A Story of Personal Struggle
(With weight)
My weight yesterday morning was 191.8 lbs.
My weight this morning, February 21, 2013 is 190.6 lbs.
My weight this morning, February 21, 2013 is 190.6 lbs.
As I have said earlier, I am a 69 year old male. When I was about ten years old I was heavy but I lost that weight and I pretty well stayed within a certain weight for many years. I quit school when I was 17 and I enlisted in the United States Navy. Through my navy years, I was about 117 lbs. and a lot of that had to do with navy food. I just often could not eat what was offered, and I was sea sick often. So, I would go through the mess line with a tray and often exit with very few things on my tray and then I would eat only a portion of that. Oddly enough, I could eat pork chops, as greasy as they were, so when we had marines on board, I frequently talked them out of their chops giving me plenty to eat. I also doused them with ketchup, that wonderful concoction from Heinz 57 which has allowed us to disguise and make palatable unwanted foods from child hood on. And, one of my personal favorites then was Vienna Sausage which I had hidden in different places on the ship; those and World's Finest Chocolate bars prevented my starving to death.
Just after I left the navy I married Connie and we struggled with making a living, eventually leaving the promised land of California and returning to Oklahoma where I struggled with low paying jobs. In the summer of 1965, I returned to high school and graduated in 1967. I then went to work for Phillips Petroleum Company where I completed a 33 1/2 year career before being retired.
But this is the story of the struggle of my own weight. Along about 1971, we had visited California and surfed and swam. I was showing our photographs at work when one of the older men said, "I see you're beginning to get some love handles there." I panicked and stopped eating and lost that weight, but as soon as I had, I began to gain again. I lost that weight again and kept it off for several years before my next weight gain.
I should mention too that I had smoked cigarettes since I was about 15 years old. I was still smoking when my weight struggle began and I was addicted, no other word will suffice, to cigarettes. I had tried different approaches to cutting down, such as smoking a pipe and then cigars. The cigars were great because I cut down on cigarettes alright, becoming addicted to cigars and smoking them all day long. I also chewed on one a bit before I lit it. Smoking cigars cost about the same as cigarettes but it was much more inconvenient and I eventually went back to cigarettes and then I quit, in 1968 and I was off of them for a while before I made the mistake of smoking one cigarette. I've learned that we addicts, no matter the addiction, can't play that game of, "Oh, I'll just have one." I eventually quit smoking completely in January, 1978, first day of that year in fact. And I have been a non-smoker for more than 35 years. And that has a point. When you quit smoking, you find yourself getting away from friends who smoked, away from the environments and haunts of smokers.
You can't do that with food. Many of us have a food addiction of some kind and we have habits that we have created or learned which form around that addiction. Snacking is a habit of that ilk. Many of us snack, late and probably eat something that goes against our system too.
The same year I quit smoking I began to run. I felt that running would help me to stay off of cigarettes because I did not feel that I could run and smoke at the same time. I later met men and women who did both smoke and run. Amazing. An unexpected side benefit from running was that I could eat without gaining weight; in fact, I lost weight and gained muscle mass. I stabilized at a weight of about 137 lbs. and I stayed there for years, with heavy running. Remember that my navy weight was about 117 lbs. but in 1978 I was nearly 20 years older and we gain mass so our weight changes upwards even if we remain slim. Today, my weight should be ideal at around 157-160 lbs so I have set my goal at 160 lbs.
I said heavy running. I began running in place, in the house and I would run for 10 minutes and I added to it each few days until I could run in the house in place for 40 minutes. "Now I am ready to run outside," I said to myself one day, and I said it to Connie who said "Good". She was tired of my running in the house. So, one day, out the door I went, impress the neighbors, run 2 or 3 miles and show them, surprise them. I started out too fast and I made it quarter of a mile; thought I was going to die right there, so I walked, and after a walk of a quarter of a mile, I ran a quarter. I did that daily for a week and then one day---I finished a mile. Then I was running one mile every day and within a week, I tried to run for two miles and succeeded. I was overjoyed because I had never been an athlete, certainly never a good one in my stabs at football, baseball, basketball and anything else. Boys have to try all of it to find our niche. Within a month I was running three miles every day, all after I got off work and before we had dinner or went out to eat.
If I missed a run, I felt horrible, so I had traded the addiction to cigarettes for an addiction to running; a bad addiction for a good addiction. Addicted runners, which are most runners, feel akin to Catholics in that they must confess: Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I missed two runs in a row and I am humbly contrite, and we seem to hear, "Your sin is forgiven and for your penance you must run twice two days in a row within the next week and make a cash contribution to a fund for shoes for underprivileged runners. Go in peace and sin no more."
I kept a detailed log of my runs, where, when, how, who with, routes, splits (time in minutes for each mile) and total time. In 1978 I began to run races at the first Tulsa Run, a distance of 15,000 meters (9.3 miles) and, of course, all of that kept my weight off. I ran about 700 miles that first years, more than a 1,000 miles the next year and then 2,000 miles one year. And I honestly believed I would never gain weight again. That's a euphemism for get fat; I believed I would never get fat again. Wrong.
More to come.
Stephen Joe "Red Boots" Payne
You can't do that with food. Many of us have a food addiction of some kind and we have habits that we have created or learned which form around that addiction. Snacking is a habit of that ilk. Many of us snack, late and probably eat something that goes against our system too.
The same year I quit smoking I began to run. I felt that running would help me to stay off of cigarettes because I did not feel that I could run and smoke at the same time. I later met men and women who did both smoke and run. Amazing. An unexpected side benefit from running was that I could eat without gaining weight; in fact, I lost weight and gained muscle mass. I stabilized at a weight of about 137 lbs. and I stayed there for years, with heavy running. Remember that my navy weight was about 117 lbs. but in 1978 I was nearly 20 years older and we gain mass so our weight changes upwards even if we remain slim. Today, my weight should be ideal at around 157-160 lbs so I have set my goal at 160 lbs.
I said heavy running. I began running in place, in the house and I would run for 10 minutes and I added to it each few days until I could run in the house in place for 40 minutes. "Now I am ready to run outside," I said to myself one day, and I said it to Connie who said "Good". She was tired of my running in the house. So, one day, out the door I went, impress the neighbors, run 2 or 3 miles and show them, surprise them. I started out too fast and I made it quarter of a mile; thought I was going to die right there, so I walked, and after a walk of a quarter of a mile, I ran a quarter. I did that daily for a week and then one day---I finished a mile. Then I was running one mile every day and within a week, I tried to run for two miles and succeeded. I was overjoyed because I had never been an athlete, certainly never a good one in my stabs at football, baseball, basketball and anything else. Boys have to try all of it to find our niche. Within a month I was running three miles every day, all after I got off work and before we had dinner or went out to eat.
If I missed a run, I felt horrible, so I had traded the addiction to cigarettes for an addiction to running; a bad addiction for a good addiction. Addicted runners, which are most runners, feel akin to Catholics in that they must confess: Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I missed two runs in a row and I am humbly contrite, and we seem to hear, "Your sin is forgiven and for your penance you must run twice two days in a row within the next week and make a cash contribution to a fund for shoes for underprivileged runners. Go in peace and sin no more."
I kept a detailed log of my runs, where, when, how, who with, routes, splits (time in minutes for each mile) and total time. In 1978 I began to run races at the first Tulsa Run, a distance of 15,000 meters (9.3 miles) and, of course, all of that kept my weight off. I ran about 700 miles that first years, more than a 1,000 miles the next year and then 2,000 miles one year. And I honestly believed I would never gain weight again. That's a euphemism for get fat; I believed I would never get fat again. Wrong.
More to come.
Stephen Joe "Red Boots" Payne
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