The Run, Part 2

The Shoe Search

As a preliminary step to really starting to train, I started with some shoe research.

I found websites that said that all fat people have flat feet that pronate (roll inward) as part of their gate. Personally, I have really high arches and tend more towards supination (roll outwards). So much for generalizations.  I found websites that said I should go for a lot of cushioning. My feet say I should be barefoot and the cushioning felt like I was trying to run on balloons. Plus, my weight would break down the cushioning more quickly than usual, resulting in either wearing out the shoes or throwing off my stride with an uneven base.

The stupidest thing I saw was at Payless, who were selling shoes advertised to help lose weight by "creating pockets of instability" that made it harder to walk and supposedly burned more calories. Seriously? Pockets of instability are the LAST thing you want under your feet when exercising. That's how injuries HAPPEN. I'm still raging over that one. It's tough to exercise in a leg cast, so how do they expect to sell more shoes? Idiots.   Oh, and that "weight loss shoe" with the toe higher than the heel!?  Can anyone say Plantar Fasciitis and strained muscles?  But I digress...

Your first step is to go to a store specifically catering to runners, and try on shoes. Don't order them on the web even if every running site on the web say they're the bee's pajamas and the cat's knees. There is no such thing as a shoe that fits every foot and gait.

This is a scary prospect because I'm sure super-elitest stores exist out there that will treat a fat person coming through their doors like crap. Even if they don't, I always feel "exposed" in an athletic shop. I am a fat nerd in the jock's natural habitat. Every instinct instilled during junior high and high school screams that at any moment they'll notice me and the mocking will commence. All I can say is, if someone treats you rudely or condescendingly because of your weight, walk out and notify the manager that his employee lost a customer. On the other hand, if you're too keyed up expecting bad treatment, it will make you defensive and your non-verbal communication will come across as hostile. Your hostility will make the other person defensive, creating a self-fulfilling expectation.  Not getting treated like a human being ready to secure them a sales commission should definitely be the exception to the rule, so at least give them a chance to help you.

I went to a place downtown with a fair amount of success. The clerk was very nice, had me try on about 10 different shoes and watched me walk in them to check my gait. You're looking for shoes that hug your feet without squeezing them. If they're a little too tight at first they'll stretch with use, but they shouldn't cause discomfort. Most people have one foot larger than the other, so it's tricky to find the right pair. It should feel supportive and slightly springy underneath, and should not interfere with your natural gait. It should, in no case, feel unstable or wobbly.

Once you've tried on a bunch, you will hopefully discover a pair you really like. At this point you have a choice. There really isn't any reason for a beginner to pay more than $125 for running shoes. If you pay more, you may be buying too much shoe (where the advantage to a marathon runner would be lost on a beginner) or you may be paying for branding (i.e. slap on $60+ just for the little Nike logo on the side). One solution to sticker shock is to ask about last year's shoes. Like cars, shoes come out with new models every year and the previous year's may be on clearance. Another solution is to find a shoe you like, then go to a big box store and try to find shoes that feel the same way. If you're just starting out there's really not a lot of advantage to buying sleek, professional gear. If it fits well (snug but not squeezing) and has good support, a pair of off-brand sneakers at Wal-mart can do just fine for the first six months. If you're still running after that, then upgrade. I know someone who's been running for twenty years in the Dr. Scholl's brand sneakers from Meijer's, for $30 to $50 depending on sales. He only bought fancy running shoes when he needed better arch support.

Just starting out, I went for traditional, neutral balanced low-cushioned runners with a slightly flexible sole. I have a pair of Adidas for home. For my work runners (I wanted a second pair so I didn't have to lug them back and forth) I got a cast-off but almost new pair of Nike's that JD bought and discovered too late they were the wrong size.

I really, really want a pair of barefoot shoes. Even when I was a kid it was hard to keep shoes on me, and I still go barefoot unless required otherwise. Barefoot runners require special training to condition the body to that style.  As appealing as the idea is, I want to save that until I can run any reasonable distance. It would be trying to fly when I'm at the crawling stage.

Someday.....

The Run, Part 1

Summer is here and hiking season is fast approaching. Last year we went to the Hocking Hills and Smokey Mountain National Park. Both times I found I was able to put in four to seven miles the first day, then could barely bend my legs on the second. This year the goal is to be able to put in a few miles every day without so much pain that it spoils the rest of our trip.


Because our schedules are so packed, I'm pretty much limited to my lunch hour and a few hours on weekends for any kind of dedicated exercise time. Luckily I have the Kal-Haven trail (a 33 mile railroad bed turned into a hike and bike path) a few minutes from my office. Before the ice cover was entirely off the trails I was out on my lunch hour every day for a half-hour walk.

The time limitations mean that I can't really train for distance. After all, the best training for an eight mile hike is an eight mile hike. When I can't increase my time, I can build endurance to some extent by increasing my intensity.

Despite recent studies showing that running isn't so hard on the joints as often assumed (in fact it can IMPROVE joints by building cartilage and bone density over time), the health mythology of exceptions for fat people continues to linger. I love the catch-22. Fat people should exercise, but fat people shouldn't exercise. Somehow what's good for the joints of a thin person is terrible for mine, in a grand example of "I reject your reality and substitute my own" (quoting Adam from Mythbusters).

What's bad for ANYONE's joints, regardless of weight, is over-exertion and injury. If your frame and joints are small or weak for your body mass, you may need to be more careful to avoid injury. That doesn't mean you can't run. It just means you (along with everyone else) needs to build up a pace gradually, listening carefully to your body to know how to adjust. It means you start slow and add small increments of increased activity.

I started off dedicating half an hour of my lunch break. At first I walked, and the ice hazards meant I went less than a mile in that 30 minutes. As March advanced and the trail thawed, I was able to go faster in clear areas, until I was doing a 20-25 minute mile (approx 3mph). That's what they generally mean when they say "moderate walking speed".

When I could walk for 30 minutes at that pace without huffing and puffing and without pain or tiredness afterwards, I started to incorporate running.

When I say running, of course, I mean a rather slow jog. I also mean for about 30 second intervals. I would do three 30 second intervals in the course of the walk, with about 5 minutes of walking in between. Every other day I would walk only, and do the running intervals on the off days.

That doesn't sound like a lot, but that's what slow and steady means. By starting out slow and being honest about my body's capabilities, I can avoid injuries to my foot, legs, tendons, etc. that would force me to stop altogether for weeks and start again at the beginning.

As my body adapts to the routine, I've increased each interval, so that I'm now at one 30 second interval followed by two 1 minute intervals with five minute walking gaps between. Once I'm at three 1 minute intervals, I'll work on shortening the time in between. I've already noticed that I recover from each "run" interval more quickly every day, meaning that my heart rate and breathing return to normal a little faster.

Once I'm doing alternative 1 minute walk/run intervals, I may add more. Once I'm up to 7 or so, I'll start stringing them together into extended runs. Or I may switch that routine around and keep adding 30 seconds to each interval until I have extended runs.

Regardless, while it may make a marathon runner snigger a bit, this is the pace my body has set. There's really no reason why a heavy body is any more or less incapable of any physical activity. Mine just takes a bit of a run-up to get there.

Pun intended.

Going Gluten-Free

After a long year of working with my partner's serious illness, we think we've finally found the reason for it and our household is officially going gluten free.

Technically only he needs to eat gluten-free, but the risk of cross contamination, accidents, and the hassles of split meals make it logical for me to simply join him on the diet and just keep everything containing gluten out of the house altogether.  My having the occasional gluteny treat is not worth the chance of making him sick again. 

So we scoured every label for the obvious (wheat, barely, rye) and the less obvious (caramel color, malt, modified food starch, "natural flavor" and a hundred others).  Everything unopened we suspected of containing gluten went to the Kalamazoo Loaves and Fishes food bank yesterday.  31 pounds and the warm fuzzy feeling of helping those who really need it.  Anything they wouldn't accept (frozen, refrigerated, partials, etc.) goes into a friend's freezer who has a big family to feed. 

The cupboard isn't as bare as I'd feared, since some brands (like Wal-mart) is adapting to the changing market by labeling products when they're gluten-free.  Most of the time the issue isn't that the product actually contains wheat gluten, but that it was manufactured in a facility that handles gluten-containing products and the flour dust, crumbs, handlers, etc. could cause cross-contamination.  I was particularly surprised to see that a lot of plain frozen vegetables have "may contain" warnings on them that make them unsafe; perhaps because the same facility is used to process frozen breaded items.  It isn't worth the risk at this point, so out the door it goes. 

Some of the gluten dangers are surprising.  Did you know that Crest is willing to claim their toothpaste is gluten free, but Colgate isn't?  Did you know that some artificial colors are made from wheat, and that you have to write each manufacturer with the batch number to find out if you can use, say, frosting coloring or vanilla extract?  Did you know that most commercial vitamin E is made from wheat germ, and therefore vitamins, multivitamins, and even chapstick can make a gluten sensitive person sick? 

At this point we're going crazy-paranoid about every little thing, in hopes of getting him well as fast as possible.  In a year or so he may decide to test his tolerance for, say, chapstick, but in the meantime he's not eating in restaurants, we're bringing our own food to potlucks and family gatherings, and creating a gluten-clean house by even scrubbing down all the food shelves and replacing the shelf paper in case there's residual flour dust. 

After three days he's already feeling better, but we're both still surprised every time he eats something and doesn't get sick. 

The biggest concern for us was cost, as national figures suggest that a gluten-free diet costs 200%-300% more than the average American diet.  Yesterday we went to one of the two health-food stores in town and extensively priced everything, noting brand, size and cost in a notebook.  I'm sure they thought we were either crazy, or spies from a competing shop, because very puzzled clerks kept asking if they could help us :-)  Once I have it all plugged into a spreadsheet we can do a comparison check at the other health food store in town, and then see what on the list is also available at local grocery chains. 

We discovered that the high-cost estimates of eating gluten-free is assuming a few things.  It's assuming that people buy the outrageously priced, Styrofoam textured commercial GF foods, like cookies, crackers, bread, candy, baking mixes and microwavable meals.  It's six dollars for a pack of GF cookies comparable to the package of vanilla sandwich cookies you can buy at any dollar store. 

For someone who is tolerant of glutens, it's generally cheaper (in a purely financial sense) to buy pre-packaged and prepared foods.  Before going GF I could get a package of cookies, crackers, or cereal cheaper than the ingredients to make them myself.  The inverse is true when you're discussing a gluten-free diet.  Even using gluten-free flour substitutes, I can make GF cookies MUCH more cheaply than I can buy them, and they'll actually taste like cookies.  I can make my own flour mixes much more cheaply than buying commercial mixes.  I can make a fresh meal of fresh veggies and meat much more cheaply than buying commercial GF microwave dinners. 

The ideal and least expensive route to Gluten-free is to rely on fresh vegetables (blanch and freeze them yourself with seasonings already included for quick side dishes) meats, whole gluten-free grains and legumes, and rice.  No one actually needs the pre-packaged stuff that makes the GF diet so expensive. 

I, however, am a bread fiend.  Like many Europeans, I think a really complete, excellent meal comes with fresh bread of some kind or another.  So I'm willing to sacrifice some extra money (and thankful I have it) to buy a few gluten-free flour alternatives to mix myself and use in baking.  In some ways that's a benefit; how can a pie crust made with almond flour instead of wheat be anything but yummier? :-) 

I can at least count us extremely lucky that I love to experiment in the kitchen and am a fairly good cook and baker.  It will be easier for me to transition to gluten-free than it would for a lot of people, because I can think around recipes and know how to substitute items to achieve good flavor.  I've already accumulated a stack of recipes to try, and am planning to search diligently to find a substitute flour for the roux in our family's traditional Christmas gumbo.  I hear amaranth works well.

Grapefruit Update

Thoughts on the Grapefruit Resolution:

On Saturday I started with a plain, raw grapefruit to get a feel for the flavor.  I was surprised to find it much less bitter than I remember it back in the days when it was a dieting-obligation food.  I chose a nice red fruit from Texas and got a net bag full of them.

Today (Sunday) I added sugar to the raw grapefruit and found a curious thing.  Adding sweetener actually enhanced the bitter aftertaste of the fruit!  It was as if the first intense simple sweetness of the sugar intensified the contrast with the more complex bitterness of the grapefruit.  I'd be willing to bet that the reason I disliked it as a teen/YA is that I had loaded it up with sweetener (and artificial sweetener to boot), and as the bitterness intensified I added more to compensate.  After a while it was just saccharine with a bitter aftershock.  Of course I hated it!

We put the ice cream maker in the freezer overnight in prep for the Grapefruit sorbet, which for budget reasons I'll make with Squirt soda instead of Champagne and sugar as the base.  I'm also playing with the idea of whether a grapefruit substitution in a key lime pie recipe would turn out well or not.   

In an ironic twist, my psychotic swamp cat (Mad Sweeny) who rejects all human food from bacon to tuna....loves grapefruit. I let him have a little taste from the empty halves to convince him he didn't like it, and he was ready to fight me for the rest (and yes, I checked first to make sure grapefruit isn't toxic to felines; it can upset their stomachs in large quantities but he only got a few licks in).

The idea of taste is an interesting one.  It's my understanding that people are often "inclined" towards one of the tastes (sweet, salty, bitter, sour...and the East Asian umami/savory) based on the genetic coding of the taste receptors on your tongue.  Personally I'm very sensitive to bitterness and sourness.  I hate walnuts, even masked in desserts.  I can really taste the bitterness in white grapefruit, marmalade, or iceberg lettuce. I cannot stand the taste of fresh tomatoes, because to me they are bitter and sour at the same time (like something rotting).

What this leads back to is an idea that Gretchin Rubin of the Happiness Project puts forward:  "although you can choose what you do, you can’t choose what you like to do."   

I'm lucky enough to be able to choose what I eat, but I have little ability to change what I actually like.  I could force myself to eat fish, venison or mushrooms in a starvation situation. But if it's not something I like and I have the capability to choose...why eat fish?  Or tomatoes?  Or green peppers?  I don't think I have that kind of time to waste in my life.  I also don't like the current movement that treats food as medication.  If you're eating something you hate simply for the beta-carotene, you might be better off with a pill.  It's easier to swallow.  What I'm after isn't medicine, it's a variety of tastes and the pleasure of experimentation. 

More on Grapefruit and Resolutions

For my first actual content post relating to my experiment in fat happiness, I want to kick it off with a resolution.

My first happiness resolution is in the Health category.  In my own interpretation of HAES (Health at Every Size) I subscribe to the whole "varied eating with fruits and veggies" theory of healthy eating, but frequently fall down in practice because I don't make time to prepare daily complicated meals.  It's so much faster and easier to make a plate of nachos or a bag of microwave popcorn for dinner so that I can get back to the day's project.  But I do feel a physical difference when I'm eating a more varied diet with unprocessed ingredients.  I feel better, my energy is lighter and cleaner, and my mood is elevated.  I know that for a lot of people it makes no difference at all in how they feel (or not enough of one to compensate for the trouble).  So all FDA claims aside, is this actually something that would improve my personal health or do I just get a "feel better" feeling from eating "right" according to pop theory which then wears off when it becomes routine?
So I'm starting a resolution that is also an experiment.  Each week I need to choose a new base food (an unprocessed fruit, veg, meat, grain, etc.).  It should be something in one of these categories: 

1. Something I've never tried before.
2. Something I haven't tried in years since I hated it as a kid (our tastes change as we get older!)
3. Something I've made but only have one recipe or preparation I make over and over again.

I have to eat that new thing at least once per day during that week, each time prepared in a different way.

The theory is that doing so will force me to widen my options and explore new foods.  There's no restrictions on how I prepare it.  

So, for the next week, I will be eating Grapefruit.  I've only eaten it in the traditional diet prep many years ago: raw with artificial sweetener.  It was miserably gross.  I've always associated Grapefruit with dieting, which made them too bitter on many levels.  But now I can go and re-visit them as a "real" food, instead of some kind of obligation.   By the end of this week I'll know for sure if there's such a thing as a Grapefruit I like.

I'll find some help from the all-knowing google, including:

http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/ways-cook-grapefruit-00000000008115/index.html

http://whenharrymetsalad.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/grapefruit-extravaganza/

By the way, a real Mexican margarita is made with grapefruit juice, with accents of orange (triple-sec) and lime, not the sickening-sweet fake-lime stuff you get in stores and restaurants.  I usually make them with Squirt soda as the base: a trick learned from my parents when they lived in Ajijic.  I wonder if my "no restrictions on how it's prepared" rule extends to booze? :-)

Also, I'm adding the following to my Reading list, based on Gretchen Rubin's recomendations:

Reading List:

Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Why the Meaningful Life is Closer Than You Think
Daniel Nettle, Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile

David Lykken, Happiness: The Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment

Gregory Berns: Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment

Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness

Kahneman, Diener, Schwartz, Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology

Resolutions - Health

1/15/10:  Eat a grapefruit every day prepared in a different way.
               Done!  Best with salt instead of sugar, or prepared in savory dishes. The exception was the
               Grapefruit-squirt sorbet.

1/26/10:   Try at least three recipes with capers in them.