. I followed the flawed method of Calories in / Calories Out. I starved myself by taking in less than 1200 calories a day and I spent a ridiculous amount of time on the stationary bike. At the peak of my exercise routine, I was riding three hours a day. Right or wrong, it worked.
By the end of 2010, I was down to 180 lbs. I had also decided that summer to get a real bike. I had been watching the Tour de France for years and I wanted to be Lance Armstrong (he had not been disgraced yet), so I went on craigslist and found what I thought was the perfect bike. It was a 2000 Trek XO-1. It was an amazing bike, but not at all what I really wanted, in hindsight. I really knew nothing of cycling at the time. As it turned out, that was a cyclocross bike, which it designed very specifically for a certain sub-genre of cycling competitions. Regardless of my mistake, I rode the ever-loving shit out of that bike. FYI, it is still in my garage to this day. Another thing I did, as Spring began in 2010, was that I decided to shift my exercise routines to running. It was agonizing at first. Running is a vastly different cardiovascular activity to cycling. It is laborious and painful to the initiate and I suffered all the growing pains. However, after enduring it for months, I decided in the summer of 2010 to run my first 5k.
Warming up with the assistance of my oldest. This was my first 5k in August of 2010.
The Inner Harbor 5k in Syracuse, NY is still run every year, but that was my first official 5k. I was terrified. I was confused by how it all work. Luckily, I had my family with me to cheer me on. My oldest even ran alongside me while I jogged my warm-up. About a quarter mile into the run, my right foot found a pothole that my eyes never saw. CRACK. The pain was horrific. I limped for a couple of strides. A million thoughts streaked though my brain. Did I have to quit? Was I able to run? What did I do to my ankle? Did it matter?
The answer to the last question was an emphatic NO! Adrenaline was luckily still pumping through my body from the starting gun of the race. The sudden realization of a possible substantial injury only encouraged my adrenal glands further. I felt almost no pain as I ran the remainder of the race. I also ran it fast, finishing in under 24 min. Well, fast for me anyway. I also realized immediately after I finished, that I had done substantial damage to my ankle. As it turned out, it was a severe sprain but luckily not broken. Regardless, it hurt all the same.
That race ignited a love affair with running that carries on to this day. I have also continued to be an avid cyclist. A few years back, I added kayaking to my list of adventurous activities. There are a few more, and I will certainly address them over the coming blog posts. My accomplishments make me proud. I have run a lot of races, including full 26.2 mile marathons. I have biked in races and charity events, riding in several century rides. This spring, I am going to add a kayak race to the fold. In future posts, I will also be recounting some of my more memorable events. I will talk about my diets, both successful and otherwise. I will talk about my one attempt at a sprint triathlon and why it never even started. I will talk about my professional career and how it has served my fitness journey and how I am now able to guide others in their’s.
I hope you enjoyed this read and come back for more…
Christopher Hess, LMT
Be sure to return tomorrow to see what Saturdays’ topic will be.
