The Incredible Lift My Podiatrist Gave Me

Many of you have applauded me for being very enthusiastic about my fitness quest. But there was a dark cloud for me. It was the pain in my lower legs/ankles (mostly from tendons, I'm told) during jogging. It happened a few minutes in and caused me discomfort that subsided a few minutes after I finished.

This was a barrier to me being all I wanted to be physically. Now, I'm over 300 pounds still, and jogging probably could have been a bit much for me, but I suspected that it was something else. The rest of my legs did fine. This part of my leg would fatigue long before the rest of my legs.

I have high arches--very high arches. You can limbo under them. They've never really been addressed, until now. I decided to take advantage of my wife's work medical coverage and seek out an opinion from a foot professional.

Right away he saw significant problems with the way I walk. Friends have been telling me that I walk funny ever since I was in high school. Shoe salespeople could do little to help me.

I got my custom orthotics yesterday. They cost me $420! My insurance will pay for most of that, but boy, that's a lot money. A computer scans the bottom of your feet. They send the data away, and in a couple of weeks you get custom insoles to put in your shoes. They last a couple of years. I plan on mine lasting a hundred years.

I took them for a jog and I couldn't believe that I for once didn't feel discomfort in my lower leg tendons. The lower legs felt as the upper parts of my legs did. My legs were getting a work out, but there was no pain. I felt like I could go on forever.

This is huge for me. It opens up the potential for me to progress physically with no boundaries. I no longer have this problem holding me back. In short, I need feel I can get as fit as I want to. My jogging time can now start increasing up to a length I'm happy with, say twenty minutes or so, for now.

I've said before that there are probably a thousand things that led to my severe obesity. Bad feet was probably one of them.

An Anniversary of Sorts Today

You could say the journey to better health that I'm on (and writing about in this blog) started one year ago today.  On this day last year, I saw a nutritionist for the first time. The visit didn't meet my expectations. I had been offered the services of my clinic's nutritionist for years but I declined. I had it in my big, pointy head that a nutritionist had to be a Food Nazi. I thought I'd be asked to eat like a "normal," healthy person who doesn't overeat and consumes vegetables for breakfast.

I wish my doctor had filled me in better on what would be involved. I might have gone sooner. That fact is, I didn't even agree to go to a nutritionist. I signed up for the Craving Change class and got forwarded to the nutritionist.

Nutritionists don't expect you to throw everything you know out the window. They nudge you into making small changes--changes that you decide you can achieve. And, by God, they're used to dealing with finicky, stubborn, half-crazy fat people!

My First Visit to a Chiropractor

I didn't know what to expect when I walked into my first chiropractor appointment that I've ever had. I was surprised at what their profession covers. It seems like just about everything.

For instance, we talked about irritable bowl syndrome, which I occasionally suffer from and diet. He went on about how a lot of people are getting more gluten in their diets from whole grains and that humans never used to until 10,000 years ago when there was the agricultural revolution. He said fossils from before that time show excellent health including no signs of cancer, for example. He even discussed the possible relationship of an anxiety disorder (of which I suffer) and skeletal problems. A person who tenses up constantly has a body that learns to be in an unnatural state.

As it turns out, I'm all messed up. Yes, I had a fall that injured my back two months ago, but my body is all out of whack. My arms don't hang right, I slouch, my shoulders aren't where they're supposed to be, among other things like a lack of flexibility and range of motion. In short, this could be one more thing in the perfect storm that led to me being severely obese.

I've learned to pick up things with my feet because I can't bend over very well. My wife is always amazed by this talent.

My Doctor Ordered Me to Buy a Gadget

A Sportline heart rate monitor w/ strap

Many of my more cynical friends will tell you I like me my electronic gadgets. This is how geek testosterone manifests itself. Other men pursue pick-up trucks and moustaches, I outfit myself with circuits and flashing lights. That's why I was weak on willpower when my doctor ordered me to go buy a gadget.

I had a conversation about my fitness pursuit with him and, since I haven't seen him since he tricked me into seeing a nutritionist and setting my life change in motion several months ago, I asked him about exercise advice. They always say, "See your doctor before starting any exercise program," I told him, and his response took me by complete surprise.

"Yes I do have one piece of advice," he said. "And only one piece. Go buy yourself a heart rate monitor for sixty dollars at SportMart."

My doctor even advised me on where to shop!

He got busy scribbling numbers on a scrap piece of paper. They were, in fact, the heart rate zones for exercise as they pertain to a person my age. I was quite familiar with this information through my research and use of a said heart rate monitors the last time I went on a fitness quest.

Basically, you take the number 220 and minus your age to get your maximum heart rate. No matter what you do, your heart can't and won't beat any faster than your maximum heart rate. If you exceed 85% of your MHR, you might put some stress on your heart if you're not healthy and, in my doctor's view, make yourself more sore and have a counter-productive workout. I'd doubt many fitness experts would agree with that wholly, based on what I've read, but they'd probably advise an obese 44 year old like me to try and keep below that 85% level.

They used to think that exercising at a lower intensity, say 65% of your maximum heart rate, was good for fat burning. Now I don't think they believe it makes much of a difference. But that's a discussion for another day. For more information, see this introduction to heart rate monitoring or the Wikipedia article on heart rate.

A heart rate monitor strap on a man with erect nipples.

I had a heart rate monitor before as part of my bike computer, of all things. I used to strap the monitor on my chest and go biking, looking at the readout of what my heart was doing on my bike computer. (I still have it but I can't find the strap.) Then I bought one as an accessory to my treadmill (and have since lost it.) I learned what level of breathing intensity corresponded to what my heart was doing. If I could carry out a conversation without gasping, but was unable to sing a song, I was in my moderate or "training" zone. Not too low, not too high.

So, armed with my doctor's advice--nay, orders--I went to WalMart and bought a watch style heart rate monitor that you can use with or without a strap around your chest. It has a strap included but you can also take two fingers, place them on the watch and it will tell you your pulse quite easily and accurately.

I didn't for a second think this would work accurately but it does! It gives me the same reading with my fingers as it does with the strap and the reading stays constant, without going all over the place, causing you to lose faith in its preciseness.

Using the strap gives you a continuous readout of your heart rate and the watch will track how much time you spend below your target zone, in your zone, and above your zone. It'll even beep if you go too high, which leads me to my next point.

The second or third time I tried jogging in my recent fitness journey, I did a thirty second interval which turned into forty seconds because I would have had to stop in front of a family on their front lawn watching the obese man trying to jog. Although my breathing wasn't overly intense at the forty seconds, it took off on me shortly afterwards.

That means my heart was racing towards its maximum rate because I was sucking wind, as they say. My chest tightened up and I started to get concerned that I was going to have a cardiac event. That didn't happen, but I was very cautious from that point forward and restricted my jogs to the length of time I set out to do.

I asked my doctor if I risked dropping dead by exercise and he basically told me that if I stay within reasonable heart rate limits (not at the maximum), I'll be fine. He described the tightening of the chest before I even mentioned it to him and told me that was one reason to purchase a monitor.

I like the heart rate monitor I bought today and will use it on a treadmill in winter as well, and at the gym.

My walk tonight produced a heart rate of 116 beats per minute, give or take a beat or two, which is about 67% of my maximum. Pretty much where you'd expect a walk to be, but as a measure of improving fitness, I'd bet it's much lower than when I first started walking four months ago.

I will say that I felt a little like Robocop out there tonight, with my iPod Touch tracking my pace and talking in my ear, the Nike Plus shoe sensor on my shoe, my heart rate watch on my wrist and a monitor strapped around my chest. But what the heck? It's all a little dose of motivation. The more you know what's going on with your body the better, in my opinion.

I'm Surprised I'm Fat

Although I've shed fifty pounds of fat mass, it really doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Very few people even notice my reduced size unless I bring it up, then they look me over and concede it's possible.

That fact is, I'm a very large person and fifty pounds doesn't amount to much more appearance-wise than the equivalent of me sucking in my stomach. With someone my size, fifty pounds translates into only a shirt size or two in reduction. With someone smaller it might be a pant size per ten pounds.

So I'm still a gigantic "morbidly" obese man by all accounts, but the remarkable thing is I've begun to forget this fact. I find myself surprised by my appearance when I look in the mirror. I assume I'm not morbidly obese any longer because I've stopped feeling morbidly obese. Exercise has made me feel so "normal," strong and capable that it almost doesn't matter that I'm huge.

One approach that has crossed my mind is to solely focus on exercise and not worry about diet so much. Exercise has decreased my appetite for whatever reason and I feel obliged to eat more reasonably when I'm exercising regularly.

I saw my doctor today and he didn't notice anything different about me, although he was very happy when I filled him in on my progress. The last time I saw him five months ago, I was a very different person. Then, it would have been an agonizing, slow and tedious journey from my bed to his exam room.

What he didn't see today was how I floated effortlessly into his clinic, strong, energetic, and with a very capable cardiovascular system that wasn't sucking air before I got ten feet from the car.