If this doesn't work, forget it - One man's attempt to lose the "love handles."

I really didn’t want to have to resort to this, using my blog for motivational purposes…my own motivational purposes, but I think it’s definitely come to that. You see, I just ran 50 miles. You can read below if you have a few hours. One reader said that it took him as long to read the race report as it took me to run the race! So follow this train of thought. While I realize that most of America suffers with obesity (some studies show as much as 60%) I know that I should be grateful to be able to exercise regularly and maintain a somewhat healthy weight. However, when I started running long ago I figured that if I trained enough to run a marathon some day, I’d be as skinny as the Kenyan folks who typically win the marathons. I wouldn’t have to worry about weight, what I ate, and I’d finally rid myself of those darned “love handles” that crept up sometime in my mid-20’s.

Well, after running my first half a dozen marathons I noticed that I was actually gaining a little weight and I tried to go with that whole “muscle weighs more than fat” argument. You can only hide behind that one for so long, especially when each evening was capped off with a HUGE bowl of ice cream AND you spent much of your week looking for reasons to justify eating out for lunch…and dinner…and breakfast whenever possible.

I figured that as I started training harder, and running faster, I’d still soon look like a real runner. I set my sights on qualifying to run the Boston marathon. When I first decided I’d try to qualify, I had to take almost 45 minutes off my then current marathon best (for those who care, my qualifying time needed to be under 3 hours 15 minutes). I figured that if and when I was able to hit that time I’d be off to Boston, and the fat would be off of me!

Well, I ran Boston and took the love handles right along with me. I continued to set the bar higher and higher, when I hit 10 marathons, then a dozen, each time I crossed off the milestone I still had plenty to show for it, and I’m not talking about my collections of medals and running t-shirts.

Last summer I discovered ultra running. An ultra is anything OVER the marathon distance of 26.2 miles. I ran a couple of 50k races (roughly 32 miles) and set my sights on my first 50 mile run. I KNEW, didn’t think, but this time knew that if I followed a fairly decent training program for running a 50 mile race, by the time I hit that race I’d finally see that hidden six-pack, the love handles would be gone and I’d finally, finally look like a runner!

To make matters worse, on one particular Saturday evening, about 3 or 4 weeks before the 50-mile race, we had friends over. I had just completed another 50k race, I ran two within 3 weeks and this was just 2 weeks before the 50 miler. I was eating Mexican food. My Mexican food, some of my wife’s Mexican food and most of my kid’s Mexican food. I’ve blocked out the exact conversation I had with a friend, but basically the gist of it was this friend commented that one wouldn’t look at me and think, “There’s a 50 mile runner!” Translation: man, you still look rather rotund, robust and overall chunky to run as much as you do. Ouch! I didn’t want to change up much about my diet pre-race; it had gotten me to the point where I was just fine. But I knew I had to actually eat healthy food after the race was done if I ever wanted to look like I ran as many miles as I did.

Monday, April 14, 2008 would be the day I started eating better. The race was on April 5^th, a Saturday. I gave myself a week to binge, and binge I did. In-n-Out twice, Outback once, pizza, pot roast, cold cereal and ice cream. Oh the ice cream! I had it every night and I never held back. The larger the bowl the better! But by Sunday evening I was ready. So here I sit, half way through Day 1 and I’m actually doing fine. Tonight I won’t have ice cream. I worked out hard this morning and won’t cheat with any candy or ice cream, no fast food. It’s time to see if eating well, or “clean” as many athletes refer to it can actually benefit me. I realize that statement sounds silly, of course it will, it just might not be as fun as I’d like for it to be.

And if I do it for 6 weeks and I don’t see any results? Well, I’ve heard that if you just scrape off the freezer burn the ice cream still tastes just fine!

Epilogue, Monday Night – We have “family night” every Monday. A little lesson, a few songs, it’s a great time. I highly recommend it. We also end family night with a nice, unhealthy snack. Much to my kids delight, and my chagrin, I told the kids that I was in charge of snack and that the goal was to “eat all of Daddy’s ice cream.” They did. I scooped it and for the first time in my life I didn’t sample at least a bowl full whilst scooping. I didn’t have any! And my nighttime snack? A banana. I can’t even come up with a joke about eating a banana for my nighttime snack. That’s how boring it was. So day one down, nothing unhealthy. First day without ice cream, candy or a cookie in, well, I don’t know if I’ve ever pulled that off.