Looking Forward, Looking Back

As they age, most people wistfully look back at pictures from their younger days and long to look as they once did. Inevitably as we grow older, we put on weight, we lose our hair or go gray, we gain wrinkles and creases, all the while wishing we could look a little bit more like we used. Most of us, men and women alike, probably look back at things like our wedding photos or pictures of us in our 20s and admire how we looked. For me personally, though, I'm the complete opposite of that mindset...as much as I love my wife and have been blessed to have been married to her, the only reason I like looking at our wedding pictures is because she was as beautiful then as she is now and it reminds me that I made one of the best decisions of my life in marrying her. When it comes to me, I prefer to not see myself back then at all. I was 22 when we got married and it must seem strange to many of you, but I absolutely cringe when I look at myself in our wedding photos. In fact, I'm at the point where I can't really bear to look at any pictures of myself between the ages of 20 and 30. For me, that decade was marked by my becoming really overweight and out of shape. Most of it was my own fault as I stopped exercising and eating right, partially caused by the time consuming and stressful nature of being a PhD student and postdoc. I got lazy and stopped taking care of myself, and I figured that since I am tall (6'5") and have a large frame, I just carried it differently than other people. I had been slimmer and very active in my teens and early 20s, playing many different sports and running avidly, so I figured I could go back to doing at some point in the future.

It didn't really hit me until I turned 30 and it began to affect my health. My annual physical that year was not so good, with my blood work showing high cholesterol and the beginnings of diabetes. I also had high blood pressure and constantly sore knees and back. The final straw for me was when my doctor at the time gently suggested that maybe I should consider weight loss surgery. For whatever reason, that was the kick in the ass I needed and over the next year, with the help of a free iPhone app for tracking my calories and improving my habits, I took up running again after a decade and managed to lose over 100 lbs. I'm proud to say that even now at 5 years later, I've kept it off. In fact, my new doctor, who has only known me since we moved here this past year, commended me on how excellent my health is when I had my annual physical last week, something for which I was justifiably proud. 

However, I've never been able to reconcile the contentment I feel with being healthier and in better shape now than I have been since I was 18 or 19 with feeling so ashamed to look at pictures from my 20s. So many wonderful moments, from getting married, the birth of all four of my children, graduating with my PhD, and fun times and vacations with family and friends...all are preserved in images that are painful for me to look at because of how awful I looked and felt back then. The fact that this prevents me from reminiscing and enjoying those memories is doubly sad and does nothing but exacerbate those emotions in me. I've always been self-critical and self-conscious, but there is basically an entire decade of my life, which at the moment is almost 1/3 of my existence, which I can't bear to literally look back on because of this. When most people my age are looking back on those years with fondness and wishing they looked like that now, apart from the fuller head of hair I had back then I'm the complete opposite. I'm not sure if I'll ever get over how much I wasted my 20s being so unhealthy and out of shape, but for the sake of so many of the good things that happened in my life during those years, I've got to try and at least make enough peace so that it's not too painful to look back. The one good thing, though, is that all of those photographs have been excellent motivation for me to keep living a healthier life. Any random day when I feel too tired to run or decide that eating right is too much of a hassle, I just pull out one of those pictures to remind myself where I was five years ago and where I am now...it keeps me going and gets me back on track because I will never allow myself to go back to that ever again. Having just written that, it's occurred to me that perhaps that is the silver lining in all of this; those photographs can serve as a cautionary tale and continue to motivate me to live as I am now out of fear for how I was then.

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Matching Fitness Expectations With Your Age (or, I'm Not Going to TakeThis Getting Older Thing Laying Down!)

Just a short personal post on getting a little bit older and not being too happy about it...

The other day while I was out for my run, I became frustrated yet again that my average pace the past year or so has been slower than it used to be. I've also been getting increasingly frustrated with the fact that I seem to get sore and unable to run more than four miles in one go; it especially galls me when I remember than as recently as 2013 I was running six to nine miles each time I went out.  Now before you think me an ungrateful complainer, let me acknowledge right off the bat that I realize I should be thankful that I'm physically able to do what I am doing. I am very thankful that I am healthy enough to be able to run on a regular basis.  My frustrations stem more from the fact that lately I have not been able to force my body to do what I want it to do, especially since I was able to not that long ago.

Really, what I'm struggling with is that scourge we all have to deal with which is starting to push back against me with equal force. I am of course talking about AGE.  I turned 35 this past February and while I certainly wouldn't classify myself as old, I am finally (reluctantly) coming to terms with the fact that I am not young any more, either.  I'm in great physical health but the aches and pains last a bit longer and the minor injuries I accrue throughout everyday life take a bit longer to heal than they used to.  I remember in my early 20s going to play hours of pickup basketball when I had the flu, a sprained knee or ankle, a stiff back, you name it.  Like anyone at that age, I bounced back quickly and felt indestructible.  I still felt that way around the time I turned 30, especially after I'd gotten back into shape at that age. However, over the last five years I've definitely begun to notice the shift.  Most recently, I've been suffering from a sore hamstring and glute in my right leg that has been nagging for weeks.  I have no problem running through it, but no amount of stretching or rest seems to speed up my recovery. Five years ago it would have been as good as new in a few days.  I kept complaining about it until my wife once again reminded me that I'm a little older now than I was then.  I certainly haven't been accepting of it and I still complain about it a lot. It has taken my wife gently reminding me that I really am getting older to make me gradually realize that this is really happening and that I am going to have to learn to live with it. But just because I accept it doesn't mean I have to like it or be limited by it, right?

The challenge for me now is to temper my fitness expectations by taking the age factor into consideration.  Maybe it's okay to not be as fast or spry or flexible as I was at 30 or 25 or 17.  Maybe it's no big deal that I heal a little slower from aches and pains.  Short of finding the fountain of youth, there's nothing that can be done to reverse the march of time and its effects on the body.  That being said, I am slowly coming to grips with it and realizing that it's perhaps okay to be a little slower, or only run 4 miles instead of 6. It doesn't mean I will never be able to physically do the things that I was easily doing a few years (or more) back; it just means that it's going to take me a bit more time and effort to get there again. Luckily, I like a challenge..and I will get back there!

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The Exercise Mind-Body Connection

As an avid runner, I've definitely reaped the physical benefits of regular exercise and eating a healthier diet: I lost a LOT of weight, I improved my overall health immensely, and I just feel so much better physically at age 34 than I have in a long time. If you'd like to read about my weight loss and fitness journey, you can check out previous posts HERE. I won't rehash it all in this post because what I want to write about now is something that I've learned over the course of the last few years. As you can guess from the title, it has to do with the connection between the body and the mind as it relates to exercise.

You see, there are some cases where I'm out on one of my runs and my mind wanders so much thinking about different things that it's almost like I'm on autopilot. I would say more often than not, this is what happens when I go out for my long runs, and I enjoy this aspect of it. For me, it's the best kind of mental therapy because it's time that I'm alone and clear-headed enough that I can really get some good thinking done. There are also the (rarer) occasions when I am mentally not into it, whether it's because I'm tired or having a bad day or for another reason, and I just switch off my brain; during these times, the run is a purely physical exercise and nothing more. However, when I'm able to strike the perfect balance between the physical movement of my body and the thoughts in my head, I'm able to reach another level that is really special.

At the risk of sounding too "New Agey," it almost feels like I've achieved a state of hyper-awareness between my body and my surroundings. I prefer to run without music playing for safety reasons: I like to be able to hear what's going on around me, whether it's a car coming, people in their yards or approaching me from behind, and so on. But another reason for this is that I like to be able to focus on the sights, sounds, and smells of my surroundings...nature is very beautiful and given the number of wild animals I've encountered on my runs over the years, from wild turkeys to deer, skunks, possums, foxes, coyotes, rabbits, and turtles...not to mention dogs and cats, it's best to know what's going on around me at all times! Taking it even one step further, I love listening to the sound of my footfalls and the rhythm of my breathing because when I enter this state of balance, I can really feel that I have complete understanding and control of my entire body.  When I really pay attention and strike this balance, I can focus on improving my running performance, which leads to definitely noticeable improvements each successive time I head out onto the road.  I also find that the adrenaline allows my senses to feel almost enhanced...certainly my senses of sight, smell, and hearing feel more wide-open, acute, and sensitive when I'm in the middle of a run than they do during my everyday life. Biologically, this makes sense with the increased oxygen intake and blood flow, as well as the opening of my airways, but I also think that the fact that I'm really in tune to how my body is feeling and my focus on what I'm doing give me more of an understanding and more control over those senses.

Additionally, reaching this state of equilibrium when I'm running allows me to really think about things with a clear head and open mind. I'm sure it's a combination of being truly alone and singularly focused on one task, as well as the endorphins that are released during sustained physical activity, but I always find that, by far, I do my best thinking when I'm out on these long runs. This can range from thinking about things going on in my life at the moment, whether they're stressful, exciting, confusing, upsetting, happy...the entire emotional spectrum. I also find that some of my best creative ideas, whether they're song lyrics, ideas for the novel I'm (still) working on, ideas for blog posts, song melodies, and anything else that pops into my mind all come to me at these times. I've found these moments during my runs to be the best form of psychotherapy I could possibly have...a chance to clear my head, burn off all of the energy and stress and anxiety I may have, and a time to really think clearly and resolve issues in my head. The resulting runner's high after the run ends is a fantastic feeling, the only downside being that sometimes I have such a hard time coming down off of all of the adrenaline that it makes it hard for me to go to sleep, even hours later!

I know I'm not unique in noticing, harnessing, and reaping the benefits of this phenomenon during regular exercise sessions, and I'd love to hear from anyone else who notices something similar during their workouts, whether you run like I do or engage in some different form of exercise. How do you feel during it? Do you take advantage of the enhanced connection between your mind and body? Have you found that it ends up feeling relaxing to workout? Please comment below and let's discuss this!

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