TL:DR I've lost about 20-25lbs over the last six months, and I've gone from running at most 1.5 miles before having to stop due to knee pain, to having just run 8.8mi before having to stop only because of blisters.
I'm gonna give all sorts of details here in a big layout of my past, largely for my own benefit to have written out.
I've (26M) always been a very active person, played soccer growing up, ran cross country in high school, have always enjoyed road and mountain biking, hiking, etc etc. Never particularly fast or 'talented' at any of those activities, but I enjoyed them. Was also in pretty good shape and at a healthy weight at this point. Then I dislocated my patella (kneecap) in April 2010, partially tore the MCL, had surgery to fix. Didn't completely fix the problem, had a few very brief dislocations in the following years while playing soccer, in gym class, wrestling around with my little brother, etc etc.
Went to college in 2013, and being on my own for the first time, and being in charge of what I ate, and having the freedom to buy whatever junk food was not good for me. I was still running and staying active, so my weight didn't totally explode, but I absolutely creeped into somewhat overweight category, developing lots of bad habits along the way and a sugar addiction I'm still struggling to kick to this day.
Then in February 2017, while finishing up school, had another serious dislocation, required a second surgery. Was a bit more involved, used cadaver tendon to support the MCL, fun stuff like that. In short, it worked a lot better, knee was feeling stronger than ever! I ran a half marathon at some point following recovery, and set a PR mile time in March of 2018. Setting that mile PR definitely tweaked something though, and I would start getting weird pains in the knee during future activity. My other joints have mild problems of their own, and between the hips, knees, and ankles, my running became pretty limited from 2018 onward (I'd still bike a lot to get exercise). I would go out once in a while, but not wanting to lead to worse injuries, I'd stop after something would start to hurt, usually about a mile, maybe one and a half. During this time, I hit my weight high, probably around 220lb. I don't have an exact number, I was weighing myself very very rarely, mostly getting that info from the occasional physical checkup.
Last summer was when I started to dig myself out of the depression hole I spent most of the last decade in. There wasn't a defining moment I started to change things or to lose weight or anything. I've just made a lot of changes in the past six months to improve my life, weight loss being one of those. One thing early in this time was my little brother convincing me to do a triathlon with him. I had to do some preparation to make sure I could swim 400m without drowning, but I can easily bike 16mi, and I figured I'd just run a mile or so, then walk the rest of the 5km when the inevitable pain started. Imagine my surprise when that never happened and I wound up running about three fourths of it (walking just cause I was very out of breath from using most of my energy on the bike section). After that I was curious how future runs would go as I really started eating better and very slowly lost some weight. Now I'm down about 25lbs to 195. A few weeks ago, I just kept on going, since I kept feeling good, and wound up running 6.4 miles. I hadn't done more than a 5k in at least four years. Had to stop cause my feet didn't like that, and had some nasty blisters. So I went and got non-cotton socks, since no one at any point in my life ever told me that cotton socks are terrible to run in and will give you blisters very easily! Last night I went out and did 8.8 miles, again stopping only due to blisters, not joint pain (the socks were better, but apparently not quite enough).
So while I'm sure a variety of factors are at play, I have to think that losing about 25 pounds really helped my ability to run long distance again. It's a lot of extra weight to have on the joints during impact activities. I see a lot of discussion about how exercise is obviously critical to weight loss, but not as much about how losing weight makes future exercise easier and more enjoyable. The level of joy I was getting last night from a long run was incredible, realizing that I wasn't being limited in the ways I previously was. If someone could have told me I would feel this way as a side effect of losing some weight, I'd probably have put far more effort into it from a much earlier age.
Now to keep it up, targeting 180lb for now
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