Don't Silence Your Inner Fat Kid - Control & Use It

As a former fat kid, I found myself stuck in how I viewed myself. That is, after I lost weight, I still saw myself as 'the fat kid'.  I worked really hard to see myself as I actually was rather than as I used to - essentially silencing my past as a part of my present and future.  As I've now been thinner longer than I was fat, I have a new perspective on things that I think is valuable to share.

I was 248 lbs at the height of my obesity, at age 17.  There was a distinct rotundness to my shape, and my height (6'2" - not giant, but taller than most kids in my school) drew even more attention to my proportions.  I lost most of the weight the summer before my senior year, and really toned up through that year.  I didn't really see myself as this in-shape or good looking guy because I never saw myself that way (justifiably), and the people around me had always known me as 'the fat kid'. My whole environment had sort of type-cast me, if you will.  And people had always complimented me to be nice (e.g. my mother saying something like, "You look so handsome in that suit."), so the compliments I started to get after losing weight sort of rolled off my back as niceties no one actually meant.  They were just being polite.

As for girls, none in my environment were interested because they had formed a bullet-proof sense of me as unfit, unattractive, unathletic, uncool.  If I was at a party with kids from another school, and a girl showed interest in me, I didn't have a clue what to do about it, and didn't usually even pick up on it.  I mean, why would she, right?

Fast forward to college - new kids, no one with a pre-determined sense of me. That is, no one but me. I worked on how I viewed myself while in college, and did so by basically ignoring who I had been rather than finding a way to really deal with it or take power from it.

This is the key.

Like anything we go through in life, the right way of dealing with it is never to not deal with it. If that sentence didn't read right to you or didn't make sense, go back and re-read it.  I didn't mistype it. You cannot suppress or ignore things that happened and ultimately expect to move on completely. That doesn't mean you can't have a good life or be happy, but just that you won't have truly dealt with it or faced the issue.  If you can successfully do that, you will be in a much better place than you could have been if you just suppressed or ignored.

There are obviously much tougher situations than childhood obesity that people go through, and I'm not saying it's easy to deal with any of this. But being 'the fat kid' is easier than we may allow it to be - ridicule, self-doubt, lack of self-worth and all.  They key is to take power from it.

So what does this mean? For me, it's about remember who I have been, and what I've done to get to where I am. Not just physically, but mentally - especially mentally.  I wasn't fat because of physical reasons. I was fat because of mental. My understanding, my mental strength, my emotional strength and my sense of what I was worth. Looking at what I am today feels great, but doing it in light of what I was before feels immensely better.

I let that fat kid in me live. I seek to understand why I ate how I ate and had the attitude I did toward physical activity and being outside. It is because I allow those thoughts into my head so that I can understand them that I'm able to move on from them and do better.  If I didn't, I wouldn't have the tools to deal with them should those feelings crop up again.

As an example, I didn't like exercise because it was always done to me rather than something I chose to do for me. That really is the root of my feelings toward it. It's about choice. Now I choose to do it. And I choose what to do. I didn't want to play soccer as a kid, but my brother, father and mother made me. Now, I don't mind playing it, but if I don't want to, I do something else.  And I've come to understand who the exercise is for.  It's not because my father is mad at my weight, or my sister is making fun of me for being fat and lazy. It's also not even because I want to look good for my wife (who is beyond out of my league), or to be a good role model for my son.  It's because I feel amazing doing it for me. That high I get from doing for myself is why I do it.  But it took breaking down my deep-rooted feeling toward exercise to understand why I disliked it, and try to look at it another way. Looking at it another way took structuring my approach to it differently.  None of this would have come if I had just suppressed my past feelings.

I know because that was my old approach. I exercised through most of my 20s, and I did it because I was afraid of getting fat again and because I wanted people to like me. I wanted to find a wife, and I'd never do that if I was fat (obviously, this is flawed thinking, but that's what was coursing through my mind).  I did it, essentially, out of fear. And I wound up taking months off at a time because I'd be burnt out on it (and I did maybe 20% as much exercise as I do now, and slept twice as much, so it wasn't due to physical exhaustion).

Let the fat kid in you live. Become his or her friend. Understand what motived good and not good choices and behaviors at a very deep level.  Break this down into understanding how you can use it to help you today.  We are who we have been, and we can only move ahead by allowing for that to be ok and to grow from it. Go ahead - enlighten.your.body.

Hey, Adidas, stop it, ok?

Adidas Springblade

Adidas has come out with the second shoe that aims to absorb and rebound energy like nothing before with the new Springblade.  The first is their Energy Boost shoe. Both are super innovative, and I'm sure are the result of an incredible amount of R&D (both time and money). I applaud all of that effort, but I fundamentally can't agree with what these shoes try to do. Going a step beyond not agreeing, I'm actually very concerned with what these shoes will actually do to the body despite their attempts to protect joints and increase performance for a given level of energy expenditure.

Aside from selling the things, Adidas has a noble goal of decreasing joint pain and increasing endurance by cushioning impact and deploying more kinetic energy per stride. I'll also add that I love to see that they're using their Techfit upper in the Springblade, which I've found to be comfortable and compliant with different foot shapes (though the toe cap seems to negate the real benefit of the upper since it will restrict the toes from splaying and naturally providing stability).

My issue starts with how the body will react to these two models. Several reviews of the Energy Boost have raised concerns with the unpredictable nature of the energy return, like running on a trampoline. This screws with your body's ability to sense angles, balance and forces, and fire muscles appropriately (aka proprioception). There are arguments for training in proprioceptively rich (aka unstable) environments as it strengthens the minor support muscles around your joints and builds the primary movers in a wider range than overly-controlled exercise. That said, these aren't positioned as proprioceptive trainers (like a Bosu or balance disc is). They're positioned as running shoes you could run a race in.

For the Springblades, I'm even more concerned because they really force you down one path - heel striking, and they look to snap you ahead a bit as the plastic blades spring back. That can't be good for the knees - knees that have just taken a jolt from the heel strike you can't avoid in these things. I'm sure you could mid-foot strike in them, but I would imagine you'll get an odd jolt from the heel blades when they touch and spring back which would put an odd strain on a knee that isn't expecting return forces from heel striking to come when it isn't heel striking.

The Energy Boost are also so thick in the back and rigidly constructed under the forefoot that I can't these being forefoot strikable.  I'm sure you can mid-foot strike in them, though.

Adidas Energy Boost

Am I basing this off looking at the shoes rather than running in them?  Yes. I've read a lot of reviews of the Energy Boost, and my thoughts are pretty well validated by the reviewers who have run in them. And we're not talking about average Joe reviewers, but highly educated and respected reviewers like Pete Larson of runblogger.com and author of Tread Lightly. Adidas talks a lot about the energy return of the shoe, but it's not clear that this is actually useful or good in a running shoe. They have no evidence to show this to be the case. The same is clear in the marketing of the Springblade.

The shoes look really cool (especially the Springblades), and I'm sure will sell fine. However, they're both very expensive ($180 for Springblades (!) and $150 for Energy Boost), so I really think the burden of proof of the true benefit of the technology needs to be there. Cushioning or energy return may be good, but before you ask me to spend more than any other competitor shoe I've seen on the market, perhaps you could really show me why and how it's good.

This all reminds me of a similar situation in the opposite direction. Vibram FiveFingers came out with a lot of claims of being better without a lot of proof of this being true. Those claims as taken by the average consumer imparted a sense of health benefit or at least benefit to running and injury reduction. No proof has emerged, and injuries have still been experienced by VFF wearers. The result was a class action lawsuit that Vibram lost.  Notice the analogs here - claims that the tech is better for you and will help your body, yet a lack of proof. For some reason, the media was all over Vibram for its claims, but no one in the mainstream sports media seems to be pointing out what Adidas is doing here.

I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I'm saying people need to be mindful of claims without proof, and the trend of the big sports companies to generally isolate the body from the sport with excessive cushioning and technology to do the work for us (like blades from Adidas or shocks from Nike that spring us forward so we don't have to).

Removing yourself from your exercise isn't a great way to be healthy. Get closer to it, let your body do what it's made to do, smile and enlighten.your.body.

FFS in a MFS Shoe Market

I run on my toes. Not my tippy toes, but my forefeet. I've tried to get back onto my mid-foot, which I can, but it isn't as natural or comfortable for me. I've tried heel striking, but it hurts my whole body - especially when I'm in really minimal shoes. As I've been going for more distance, I find myself wishing for more padding than my favorite shoes tend to have as I have been getting some nerve pain between my metatarsals.

Adidas adiPure Gazelle 2

For the non-medical types reading this (like me), a key to forefoot striking, or FFS, is plantar flexion of the foot. This is when you flex the toes down toward the ground, and point the foot. The opposite is called dorsiflexion, and it's what a heel striking would do as they extend their foot to get the heel on the ground first. See this lovely graphic on the right? I'm the lower image (though my toes aren't pointed, least they break off on impact).

So I've tried a few shoes that are generally well-received. Moving up from Vibram FiveFingers into a padded minimalist shoe, I fell in love with the Adidas Adipure Gazelle (read my review of them here). I thought they would be and remain my favorite shoe, but as I broke through 40 miles on them, I found I was having lots of knee pain and blistering as they weren't keeping my foot aligned over the footbed given their unstructured upper. That's just too short of a life. I still love them, but I have to pick times to wear them when I know my legs are feeling good and strong so I can maintain my form. They're also just fine for treadmill runs, which remove all of the pivoting and uneven loads of outdoor running (a good reason to avoid the treadmill!).

Merrell Vapor Glove

I tried Merrell Vapor Gloves, which are basically like Vibrams, but without individual toes. They're ok, but not really what I was looking for in terms of padding since, well, they have none.


Luckily, Merrell has another model that's a step up in structure from the Vapor Glove called the Bare Access 2. I really liked these shoes, but their additional padding is pretty dense, firm and tough. It's not as noticeable running as it is walking, but it transmits most of the shock into your foot, and definitely takes some work to get a good plantar flexion of the foot going, even if you aren't aware of it. That can tire your feet muscles, aggravate your joints and inflame your nerves. This happened to me in the Bare Access 2 the first time I consistently ran over 4 miles (3 times in a week).

Merrell Bare Access 2

So I went to Merrell's sister company, Saucony, and got a shoe that is basically universally loved by

Saucony Kinvara 4

runners and reviewers, and had just been redesigned to even more positive praise, the Kinvara (version 4, this time). This was the first traditional-looking shoe I had bought in a long time. It had real cushioning, which I was looking for, but didn't have a wide toe box or sole design that would facilitate toe striking. I was concerned, but tried them on, and found they felt fine on both counts. I did find in runs that I need to really push myself to get a good toe strike - at least at first until I found a good rhythm. This was new to me. The easiest thing to do with them was heel strike, or maybe mid-foot strike.

The cushioning really was great, and I've generally liked the shoe a lot. However, as I ran more and more in them (both in terms of frequency and distance), I found my metatarsal pain was a frequent issue despite the cushioning, and I had started to get Achilles tendon pain, which I've never had. I saw my PT, who suggested a few things, which generally helped, but only until I ran again (even if I took a week off and really let the pain die down or away completely).

I realized the issue. Yes, you can toe strike in both the Bare Access 2 and Kinvara, but the effort it takes to do so was having an impact on my feet and Achilles.  I'm a FFS runner, and most shoes in the minimal or natural category (save for the ultra-minimalist stuff like the Vapor Gloves and VFFs) really are best for mid-foot strikers. And most traditional shoes are very MFS-friendly (that is, you should be able to mid-foot strike just fine, despite their ramp-like construction).

Mizuno Cursoris

So what to do? I need to stick to shoes more like the Gazelles in their construction, but perhaps with a touch more structure to ensure my foot can't slide out within the shoe in weird ways. I've recently picked up a pair of Mizuno Wave Evo Cursoris, and, if you follow me on Twitter, you know that I'm totally smitten. I need to get more miles on them overall and in a single run, but they might be the perfect mix of cushion (18mm), easy-flexibility and sufficient structure for me. I want to get in a longer #CUYOP run next week in the 7-12 mile range (if not two in one day) to really see, but every stride has really been a joy. I also did my fastest mile (high-6s) in them, and have been able to get my pace back into the mid-8s when it's been stuck in the high-8s/low-9s for a while.  I actually had to consciously slow down on a 3.5 miler this week when I saw my pace was in the low 7s - I'm not trying to get injured, but rather an training for a half marathon.

My point is to take some time and really think about how your body wants to run. I can get preachy and tell you how it should run, but it's not about me and my beliefs or wants. It's about you and yours. You can buy a bunch of shoes to try them and see what's best, or you can think a bit up front, and let that define the must-have features. Just don't be afraid to adjust and learn as your body adjusts and learns. Learning is how your enlighten.your.body.