I run 60+ miles and 10+ hours weekly. Last Friday I underwent corrective laser eye surgery. I must wear a “bandaging contact lens” on my left eye until the optometrist removes it this Thursday. Hourly eye drops, fleeting dry-eye and ocular irritation collectively take a back seat to my displeasure at being told not to sweat or run. Running makes me happy and I look forward to it every day. It also plays a key role in my weight management strategy. I burn at least 600 calories from running daily. This lets me eat more without gaining weight. Now that I can’t run, I’m faced with some choices:
- Eat the same and gain weight. It’s just a week, after all
- Eat less and maintain my weight. Ew, self restraint and discipline? I don’t like using those tools, they are last resort options
- Find some other way to burn calories and time so that I’m not eating (can’t eat when you’re running, and can’t eat when you’re sleeping, and every hour you’re running is one less hour you’re sleeping and one more hour you’re not eating)
So, I started going on more walks. But I thought: “I can’t read, I can’t watch tv, I can’t play games, I can’t work. I also can’t eat all day (or I’ll get fat)”. So walking became a solution to TWO problems: the problem of temporarily replacing my calorie burn, and also the problem of having idle time with nothing to do.
And further into the week I decided, “I should go on a longer walk, like one of my mid-length running routes”. So yesterday I went and walked 9.5 miles while listening to podcasts. I guess it sounds less weird if I say I hiked, which is true since I went up into the hill trails and spent the majority of my walking time in the forest. Later that evening I took a shorter 5 mile walk around town - a slightly shortened version of my “minimum distance run” (my minimum distance run is about 7.3 miles and includes running halfway up a local mountain trail).
So anyways lately (the last 3+ months) I’ve been having trouble getting a nice calorie deficit. When I was heavier, it was easy to reach 500+ calorie deficits daily, for weeks straight. That was back when I was obese and overweight. Today I am 142lbs and 5’7” tall. Basically, I made it. I lost nearly all the weight I wanted to lose. So I lost motivation to drop the last 10-15lbs that I would need to lose to go from 15-18% body fat to 10-13% body fat. Don’t get me wrong - I would like to get to 10% body fat - but at around 15%, which is probably where I’m at currently, I look great with clothes on, and that’s probably why I don’t care so much anymore about hitting nightly deficits.
So imagine my surprise when I was about to go to sleep last night with an over 1400 calorie deficit. I had walked over 14 miles, lifted weights, and eaten over 2000 calories of food (two giant 2+ lb avocado kale salads, several bowls of pudding with fruit - that’s my daily diet lately). I ended up eating another dessert bowl just because “I could” and still ended the night at over a 1000 calorie deficit.
Walking. Wow, seriously, I am impressed. Fucking walking. I know almost nobody who can run for hours like me. There’s only two people among all my friends, acquaintances and coworkers who can do that (I’m not counting my running team, most of them could wipe the floor with my sorry ass). And I think this is the big misconception everyone seems to have about “exercise” and “weight loss”. I think almost everyone, amongst whom all are misinformed, thinks “if I want to precipitate weight loss from exercise, I have to run and grunt and squeeze and strain and sweat until I’m hurting and sore and wheezing and my body hurts!”
Granted most people would feel that way if they tried to run like me every day. But I’m recovering from having one of my eyes’ front literally SHAVED OFF WITH A LASER, and the other eye being SLICED OPEN WITH A LASER AND PRECISELY GOUGED. It’s fucking laser eye surgery, and I am fucking recovering from surgery. BUT I CAN WALK. I can walk and I can shitpost on Reddit. And I burned 1,350 calories yesterday just from WALKING. And you know what? The entire time, until my phone battery nearly died, I was listening to comedy podcasts and playing Raid Shadow Legends.
Ok so why am I posting this? Well, one of my family members is fat and sad about it. Everyone in my family has seen my transformation, and they respect my thoughts on the subject. I’ve given them advice at various times and some of them have heeded it and lost weight. But not this one fat and sad family member of mine.
So I told her, “you don’t need to lose weights, you don’t need to run, you don’t need to do this and that. Just walk”. And I was talking to my family later - “oh we got her a gym membership”… SHE DOESN’T NEED A GYM MEMBERSHIP, SHE JUST NEEDS TO MOVE MORE.
Meh, I’m almost out of the mountains now. I’m gonna check my Raid Shadow Legends game and see if I have enough stamina to run some dungeons, or arena tokens to compete in the player versus player stuff. And gonna get a black coffee with 5 packets (minimum) of stevia and other zero-calorie sweeteners. And you know what? My overuse injuries in my knees aren’t acting up, so after I sip my coffee I think I’ll go up the mountain again. Cuz why not? I ain’t got anything better to do
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