Have you ever done something with your kid that was hard, painful even? So much so that you doubted whether you were doing the right thing? Only to come out the other side laughing about how much fun the challenge was, how much better and stronger you are for having done it.

It’s happening a lot at our house these days because this is the semester of endurance.

Last week it was running cross country with my son for the first time.

We’re good at a lot of things. But we’re not always good at making ourselves do hard things. We don’t seek discomfort, even when we know it’s an improvement.

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For my daughter, that’s three straight hours of dance on Wednesdays. We know that she needs to do something that feels a little magical if she’s going to move past the body brain barrier.

For my son, we know he needs friends and a bit of adventure, not repetition, to lock in. So we joined the cross country team with his best friend. Running around a track wouldn’t have worked. Running through the woods is great. He loves to hike, this is just faster than that.

For April and me? It’s routines. We’re so good at establishing and starting routines, but I’ll be damned if, every time we knock out a consistent week, we say, “Great, we did it,” and stop doing it. “Why don’t I feel as good?” Because we jumped off whatever wagon it was we were on at the time.

Back to cross country:

I finally got to run long with my son last week. It was absolutely magical.

I mean it was hard as hell, physically and emotionally. He’s still new to running, so he gets the side cramps and shin splints. But I think he’s finally seen over the hill to the other side, where you get all the feeling good without quite as much of the feeling bad.

Even though he knows that, it’s hard to watch, or even encourage, your kids to endure suffering.

So we talked about the pain cave. Sometimes, long-distance runners find getting to the place where there is pain to be a therapeutic experience. I’m not talking about sadistic, injury pain, but rather that intersection between boredom, discomfort, and self-doubt.

For me, it’s not dissimilar from getting a tattoo.

It’s an opportunity to connect the gaps between where we are and where we’re better. Shep really seemed to understand that metaphor.

So we put our hands on our heads and walked the turnarounds. Kept it slow on the flats, and ran the hills. We knocked out a mile.

We cried. We laughed.

We limped. We dragged. We walked.

But we ran the hills. We kept our hear rate up.

We even passed a few of the kids who came out of the blocks too fast.

It was hard, but at the end he still had the energy to ask, “Can I play on the playground?”

We couldn’t, it was dinnertime, but wow.

It was a lovely morning, other than the fact I hadn’t had any coffee. But I was on my way to my doctor’s office, and low blood pressure is a great way to make a good impression with a new doctor.

Speaking of which.

A family ambled up behind me while I was standing in front of the door on my phone. “Excuse me.”

I opened the door and held it as they shuffled in.

“Do you know where the pulmonary office is?”

“I don’t I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t even know where the office I was headed to was. But I couldn’t let that stress me out, my blood pressure was already on the way up.

Checked the registry by the elevator banks. Second floor.

I tried to calm myself in the waiting room, but it’s so hard with all of the completely unaware folks shouting and watching TikTok on their phones without earbuds.

“Mr. Clark.”

That’s me.

We step on the scale. Not too shabby, not that it matters.

Then comes the blood pressure cuff.

“I have white coat syndrome,” I say in preemptive defense.

And boy did I. My BP was 158/100 compared with the much better 118/74 only a few months ago.

White coat hypertension

Do you ever get nervous when you go to the doctor? Maybe when they pull out the pointy needle. Or maybe when they pull out the scale?

For me, it’s the blood pressure cuff.

That’s the moment my blood pressure spikes (not ideal for blood pressure measurements).

It’s called white coat hypertension, and it’s very common for big bodied folks. So common, in fact, that a doctor friend once told me he pays more attention to the bottom number in big folks, because it’s the one that swings the least from moment to moment.

But that still makes it hard to get an accurate reading.

And it certainly doesn’t help the shame fat people already feel in the doctor’s office.

Shame is a clinical issue

Here is the fact of the matter, shame triggers fight or flight responses. Those responses increase blood pressure and spike cortisol—which isn’t an issue if you’re like, fleeing. But, long-term shame-related stress doesn’t dissipate. There is no safety to return to. It’s constant, and cultural.

Let’s get academic for a minute and check the literature.

Schvey et al. studied people who experience weight stigma in a clinical setting.

“Participants in the stigmatizing condition exhibited significantly greater cortisol reactivity when compared with those in the neutral condition, irrespective of weight status.” (Schvey et al., 2014)

That means participants didn’t even have to actually be fat to “feel” fat, and experience the corresponding cortisol reaction.

Here is why this is so significant:

If a fat person goes to the doctor for stress or weight-related issues, they are more likely to experience fat shame than a non-fat person. That shame creates increased cortisol production, which worsens the issue.

The Infinite COBWEBS Loop

Janet Tomiyama gives this a name, the COBWEBS model, which describes the perpetual and deleterious nature of fat shame in the clinical environment. (Tomiyama, 2014)

So it just adds to more weight, more shame, worse blood pressure, more weight, more shame... you get it.

And there is plenty more research to back this cycle up.

“Higher BMI was related to greater experienced and internalized weight stigma, which were linked to greater body-related shame. Internalized weight stigma was also related to greater body-related guilt, which was associated with higher body-related shame. Body-related shame was associated with healthcare stress which ultimately contributed to healthcare avoidance.” (Mensinger et al., 2018)

So fat folks are either going to the doc to get worse, or avoiding the doc and getting worse. Great.

“Weight discrimination was associated with an increase in mortality risk of nearly 60% in both HRS participants and MIDUS participants. This increased risk was not accounted for by common physical and psychological risk factors.” (Sutin et al., 2015)

And people are dying. So yeah, sometimes I get in my head about it.

Why the BP if I know all this?

I’ve known about the blood-pressure/doctor-shame cycle for a long time, but have been lucky enough to not think about it for a while. My blood pressure has been good. My doctors have been supportive. And the numbers have gotten better consistently for the past five or so years.

That’s not the case for a lot of patients.

“PCPs demonstrated less emotional rapport with overweight and obese patients than for normal weight patients.” (Gudzune et al., 2013a)

We’re trying to find a magic bullet for obesity and it turns out, a little rapport could work?

So all of that negativity was in my head when I moved to a new town where I didn’t know what type of office I was walking into. Were they going to take one look at me and prescribe a GLP-1 before they ask any questions? Not that there is a problem if that’s your journey, it’s just wrong to assume that’s my journey.

And even before the GLP-1 of it all, that first interaction always involved so much hemming and hawing about weight loss. And in the Southeast, a lot of times that doctor is as fat as me. Which is fine, other than the way they’re still treating me like shit and making weight the only focus of our visit.

In a study on people experiencing weight stigma, the results were shocking. “On average, 29% of participants across countries avoided visiting their doctor even when they suspected they should.” (Puhl et al., 2021)

And for you, “Obese people are a drag on national healthcare costs,” assholes. Where do sick people wind up when they can’t settle in with a primary care doctor? The most expensive place on the planet.

“As compared to normal weight non-shoppers, overweight and obese shoppers had higher rates of ED visits, which persisted during within weight group comparisons.” (Gudzune et al., 2013b)

The non-weight markers

To be clear, my doctors and coaches have taken me from out of control blood pressure and cholesterol (to name just two) to basically perfect markers across the board. I’m still a lot closer to 300 pounds than whatever goal weight most doctors would set for me.

For some people, losing weight truly is a path toward better health markers. For others, the journey toward better health markers happens to correspond with lower weight. And for the rest of us, we’re just the size we are, so those health markers are much more important than the number on the scale.

And treating patients in big bodies with kindness and respect goes a long way toward improving those numbers.

I should point out here that my new doctor was lovely, totally understood why my blood pressure was bad, and told me about her own experience with weight. And my blood work came back better than ever.

And whether you believe in Health at Every Size or empathetic care for fat people or not, cholesterol is cholesterol, BP is BP, and reducing shame is a clear path toward better health outcomes.

So, sure, weight is a thing. But it’s not necessarily my north star health marker seeing as how no matter how much I work out (10K afternoon heat-wave run this week), diet (pescatarian), and transform my body, I wind up between 270 and 300.

Where do we go from here?

For any providers out there reading, just know that having someone, on their first interaction, assume I’m sedentary, unhealthy, and at risk just kind of sucks.

My whole thing is that I work my ass off to stay fit. One of the best days of my life was when Dr. Christina Roullard looked at my calves, my resting heart rate, and my body, and said, “Man, you must be a runner or something.”

References

Gudzune, K. A., Beach, M. C., Roter, D. L., & Cooper, L. A. (2013a). Physicians build less rapport with obese patients. Obesity, 21(10), 2146–2152. https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.20384

Gudzune, K. A., Bleich, S. N., Richards, T. M., Weiner, J. P., Hodges, K., & Clark, J. M. (2013b). Doctor shopping by overweight and obese patients is associated with increased healthcare utilization. Obesity, 21(7), 1328–1334. https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.20189

Mensinger, J. L., Tylka, T. L., & Calamari, M. E. (2018). Mechanisms underlying weight status and healthcare avoidance in women: A study of weight stigma, body-related shame and guilt, and healthcare stress. Body Image, 25, 139–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2018.03.001

Puhl, R. M., Lessard, L. M., Himmelstein, M. S., & Foster, G. D. (2021). The roles of experienced and internalized weight stigma in healthcare experiences: Perspectives of adults engaged in weight management across six countries. PLOS ONE, 16(6), e0251566. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251566

Schvey, N. A., Puhl, R. M., & Brownell, K. D. (2014). The stress of stigma: Exploring the effect of weight stigma on cortisol reactivity. Psychosomatic Medicine, 76(2), 156–162. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000000031

Sutin, A. R., Stephan, Y., & Terracciano, A. (2015). Weight discrimination and risk of mortality. Psychological Science, 26(11), 1803–1811. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615601103

Tomiyama, A. J. (2014). Weight stigma is stressful. A review of evidence for the Cyclic Obesity/Weight-Based Stigma model. Appetite, 82, 8–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2014.06.108

— Two Gudzune 2013 papers share a first author and year, so APA needs the a/b suffixes; they sort alphabetically by second author (Beach before Bleich), which fixes a to rapport and b to doctor shopping. Volumes, issues and pages verified against Europe PMC and Crossref on 8/19.

Have you ever moved? A new town? A new state? A new region?

My dad was an Air Force brat, so we moved every three or so years for the first half of my life. I’m used to it. And in my 20s, all of my moves were related to working at the newspaper. Day one, I was on the phone with sheriffs and senators. It was my job to take the day to get lost and find my way back.

Moving is exciting for me and my family. We like adventures, we like solving puzzles. We like meeting people.

But not easy for most people. In fact, most people don’t move. And we’re trying to remember that because our last move, while in the long-run one of the best decisions we’ve ever made, was SUPER hard. And when we got here, we didn’t have the same classmates or newspaper editors to introduce us to town.

Plus, now that I’m in my 30s working for marketing and software companies, wandering around town on foot, getting lost, and calling my local elected officials over and over is considered erratic behavior.

So I’ve started using running as my formal introduction to a new town. It started back in 2022, which I wrote about here:

The Perfect Pace for Curiosity

Running is slow enough that you see the stuff you would miss in a car, or even if you were just busy and distracted by wherever you’re going next. That’s the thing about running, you’re never really on your way anywhere, so you can be on your way anywhere.

So running is my new way to get acquainted with a new town. It reminds me of Peter Sagal’s line from The Incomplete Book of Running.

For instance, last week I was running past a bunch of downtown store fronts, the part of downtown where all the fancy-lady spas are. And I watch someone walk out of… A BUILDING I’VE NEVER SEEN.

That’s right, most days we’re moving through the world so fast we don’t even notice the stuff that is there. The stuff that has been there longer than we have, but we’ve yet to see it.

Like that tree. Yeah, that one.

Or the field of bluebonnets I found behind my apartment in Ft. Worth once I finally ran past a copse of trees. Or the wildflowers that were waiting just past the point where I normally turned around on the Natchez Trace. The fox that I didn’t realize lived on the trail next to my office in Oxford. The coyote that was displaced by the new grocery store they built next to our neighborhood.

These days it feels like we’re searching as hard and fast as we can for something. For something interesting. Something we haven’t seen yet. And here it is. All you had to do was run a little slower.

What Dalton’s Shown Me at 5 Miles Per Hour

Here is the best part of running around Dalton, just about anytime you crest a hill, there is a view waiting. For instance, the hill right outside my front door, when I get to the top, I can see all the way to Ellijay where the Smoky and Appalachian mountains start in earnest. And when you have a view that great, it’s easy to think to yourself, “That’s the view.” And that’s what I thought in March and April when I was getting to know my house and my street.

Maybe it’s Turniptown Mountain, maybe it’s Cowpen. I don’t know, not an expert yet. But I’ll let you know for sure when I run to the top one of these days.

The Mt. Rachel Summit

But then came May, and my foot started feeling better. So I ventured out. I found out that it’s a 5K if I run from my house, to the top of Mt. Rachel (it’s not that high, I promise) and back down to the bar. What a wonderful coincidence.

And then, I realized that if I make one extra turn, that same route goes past my kids’ school.

And just like that, most of a square kilometer is locked in my head. Library is across from the arts guild. The Arts Guild is two blocks from the school. The school is only a few more blocks away from The Mill (our town’s hip hangout inside a converted early 1900s textile mill). Before that run, I thought The Mill was on the other side of town (now I walk there).

And, I would have never known about the busted-but-cute little log cabin across from the Mill. Or the pedestrian greenway that connects the mill to Mt. Rachel.

I wouldn’t have known about the big drainage runoff ditch that an enterprising immigrant family turned into a beautiful farmable little piece of temperate rainforest (with the help of some pigs and a flock of chickens).

And I certainly never would have known that my favorite bar is literally in between the end of the Mt. Rachel route and my house. That’s VITAL information.

Plus downtown is flat, super pedestrian friendly, and home to more micro breweries than a town of 30,000 could possibly need. Nothing better than finishing a long hilly run off with a flat cooldown and a couple of grown up sodas. Except maybe having the whole crew sitting on the porch cheering when you run by.

The Interval of it all

I have to shout out this new running app/game, Interval, which has been a big part of my new small-town running discovery. It’s basically just Risk, but if the board game was Google Earth and conquering territory happens by running a loop.

So, to expand my territory and compete, runners have to find unique routes and new places to run. You have to figuratively expand your map if you’re going to literally expand it.

And that means I’ve found the roads with good sidewalks (and made a note of the ones my mom would be mad to find out I ran down).

The Civil War Battlefield

In June, my wife took me to Rocky Face Ridge on the other side of town. It overlooks one of the only real passes between Chattanooga and Atlanta. So, when two armies were trying to navigate through Georgia and Tennessee during the Civil War, they met there in that valley.

It’s one thing to drive past a battlefield. Or to walk a battlefield. But to be on the ground, sweating, tired, running, is to experience it more viscerally. Dipping in and out of the tree line. It’s not that you feel like a soldier (I don’t know, maybe you do), but it certainly makes me think, “If I’m this tired doing this on purpose in performance fabrics, then I can only imagine what it must be like for a teenager in head-to-toe wool, who was forced out here by his town’s rich landowner.”

And there are streams, where it’s easy to imagine that same tired young man stopping for water and a break from the beating sun.

The Rolling Dead

The high school is across the street from my house, and it’s one of the more popular running loops in town. Any time of day, someone is running laps around the high school campus. It has two hard hills either way you run it, and is otherwise a nice, chill time.

I’ve been running it since the week we moved here.

But sometime in July, I thought, “I wonder what’s over that hill.”

It was an absolute beast going up, but on the other side is a hundreds-of-year-old cemetery that spans 100 acres of wooded rolling hills. Some of the soldiers from the battle at Rocky Face were laid to rest there.

And I don’t know if you’ve ever run through the cemetery of an army that was both from your town and fighting against your country, but it’s a bit of a mind-twister.

If I was driving, I could have turned on the radio and gotten the hell out of there. But I was running, and I had no interest in turning around and heading back up that hill. So I had to sit with the discomfort. Or, well, run with it.

I mean, the generals, leaders, and wealthy supporters of the Confederacy, good riddance. But it was mostly poor kids doing the fighting, being forced to give their lives for a future they wouldn’t inherit.

And since you can’t outrun those thoughts, might as well run to the local bar and talk them over with some friends.

What Have You Seen at 5 Miles Per Hour?

What is your hawk’s nest or busted log cabin?

I want to know. Hit reply and tell me.

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Is anyone else noticing the grueling pace of the world lately? It’s too fast. It feels like something kind of catastrophic has to happen to shake us out of our speed addiction, (MORE BETTER FASTER!), and I’m kind of always panicking about what it will end up being. Thought the pandemic was “it” but boy was I wrong.

In the same vein, I work a lot with AI. For work. That’s half the reason I’m writing so much on Substack these days, because I’m longing for creativity and original writing. But it also has me thinking about AI a lot and talking to AI experts a lot. It’s stressful the pace that everyone is thinking at, and that I’m thinking at.

So anyway, I’m listening to a podcast on AI at 1.5 speed and thinking about slowing down when I clock my fastest kilometer ever! Or well, in ages. How long? I don’t know, I didn’t track back then.

How fast is my dirty nasty speed?

It’s a seven minute kilometer, lol. But that’s my dirty nasty speed. And it’s fast. I know that it’s fast, because it’s faster than my slow.

So yeah, I did 5.5 faster than I normally do 5.

I Missed Out on a Lot

In that time of grinding, grinding my work thoughts, grinding my speed, hell, grinding through my podcast backlog (why do I have a podcast backlog, I shouldn’t have to get caught up on leisure activities), I wasn’t really looking up, or paying attention at all. I even tripped on a bunch of rocks.

And I was running around a lake I’d never seen, on a 5K trail I’d never run, past people I’ve never met, and puppies I’ve never pet.

Seriously, the image at the top is just a stock photo because I wasn’t even paying enough attention to snap a photo of the very beautiful lake I was next to.

And I was just listening to two guys talk about AI on 1.5 speed while not paying attention to the world around me, coincidentally, on about 1.5 speed.

So yeah, I think I’m going to try to run that trail again slow. And maybe I’ll try to break 7 minutes without my headphones in.

Here’s how my little run tracking AI skill broke it down for me:

⚡ It’s the fastest pace on record, by a lot

Now go pound some pavement. Or rest. Just listen to your body, or whatever.

For some people, running is about physical exercise. Psh, I wish that was why I ran. What a noble idea.

I run because I’m crazy.

And not like a friend saying, “Wow you run a lot, you’re crazy.”

More like a doctor saying, “You’re crazy, you should run a lot.”

Sunday was no different. I put in my longest run in years, kind of on accident, all because I had a breakdown.

That’s right.

Oh wait, not an emotional breakdown. I mean, it got close. But literally, a breakdown.

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My family was stranded on I-40

Breakdown. Our Pacifica EV, which we love and until this point had no problems with, said, “Hey we’re shutting off, pull over,” or something equally confounding.

Once I realized the accelerator was basically unplugged, I steered the family to the side of the highway and just pushed buttons for a bit. What happened!?

We called AAA. And they were… Well, they were honestly kind of condescending. Like, “You’re stranded, what are you going to do? Walk over here and fight us?” Meanwhile I just want a tow.

Then we called the Chrysler/Mopar/Whatever road side assistance. And they didn’t know which OF THEIR approved maintenance facilities were open or even nearby. Which seems insane. That’s like, the thing they of all people should know.

But they were at least nice.

So we finally called a wrecker service like we should have from the beginning. Daniel, from Young’s Wrecker Service in Brownsville, TN. He ruled. He drove us 30 miles to Jackson, dropped April off at the Hertz counter at the tiny little Jackson airport, and then dropped the rest of us, and the van, off at the Chrysler dealership.

The dealership was closed and didn’t really have a place to receive a van, so we just left it out front and I threw my key under some all-weather mats out front.

The good news is that it was so locked up that the neutral pull cord wasn’t even working. You couldn’t steal it if you wanted to.

We Don’t Live in Jackson

Here’s the kicker, we were nowhere near home. We were a couple hundred miles away.

So after the breakdown, the tow, and the rental car, we still had a lot of driving to do.

And our dog was scheduled for pickup at 4 in the afternoon, a deadline we would have cleared by hours otherwise. But, we weren’t going to make it before the kennel closed, so we had to book an extra night along with everything else.

One night of boarding is one thing. But do you know what you want the most when you’ve been away from home for multiple days and you’re super stressed out?

A HUG FROM YOUR DOG!

An 8-Mile Run Is Almost as Good as a Hug From Your Dog

Ok, maybe not. But it’s what I had.

April told me to go on and git. So I went on and got out of there. Saying, “I’ll see you in…. well it’ll be a few hours,” before I left.

That’s the moment that a stressed guy turned into a Heavyweight Track Star.

And I kept my promise. Two hours, 13K, 8 miles, and ~1,500 feet of elevation later, I was back and better than before.

The run itself was awesome, but what was really amazing was the silence. The nothing in my head. The fact that I probably ran for an hour without a podcast or music in my ears. I faced down the scary thoughts, thought them, and then got on with being in my body.

As Kevin Costner says, “Clear the mechanism.”

Here’s the route:

I started off climbing up and then bombing a couple-hundred foot hill by the house.

Ran through the local Civitan Park.

Crossed the highway where a guy is normally waving flags and proselytizing.

Ran through the Dalton State campus (very pretty)

Ran down past the hotels and back across the highway through the traffic-laden commercial district.

Passed the local runner memorial and the best little garden shop in the world.

Hit some neighborhood parks.

Found the other elementary school in town that I hadn’t seen yet.

Did a big loop around downtown.

And here’s how you know I was stressed. After more than seven miles, I contemplated turning up the bypass and looping around the hospital (but decided against going further, for the better).

In the end, I just ran back up over the hills and through the woods to my house.

And the next morning, I took the kids to pick up Scout very first thing. It was great. She gave us hugs that were worth at least 15K.

And the car is still sitting in front of the dealership waiting for its turn in line, so there’s nothing I can worry about anyway.

I’m Grateful for Embodiment

When you have ADHD (or any number of other mental health issues), it’s easy to forget that your brain is attached to a body. Your brain is so overwhelming, why would you ever have time to get on to another thing? Having ADHD is like having a narcissist for a brain. It acts like there isn’t a body, a stomach, hormones, all that.

On top of that, when you’re fat in this world, it’s easy to disassociate from your body. Everyone else hates it, might as well ignore it.

It took me 30 years to realize I hadn’t lived a single day in my body to that point. And I’m still untangling it. Half of the activities on my list are violent enough that they force embodiment. Sure, hockey requires so much physical concentration, but it’s also hard to ignore a body that’s being slammed into a wall. That’s like an embodiment cheat code.

And I’m lucky. I’m grateful.

Not everyone knows what their thing is. I’m lucky to have running, hockey, hiking, disc golf, family walks, dog walks, and dawg walks as reliable embodiment activities, but not everyone has that freedom of movement.

Not to say I want to gloat in it. Not to say everyone should. But to say this:

If you can move your body, try out new ways to move it and see if anything feels good or presents a fun challenge.

Don’t get fit. Don’t lose weight. Don’t change your life. Just try walking or dancing or sit’n’b’fit. Try something that feels a little silly. Give it the ole college try. If you don’t like it, great. But sooner or later, I’d bet, you find a movement that makes your brain and your body happy. That’s the stuff of life.

Let me know what you end up doing.

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The short of it: our car broke down on the side of the interstate. AAA was less than helpful, condescending even. We got towed 30 miles, rented a car, it was Sunday so no one was open and we just dropped our car in front of a dealership parking lot, and drove the remaining 200+ miles home.

So yeah, when we got home I ran what my little Claude analytics bot tells me is my longest run.

It’s not. I’ve done a sanctioned half and a couple 10-15 mile trail runs.

But it’s certainly my longest in Dalton. And it’s my longest run in a couple of years.

And it’s my longest run completed without injuring myself! That’s worth celebrating.

Not too bad to see that elevation over 1,000 feet and the pace better than average.

Plus, I reclaimed basically all the territory I’ve ever had in Interval, making me the leader of the core of Dalton for a least a couple of days.

This run took me over a massive hill that looks across a valley at Rocky Face Ridge, through Civitan Park and across the creek. I crossed the highway, through the lovely Dalton State campus, to the convention center. Then, back over the highway, through the congested commercial center, past Fiddleheads (the world’s greatest nursery), and back around downtown.

It was awesome.

Our family meets up with some Ft. Worth friends every summer, the weekend or so before school starts. It’s great. All the kids are the same age and the friendship has survived a move or three, depending on how you count.

This year the destination was Memphis, my old stomping grounds from the back half of college and first few years of adulthood. A city that would have killed me had I stayed there too long. Not like crime-killed-me (that’s way less of a problem than people make it out to be). More like, fun-to-death kind of thing. The music and the parties and the food, it’s all too good for my personality.

Which makes it the perfect place for a little weekend visit. Just enough time to have fun but not so much time I get in trouble.

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I wasn’t a runner when I lived in and around Memphis, so I never got to enjoy the city from that special running perspective. It was a lot of fun.

Now, we still live only a few miles from Tennessee, we live on the other side from Memphis. The drive was long. A few storms and pitstops along the way made it longer. So when we arrived, April said, “Want to go for a run?” and I was already out the door, promising to keep it under 5K.

We were staying in Midtown, so I ran out past the library in search of the Shelby Farms Green Line—a delightful little greenway that connects commuters, runners, walkers, and cyclists from Midtown all the way to East Memphis. It wasn’t to hard to spot with it’s big green signs.

Once on the line, I was taking my time, enjoying the view, until I realized there wasn’t an exit. Moving to Northwest Georgia, I’ve been running hills nonstop since May. Memphis is flat.

And as I approached the intersection back home, I noticed it was a bridge.

And the next intersection a tunnel.

Was I going to have to run the whole trail to find another exit? Was I about to run through backyards? Thankfully, the next road had a crossing, and it wasn’t too far from home. But, I broke my sub-5K promise.

Anyway, thanks Memphis for your greenery, your BBQ and skunk perfume wafting, your killer vibrant graffiti, your beer, and your smiles and waves. What a town.

Are you a gear guy? I’m not a gear guy. Ok I’m a gear guy, but I’m not a “Shaving two-ounces of my sneaker weight really changed my stride for the better,” guy.

When people talk about their new hockey sticks, and how much flex they want, I don’t even know what they mean. I was still using a wood stick three years ago. The reason, is that these differences don’t show up at my level of competition. At least not in my mind.

Disc golf discs have all kinds of fancy numbers. I also don’t know what those mean, just that I’m not allowed to throw 10-speeds according to my little brother.

BUT

I’m a shoe guy. Or at least a running shoe guy. If it wasn’t for the improvements we’ve made in shoes, and the diversity of shoes available, I wouldn’t be able to run. I even ran in some old shoes this weekend to put the theory to the test (really just because I’m an idiot) and as I write this my knees are all creaky and sore.

I have found there actually are a few things that are important, gear-wise, for people with plantar fasciitis or big ole bodies.

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What I look for

• Toe Drop: A high heel-toe drop always made the most sense to me (for no reason other than intution), but since switching to a flatter shoe, my plantar pain has gone down even as my miles go up. The switch will definitely make your calves sore. I’m not sure they made me faster immediately, but I am faster because of the other knock-on effects.

• Heel Cushion: The first time I put on a pair of Hokas, I laughed. In the shoe store, just walking around laughing. It was right after the pandemic too so I looked kind of crazy. Sure, later I’d find out excessive heel cushion isn’t the best thing for long-term plantar care, but it certainly was nice in the moment. But most importantly, Hoka’s audacious insistence on massive cushioned soles is responsible for me even getting back into running solely because of what it did for my knees.

• Stability: Just because you’re doing the best thing for your knees doesn’t mean you’re automatically doing right by your feet. Overly cushioned shoes can be really hard on your ankles, are often less responsive, may not fit your gait, and can hide plantar pain (so you don’t take as good of care). Finding a shoe with just enough cushion, while offering a safe amount of stability, is the real balancing act.

  

• Toe Width: Smooshing your toes from the sides is just as bad as squishing them from the front. And that somehow effects plantar fasciitis and foot heelth. I don’t know. Don’t even ask how. It just does apparently. That’s for a doctor to know, and for me to find out. Which I did. When they told me to get wider toed shoes. It worked.

• Stated Purpose: If the manufacturer says they made it for racing, don’t run in it every day. If they made it for road running, don’t run trails. They’re not lying. It’s like buying pasta sauce and saying, “Eh, it’s probably ketchup.”

There are all kinds of things you can measure, but this is what I look at. Nothing more, nothing less.

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Shoes that have been game changers

Hoka Bondi

These are the big boys that got me back. I only heard of Hoka’s because my wife was a nurse, so I saw the older nurses cruising around the labor and delivery department in them. They looked like walking on clouds.

I don’t remember the exact model, maybe the Bondi 5, but this is where it started. I showed up to Core in Tupelo and they got me in a great new pair.

The Bondis became Cliftons and a whole bunch of other models. I was a Hoka fan boy for a while, and still usually have a pair in the closet.

Nike ZoomX Flyknits

This is where I found a little more stability, until Hoka released some wider soles. These shoes also gave me more side to side room and foot flexibility. I liked it, just didn’t know why at the time. Since my toes are much wider than average, but my heels are fairly narrow, I never felt comfortable in wide-foot shoes. But these finally gave me some more room to flex my toes when I run.

Hoka Speedgoats

The Speedgoat sounds cool, looks cool, feels cool. It’s great. It’s also the first time I realized trail shoes are actually probably way better than training in my other runners. More grip and more responsiveness. I love a good cushion, but that isn’t always great when you’re running on rocks and stuff, plus the ground is softer than asphalt.

Kuru

After realizing the Hoka cushions were causing me problems as an every-day shoe, and that All Stars were constricting me side sides, I found this brand.

One warning for my plantar sufferers out there: Kurus do not hide the heel pain or give lots of extra pad to your plantar. You won’t put them on and then go, “Oh great I feel better,” but if you use them and also stretch and stuff, you’ll feel much better soon. They provide a suction support for your heel that’s great.

Most importantly, they make a white sneaker. I wear a white sneaker most days. That’s a requirement.

They also make a pink and blue higher-heeled sneaker that looks like if my great grandfather bought his velcro sneakers from a gay couple at a southern second hand boutique. They’re great.

And they have a boot.

Altra FWD Via 2

These are the wide toebox, nearly zero-drop, very padded, stable shoes that are absolutely crushing it for me.

Already on my second pair and not because they’re any less durable. I’m just really big and put A LOT of mileage on them in the last few months. For now, these shoes are the embodiment of what I’m looking for:

• Wide toebox

• Minimal heel-toe drop

• Generous padding

• Wide base

• Reasonably responsive

The only downside is that my knees are sore right now. I think that’s my fault, and the hills’ faults, not the shoes. I’ll be buying a third pair.

Altra Experience Wild Trail Runners

Coach Bennett made us do a speed run as punishment if we were using our trail shoes for other things, and made us promise to stop.

So I picked these up second hand at REI on a whim, and they’re fun. I’d gotten so into trail running so fast when we moved that my Altra road runners were caked in mud and blood and just nasty.

Got a pair you swear by?

I’m always looking for an excuse to put some miles on a new pair of shoes. Hit me up with your favorite shoes or the things you look for most In a new pair.

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My wife was on call for work, so I only had my lunch break to get in a good sweat.

Since I was also feeling a little sore, I tried to keep it under 3.5 miles. Only problem is, I found every dadgum hill in the next neighborhood over. It was hot too!

Anyway, it was a good reminder that not every run has to be some crazy run. Just get out for however long you have, and then get back.

It’s like Coach Bennet says: “Go for the run you can.”

My watch didn’t record elevation though! So that’s a bummer. Oh well. It was plenty.

These creaky ole knees had me sidelined for nearly a week, but today was beautiful, my legs were feeling springy, and April came home on her lunch break to watch the kids.

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So I got after it.

Didn’t want to tack on too much mileage (my recovery plan had me at 3K, but let’s be serious).

There isn’t a great 3K loop around my house. And I know what you’re thinking, “Why not just down and back?” Because down and back doesn’t show up on Interval and I’m obsessed with this game.

The plan was to just take a lap around downtown and head home, but I still had a claim on downtown, and someone stole the cemetery from me.

The cemetery is a very fun, very hilly run. Here is one:

Mostly, though, it’s peaceful, beautiful, and like all Southern cemeteries, filled with some wild history.

And when it was all said and done, this big dog needed a pup cup (a dip in the redneck front yard kiddie pool).

Happy running. See you out there.

Here’s how it went (longer, hotter, hillier, and slower than expected, but fun).

The Run · Tuesday, July 28, 2026 · Dalton, GA

5.35 km in 48:02 at 8:58 /km, claiming 1.1 km² of territory. Average heart rate 125 bpm, 677 calories, 13.2 strain, 7,032 steps.

• Zone 0: 6:01 · 9%

• Zone 1: 16:52 · 25%

• Zone 2: 16:38 · 25%

• Zone 3: 22:48 · 37%

• Zone 4: 2:40 · 4%

• Zone 5: 0:00 · 0%

Someone stopped their car, to give me weight loss advice, while I was on a run.

Let me say that again.

Someone pulled their car over.

To tell me I can lose more weight if I run in a trash bag.

While I was on the, I don’t know, 5th or 6th mile of my run that day.

I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought he was asking for directions.

“Hey man,” he shouts through his passenger window, whistles, and waves. “Hey! Hey, buddy!” Waves again.

“Hey, how can I help you?” I’m a nice neighbor, and I was just jogging in place at a red light anyway.

He leaned over the center console of his tan, mid-2000s Buick and looked right past my technicolor running hat, knee braces, special big boi running shoes, sun shirt, and calves to size up my 300-pound frame.

🚘: “Hey man, you want to know how to lose weight?”

🏃🏻‍♂️: “Wait for what?”

🚘: “Are you trying to lose weight? I can tell you how to lose more weight.”

🏃🏻‍♂️: “I’m fine. I’m… I’m running, this is just what I look like. I’m 300 pounds. I run long distances, up big hills, I’m good.”

🚘: “Want to know what I did?”

🏃🏻‍♂️: “No thanks, the light is-”

🚘: “I was like, well like, 250 or 280 pounds, and now I look like this. Wanna know what I did?”

🏃🏻‍♂️: “No, the light-”

🚘: “Run with a trash bag on.”

🏃🏻‍♂️: “The light- WHAT!?”

🚘: “Run with a trash bag on.”

🏃🏻‍♂️: “No.”

I have no idea, at this point, why we were still talking, other than that I’d missed my chance to cross.

🏃🏻‍♂️: “No, my trainer (and my wife) would kill me if they found out I was running up mountains in the summer with a trash bag on.”

🚘: “No, look, you run with a trash bag on and it makes you sweat more.”

🏃🏻‍♂️: “Yeah and then lose the wat- What are you still doing here? I’m not trying to lose weight. I’m clearly a runner going on a run. I like the way I look.”

🚘: “You can lose a lot of weight, dude!”

At which point, I finally came to my senses enough to yell, “I’m good, I like my body!” as I ran away.

The Turn

Look, I’m not writing this because I’m mad at the guy. I’m dumbfounded at the guy. But I understand why he felt the need to share that.

1. He clearly used to be fat and people made him feel like it wasn’t ok.

2. He feels an urgent need to help me, probably because he equates fat and poor health (not his fault, he was taught that).

3. He was proud. Running in the heat in a trash bag is hard (I did it back when I was bulimic). Body transformation of any kind, healthy or otherwise, is hard (and not saying his wasn’t healthy, I don’t know him any more than he knows my history of disordered eating).

The System

But, I’m definitely mad at the societal norms that conditioned him. I’m mad at the people who know better, but still push vanity as health.

Vanity is fine if that’s what you want. But it isn’t always health.

And other peoples’ health isn’t necessarily our business. There is a difference in being public health minded, and stopping individual fat people to offer advice. Also I’ve had people comment on (and once take groceries out of) my shopping cart. And it’s certainly not that.

Or like the fat person in line for a fitness class who get’s the condescending classic (this is real), “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here today. I can see the skinny person inside you.”

It was just another reminder of how wild it is out here for fat people. And this is a fat person trying to be fit.

Here is my immediate reaction from my Running Log Note that day:

Man, this is just what fitness looks like. Blood work was perfect two weeks ago. Update your definition.

You don’t try to get a camel to lose weight before you take it across the desert. I’m a 🐫. Get out of my 🏜️ with that bullshit. (I know he thought he was being helpful. It ain’t his fault. It’s all the people that taught him this was ok).

You want to give me fitness tips? Lace up your 👟, your 🏒⛸️, or your 🥊 baby. Hit the road, get on the ice, get in the ring. But get out of your car.

Anyway, pissed me off. Have a nice run.

The Cold Plunge

Let’s cool down and look at the science

But after an ice bath, I thought about it a little more academically. It was a good time to reflect on the way this sort of “advice” shows up in more formalized fitness settings, where it’s much more common.

I pulled together the findings of some great researchers in a paper I wrote on the negative effects of shame communications on health. Check it out if any of this resonates, or especially if it doesn’t. There is some good peer reviewed research to check out.

I also wrote a shorter overview of the more positive sides of simply being nice to fat people in health spaces. I should note, nice and condescending are not compatible.

Even if your goal is ultimate weight loss, this approach doesn’t work.

Even if you think that shame is the fastest way to motivate people, and that fatness is a suck on society from a health and economic standpoint, and that it’s your responsibility as a human and a tax payer to eliminate obesity, shame is just medically not the right way.

Shame and stress, experienced over prolonged periods, lead to increased inflammation. Inflammation as a response to running away from bears or lifting weights is different than inflammation caused by a shitty boss or a mean girl at the gym. Lifting weights is short term. You repair, you recover, you’re stronger. Shaming someone’s body is sort of a permanent play.

So now that we’ve established the creation of prolonged inflammation, we should talk about what that does for weight.

It causes you to gain weight.

It is in and of itself weight.

It’s not healthy weight. It’s not energy stores. It’s not muscle mass. It’s not bone density. It’s just…well it’s just that feeling of being in middle school but crammed into all your cells.

And now that you’re fatter, and heavier, and actually less healthy weight aside, the people around you who created the shame aren’t going to lighten up.

That funnel goes downward, for those of you having trouble visualizing.

But hey, helping someone get fitter and be happier literally increases longevity whether they lose weight or not.

And, for my fitness assholes out there: A lot of times, they lose that stress weight anyway once they’re happier and have more self-esteem.

I didn’t run for most of the last two years. Plantar fasciitis took me out of the game (for the second time). And look, it was a little my fault.

I had a small flare up. And maybe before it was fully recovered, I ran 10 miles of hills in the July Texas heat to prove something.

Prove what? That I could hurt myself I guess.

Anyway. I spent a year of walking and playing sports in a boot (ice hockey, it comes with a boot), trying a million different shoes, stretching, moving into an apartment where I was self-conscious about my gait, moving out of an apartment where I was self-conscious about my gait. I got a chiropractor.

We tried everything. Balance boards, Buddha boards, not exercising and being bored.

Finally, the foot got better.

The Magic Fix for Plantar Fasciitis?

There is none. That’s not what this was about.

I just found some shoes with less drop and more toe box space (to stretch my heel a little) and started walking uphill (I moved to the Smoky Mountains). A happy accident. Plus the daily stretching and water bottle rolling.

So I Started, and Finished, a 10K Program (Thirst Trap at Week 7)

Well, I started a 5K program, and while it was probably better suited for my recovery, I got bored after two weeks. So bored.

I run for two reasons:

1. My brain is broken.

2. I want to go far and look at stuff and things. Buildings and trees. Trees mostly.

So I turned to Coach Bennett of the Nike Running Club. He’s the best. Chelsea and all the rest, also great. But Coach Bennett has gotten me through a lot more than he realizes. I’m crying a little just thinking about how grateful I am for the guy (and his mustache).

My 10K Running Plan

My 10K running plan is just the Nike Run Club 10K running plan, but I don’t set a race date and go at my own pace. It’s an 8 week program, I usually finish it in 9-10 weeks so I’m not pushing through bad pain.

Here’s how it breaks down for me.

Week 1

Day 1 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 3K / 1.9 mile Run

Day 2 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 9:15 minutes

Day 3 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 4 — 🟩 Speed Run: 27 mins • Intervals

Day 5 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 20 minutes

Day 6 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 7 — ⬛ Long Run: 4K / 2.5 mile Run

Week 1 is one of the harder weeks, and here’s why. I usually do this plan as a way to get back into the swing of things after an injury or busy season. I’ve run a half, plenty of 10K and 5K races, and can knock out 10 miles for fun on any given Saturday when I’m in peak form.

But when I’m recovering, a 20 minute run feels dumb.

It’s not. Running super slow for 20 minutes takes as much discipline as running a hard and controlled pace for 20 minutes. Especially when you’re ADHD and full of negative self talk like, “Come on fat ass, you better get it into gear.”

But after week 1, it’s time to run.

Week 2

Day 1 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 14 minutes

Day 2 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 16:40 minutes

Day 3 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 4 — 🟩 Speed Run: 25 mins • Intervals

Day 5 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 25 minutes

Day 6 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 7 — ⬛ Long Run: 5K / 3.1 mile Run

And then you get to week two and have a bunch more short recovery runs, and Coach Bennett just taunting you with promises of long runs and dirty nasty speed.

But at the end of week 2, a 5K. That good ole familiar distance.

Week 3

Day 1 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 25 minutes

Day 2 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 5K / 3.1 mile Run

Day 3 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 4 — 🟩 Speed Run: 20 Min • Fartlek

Day 5 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 25 minutes

Day 6 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 7 — ⬛ Long Run: 6K / 3.7 miles

We’re finally pushing past the median mark. The normie mark. The “No, I’m actually a real runner, thank you very much,” mark. The pretentious mark, if you will.

But at the same time, for someone who spends so much of my day in my head and disconnected from my body, anything after 3 miles is glorious, embodied, mental health time.

Plus, if you run a lot, you’ve seen all the trails and trees within a 3 miles radius of your house. So this is a chance to go explore. Heck, 6k is almost long enough to get lost a little.

Week 4

Day 1 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 30 minutes

Day 2 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 5K / 3.1 mile Run

Day 3 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 4 — 🟩 Speed Run: 26 Min • Speed Run

Day 5 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 35 minutes

Day 6 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 7 — ⬛ Long Run: 8K / 4.9 miles

Opening week 4 and seeing that long run feels like promise and progress. We’re doing five miles this week. And this is where a little of the doubt and soreness come in. 6k is just a little further than a lot of runners do. But 5 miles, 5 miles is commitment.

VS

And in this training plan, because we live in the Smoky Mountain foothills now, I got to really get out and explore some.

Week 5

Day 1 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 30 minutes

Day 2 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 7K / 4.3 mile Run

Day 3 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 4 — 🟩 Speed Run: 27 Min • Fartlek

Day 5 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 25 minutes

Day 6 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 7 — ⬛ Long Run: 8K / 4.9 mile Run

Week five doesn’t change our baseline or our long run much, but we up the speed and distance of the other runs. This one is tough because it feels like less progress, but it’s often a welcome reprieve for my knees.

It was also when I finally headed out to Rocky Face Ridge for the first time and got a good trail run in, gained more than 1000 feet of elevation too.

Week 6

Day 1 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 30 minutes

Day 2 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 35 minutes

Day 3 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 4 — 🟩 Speed Run: 5K Tempo Run

Day 5 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 5K / 3.1 mile Run

Day 6 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 7 — ⬛ Long Run: 9K / 5.6 miles

This is another one of those head-case weeks. It’s not so much a hard week, other than that you’re putting in real distance each day. It’s one of those weeks where you think:

“Oh yeah, I should do more squats and wear my knee braces.”

And then you get to the long run, and it’s so enticing to just push it on to six miles, to 10K. No one wants to stop on an unresolved number. But, it’s a good excuse to turn the wheels on for that 9th kilometer and see if you can lay down a little speed when you’re tired.

Week 7

Day 1 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 40 minutes

Day 2 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 31 minutes

Day 3 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 4 — 🟩 Speed Run: 27 minute • Hill workout

Day 5 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 30 minutes

Day 6 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 7 — ⬛ Long Run: 10K / 6.2 mile Run

It’s Christmas week, baby. The foot feels good. We put down real mileage last week, and what’s that on the horizon? Could it be Santa Claus with a 10K in his backpack? It sure is.

Also, I used to hate hill workouts. But my cholesterol is lower than it’s been since I was 20, and it’s because I started running hills every day. Don’t be scared of hills.

For this 10K, I ran one lap around the residential heart of Dalton, GA, then a lap around downtown, and finished at Dalton Brewing Company with a root beer, and beer beer, and a water beer.

Week 8

Day 1 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 25 minutes

Day 2 — 🟩 Speed Run: 6K / 3.7 mile Run

Day 3 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 4 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 25 minutes

Day 5 — 🟧 Recovery Run: 15 minutes

Day 6 — ⬜ Rest: Rest Day

Day 7 — ⬛ Long Run: 10K / 6.2 mile Run

Finishing strong! Low mileage week means lots of extra nerves, but since I haven’t done a 10k in back to back weeks in a year, I stuck to the plan. I listened to Coach Bennett, we took a trip out to Rocky Face Ridge and actually threw down 8 miles, 2,000 feet of elevation, two laps around the 5K track, and a quick jaunt up the summit trail until I ran into a couple snakes.

Big win on this run, after the first 3 miles, I was soaked (it was humid and a little rainy), so my fat ass went tarps off for five miles. As a 300-pound camel, I’ve never run shirtless. In fact, I’ve done little shirtless my entire life. Been trying to draw attention away from my body.

But it was awesome. And the runners I was passing were stoked.

Tarps off for the big boys!

How’d We Do?

• Timeline: April 27 – July 5, 2026 (about 10 weeks)

• Total miles: 91.79 miles across 35 runs

• Total time: ~20 hours, 33 minutes

And here’s the fun part (pace): My easy runs stayed easy — that’s the whole point of a recovery run. But my 5K pace dropped about 20 seconds per mile (from 13’53’‘ in mid-May to 13’34’‘ by June), and my speed runs finally got into the 10s. So don’t let the average fool you. The slow runs stayed slow on purpose, and the fast runs got faster.

Let’s Talk About Weight, Baby

One of the biggest questions I get when I’m running with folks or talking about my research, running, and fitness, is, “How much weight did you lose?”

And it’s like, since I started running? I mean I’ve been running for over a decade and so I think I’ve technically gained like 100 pounds since I started running.

But I was bulimic and anorexic back then. Got hurt a lot. And then my body clawed back the missed calories because I taught it to live under starvation conditions.

And then when you’re training hard, in the summer, on hills, in the South, you kind of have to eat. A lot.

I dropped like 30 pounds at one point and my trainer chewed my ass out. Here’s a video of him talking about it.

Sometimes You Just Have to Work the Steps

Putting this training plan in place taught me a few things.

1. Back to Basics: In fitness, in sports, in creativity, in health, it’s so easy to reach a level of success and then decide we’re too cool for whatever program got us there. My friends in the recovery community say, “Work the steps,” a lot, and that’s a good reminder for any of us. It’s ok to do the training program, even if you’re an experienced athlete.

2. Health Ain’t Weight: I technically “know” this. But sometimes I need a reminder. Sure, I’ve dropped like 30 pounds in the last six months, but that’s not the same as the average person losing 30 pounds. That’s a much less significant percentage of my body weight. It also has more to do with stress than it does with fitness. I was in decent physical shape in January, just stressed out of my mind.

3. Fuel the Beast: You wouldn’t starve a camel during a cross-desert trek. So I had to remember, I’m the camel. Those humps aren’t water. No sir, they’re fat stores.

4. Have Fun: I have a couple fairly serious mental health conditions that I have to work hard to keep on the rails every day. So I tell people, “Hey man, life is too hard. It ain’t worth it if we’re not having fun.” You don’t have to be a runner or a weightlifter or a swimmer or a hooper, just have fun with your body. In the Episcopal church we say, “Stand, sit, or kneel as you are able.” Do the thing that works for you.

What Are You Up To?

How are you celebrating and connecting with your body? I’m looking for new and fun ideas.

I’ve been thinking about the irony of the fat-shame cycle this week. You know, the fat shame –> stress –> cortisol production –> inflammation/weight gain –> more fat shame cycle.

If we’re being honest, I’m always thinking about the irony of the fat shame cycle.

Fat shame DOESN’T work, but as a society, we insist on perpetuating it as a means of addressing the “obesity epidemic.”

Even if a person believes fat is the great evil of our society — that obesity is driving absurd healthcare costs and fast/processed food is killing our youth — creating a culture of fat shame only worsens the problem.

That’s right. We have the research. We have the data. Fat shame CAUSES weight gain. Fat shame CAUSES sustained exposure to harmful cortisol. Fat shame CAUSES stress-related disease and heart disease, like hypertension.

The cycle is so ironic it makes me laugh. But reading Tomiyama’s 2018 opinion article in BMC Medicine last week sobered me up a little. This cycle perpetuated by health professionals every day is leading to the unnecessary deaths of fat people (who, by the way, are just as concerned with their health as average BMI people).

Fat shame discourages fat people from going to doctor’s offices and gyms. And for the fat people who brave the shame in the name of bettering their health often have experiences that cause more stress-related health issues that lead to more weight gain, and more shame.

It causes fat people to disassociate with their bodies. That sort of disassociation leads to a whole host of other health issues.

We know FAT SHAME DOESN’T WORK.

So let’s just try something different.

If we want to look back at the evidence, treating fat people with some amount of bodily and health autonomy has proven helpful. A switch from focusing on weight loss to fitness gain has shown to be effective in analysis after analysis (Gaesser 2021).

In fact, fat people with average to high levels of physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness tend to have fewer comorbidities and better health outcomes than people with sedentary or medium fitness levels at any other body size.

When reexamining older BMI studies by adjusting for physical fitness, the comorbidities associated with BMI are either eliminated or greatly attenuated. Meaning those studies found a correlation with BMI, but the fitness aspect was ultimately the driver behind health.

So if we encourage EVERYONE to move their bodies to the extent their bodies are able to move, and we are simply kind to fat people (or even just not shitty), health outcomes will be greater.

Some people will lose weight. Some people will stay the same. Some people will gain weight. But if health is the real focus, it doesn’t matter.

• Gaesser, G. A., & Angadi, S. S. (2021). Obesity treatment: Weight loss versus increasing fitness and physical activity for reducing health risks. IScience, 24(10), 102995. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102995

• Tomiyama, A. J., Carr, D., Granberg, E. M., Major, B., Robinson, E., Sutin, A. R., & Brewis, A. (2018). How and why weight stigma drives the obesity ‘epidemic’ and harms health. BMC Medicine, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-018-1116-5

Fat shame causes negative health outcomes similar to the effects of smoking.

A growing body of research shows that shame increases stress levels, which is associated with many adverse health outcomes and can cause more weight gain, causing a cycle of shame and poor health.

Plus, many diseases related to high BMI strongly correlate to stress and weight stigma, making them easy to overlook or blame on the fat itself.

Here’s the problem, the war on obesity has also sewn shame into the fabric of modern society under the disguise of public health initiatives.

Fat shame excludes fat people from pro-health communities, creating the conditions that the war on obesity endeavors to eliminate.

For instance, shame in the gym or at the doctor’s office can cause poor health while pushing fat people out of the very spaces that could help them increase their health.

These communities would typically serve as resources for increasing health (supportive interpersonal relationships, physicians’ offices, social support groups, and fitness facilities).

In pro-health communities, fat shame has the doubly negative effect of causing poor health conditions in fat people while removing the very resources fat people need to deal with those poor health conditions.

Changing how we treat fat people could significantly increase health outcomes.

That’s right, not treating fat people like shit may make them healthier.

A public policy shift away from weight stigma and weight loss messaging and toward pro-health and pro-fitness messaging is needed.

By using weight-neutral language to promote cardiorespiratory health and physical activity, health and fitness professionals can begin to excise fat shame from mainstream culture while promoting healthier outcomes for people of all body sizes and abilities.

Finding a Fat-Inclusive Fitness First Focus

New research has shown health and BMI to be less closely tied than once thought. A 2021 literature review found that BMI and mortality correlation studies often exclude cardiorespiratory fitness and physical activity measurements. However, the mortality risk associated with BMI is “either eliminated or greatly attenuated” in studies that include cardiorespiratory fitness and physical activity (Gaesser & Angadi, 2021). However, modern culture and health messaging do not reflect these findings.

In a survey of nearly 200 undergrads, researchers asked respondents to comment on bodies of varying sizes. More than 93% of the comments about the large male and 82% about the large female contained stigma, whereas fewer than 5% of comments for each the lean male and female contained stigma (Anderson & Bresnahan 2013).

Moreover, stigma does not stop with undergrads. A study of 4,732 medical students from 49 medical schools found that 74% of medical students showed implicit weight bias and 67% explicit weight bias (Phelan et al., 2014). Evidence shows similar biases exist for practicing doctors (Phelan et al., 2015).

Even groups where people may seek refuge (like family, friends, and close romantic relationships) perpetuate the stigma (Boyes & Latner, 2009). Puhl and Brownel (2006) found that “Family members were among the most commonly reported sources of stigma, which is indicative of the complexity and normative acceptability of weight bias and creates new challenges for intervention.”

The Weight of Fat Shame

In “Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality,” a study that examined more than 20,000 respondents, researchers found weight discrimination to be associated with an increase in mortality risk of nearly 60% (Sutin, Stephan, & Terracciano, 2015).

In the discussion, Sutin et al. emphasized that the effect of weight discrimination on mortality was generally more substantial than other factors like smoking history, saying:

“The present findings indicate that the harmful effect of unfair treatment that is attributable to body weight is not limited to psychological distress and morbidity: It also extends to risk of mortality.”

Many obesity-associated diseases are also stress-related. Stigma and stress lead to increased blood pressure, reduced cognitive control, and increased food intake. Researchers found perceived weight discrimination to be associated with significantly higher chances of being diagnosed with hypertension and arthritis in men and myocardial infarction and stomach ulcer in women (Udo, Purcell, & Grilo, 2016). Even after accounting for physical activity, BMI, and sociodemographic factors, the study found significant correlations between weight discrimination and arteriosclerosis, minor cardiovascular conditions, and diabetes.

In many of these cases, the perpetrators of fat stigma believe they are promoting a lifestyle that will eradicate these specific diseases.

Addressing Cycles of Shame and Exclusion

In a review of the evidence for the “Cyclic Obesity/Weight-Based Stigma model,” A. Janet Tomiyama argues that weight discrimination creates a cycle of stress, weight gain, and then more discrimination.

Referencing the number of known stress-related health conditions associated with prolonged exposure to cortisol, Tomiyama said, “…using weight stigma as an anti-obesity strategy violates the medical principle of ‘primum non nocere,’ or ‘first do no harm.’ The COBWEBS model further provides scientific theory and evidence suggesting that such campaigns will likely be ineffective and possibly even backfire.”

As an additional exponent to the cycle, she argues that discrimination creates threatening exercising and eating environments, causing overweight and obese people to disengage. Disengagement leads to causing increased social distress while promoting sedentary behavior and unhealthy eating. This is compounded even further by weight stigmatization from close family and friends, who would otherwise be sources of support and safety.

What Do We Do?

Changing health policy and public health messaging from a fat-shame to a pro-fitness focus can increase health outcomes for people across the spectrum of body size and even extend the lives of many fat people.

Seriously, encouraging activity instead of demonizing weight has shown to greatly increase health outcomes. Similarly, active fat people tend to have health outcomes on par with active people in general and much better health outcomes than sedentary “normal” weight people.

Additionally, removing fat shame from public discourse, public health, and public policy helps to invite more fat people into the health conversation instead of excluding them from pro-health communities.

If you believe the research, fat has much less to do with health than fitness. But if you still believe fat is a societal wrong, then including fat people is the only way to increase public health. Directing shame toward fat people can only do harm.

References

Anderson, J., & Bresnahan, M. (2013). Communicating Stigma About Body Size. Health Communication, 6, 603–615. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2012.706792

Boyes, A. D., & Latner, J. D. (2009). Weight Stigma in Existing Romantic Relationships. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 4, 282–293. https://doi.org/10.1080/00926230902851280

Gaesser, G. A., & Angadi, S. S. (2021). Obesity treatment: Weight loss versus increasing fitness and physical activity for reducing health risks. IScience, 10, 102995. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102995

Phelan, S.M., Dovidio, J.F., Puhl, R.M., Burgess, D.J., Nelson, D.B., Yeazel, M.W., Hardeman, R., Perry, S. and van Ryn, M. (2014), Implicit and explicit weight bias in a national sample of 4,732 medical students: The medical student CHANGES study. Obesity, 22: 1201–1208. https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.20687

Phelan, S. M., Burgess, D. J., Yeazel, M. W., Hellerstedt, W. L., Griffin, J. M., & Ryn, M. (2015). Impact of weight bias and stigma on quality of care and outcomes for patients with obesity. Obesity Reviews, 4, 319–326. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.12266

Puhl, R. M., & Brownell, K. D. (2006). Confronting and Coping with Weight Stigma: An Investigation of Overweight and Obese Adults*. Obesity, 10, 1802–1815. https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2006.208

Sutin, A. R., Stephan, Y., & Terracciano, A. (2015). Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality. Psychological Science, 11, 1803–1811. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615601103

Tomiyama, A. J. (2014). Weight stigma is stressful. A review of evidence for the Cyclic Obesity/Weight-Based Stigma model. Appetite, 8–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2014.06.108

Udo, T., Purcell, K., & Grilo, C. M. (2016). Perceived weight discrimination and chronic medical conditions in adults with overweight and obesity. International Journal of Clinical Practice, 12, 1003–1011. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcp.12902

Image Credit: “© Fat Yoga” by Fat Yoga is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

I just moved to Dallas-Fort Worth and my mother-in-law signed me up for a local 10K as a way of welcoming me to town — the Keller Firecracker 5K. It was a really sweet gesture. She even brought my daughter to cheer me on.

I never pick up my race packet early because I’m not that kind of person. But since it was an early race, I thought it might save me some time. Plus, I’m new in town and thought I might meet some local runners.

On the morning of the race, I was feeling good and right on time, until I realized my number bib was on the kitchen counter. So I turned back, got the bib, got lost, and pulled up to the race just as it was starting, but there was no parking.

So I parked at a grocery store down the road, ran a half mile to the race, and saw that I’d missed the 10K start time but nearly five minutes. The 5K runners were already lining up. So I hopped in the back, and jumped around the starting gate. I didn’t want to mess up their time tracking, but I also wasn’t about to miss out on a race.

The entire race took place on a two-lane sidewalk, save for a few hundred meters at the beginning and end. It was 400 people sharing a sidewalk, so it stayed tight the entire time.

In my rush to get out of the mass of bodies, I ran the first two Kilometers at 6:28 and 6:53, then leveled out to a 7:30 clip. I’m a proud member of the Slow AF run club.

The raceday atmosphere was great, and all the runners and volunteers in Keller were nice. Except for that one guy at the end who repeatedly sprinted past me and then slowed to a walk. I would pass him shortly after, every time. He’d see me pass him, and do it all over again. The joke’s on him because I was in the wrong race. I wasn’t crossing the finish line anyway.

I don’t care if you beat me, but please don’t slow me down over and over.

Anyway, thanks to the Dallas Running Club and Keller, TX for a lovely morning.

We’ve been packing up, trying to sell our house and stuff (Need an end table? How about some random mid-century modern chairs from Wayfair? No? Ok.), and slowly moving to Texas. So running the Gumtree was a beautiful way to remember the town where I became an “adult,” a husband, and a dad.

I’ve been enjoying Tupelo’s trails and neighborhoods at that perfect runner’s pace — just slow enough to see everything but not slow enough to get bored. But this was a chance to do it all at once with 500 friends.

It starts with a gathering in Fairpark. Runners register, and vendors set up tables while packs of high school cross country teams do practice runs before their 10K. You know, just going for a little warm-up 5K before a 10K. Totally normal.

Ten minutes before the race, everyone walks to the start. Runners fill Main Street lined up from Cafe 212 back to the hardware store. There is excitement. Everyone is nervous. The tall guy from the water and light department with the mohawk and daisy dukes does some sprints.

Storefronts along Tupelo’s Main St.

The wait is forever.

And then the crowd pushes forward. Everyone is tripped up, unsure of their pace in the pack. There are slow runners in the front. There are fast runners in the back. The pack hasn’t sorted itself out yet.

Then there’s a fat guy in the middle (me) running WAY above his normal pace because he’s excited and nervous about blocking faster runners.

The 500 stays 500 for the first turn, a right at the federal building onto Church Street, but begins to thin a block later when we turn left onto Jefferson. Jefferson takes us across Gloster (the main north-south road in town) and into the Joyner neighborhood.

Joyner is a beautiful neighborhood filled with post-war starter homes that young families in Tupelo have been renovating and re-renovating for decades. Tennis courts, splash pads, and community green spaces abound.

The roads are slanted as hell, and the sidewalks are few and far between, so I rarely run there on my own. But on race day, we can run in the middle of the street, so it feels like a rare treat. I ran on the center line. I relished it.

Families line the streets to cheer us on. Some plan their mornings around it, and others are just pumped to see some action while sucking down their morning coffee cigarettes. Each spectator shouts 500 encouragements. It’s sweet. It’s the kind of earnest encouragement uncommon these days, but it’s one of the things that makes Tupelo special.

Right at the halfway point, a friend and fellow heavyweight lined me up in his sites from 500 yards out. He had a Busch light and a great idea. He ran to me, gesticulating like Daniel Bryan after a wrestling match.

From that moment until my last push, my pace never wavered — hand to god (it’s in my Strava run summary).

After making some loops through Joyner, we merged onto McCoullough Boulevard, a busy 4-lane with a nice median and graceful shoulders. The cops block off a whole lane, so we have plenty of room. The pavement is flat and well maintained, and it’s an easy kilometer or so past families gathered in collectives at the edge of each new neighborhood we passed, handing out cups of water filled to the absolute brim.

Diatribe: Those girl scouts and boy scouts wake up early to ensure we’re hydrated, and they fill those cups ALL the way up. In my mind, I’m trucking along smiling when I say, “Thank you,” and take a cup of water from their hand. In their reality, a 300-pound man barrels toward them, grunting and muttering under his breath, slaps a full cup of water all over them, and then runs off like a Moose with a belly full of crab apples.

The flat highway turns into a steep hill into Park Heights, one of the oldest neighborhoods in town, known for its public basketball courts and front-yard gardens. Then back downhill for 500 meters or so.

We’re in the home stretch.

I had my eye on six or seven runners who used me as a pace car most of the race. They ran too hot, tired, slowed, then, seeing my big ass pass them, shot out in a run again. They didn’t know it, but I’d been saving energy and power for the final hills. So I slapped one more cup of water into an unsuspecting 11-year-old girl scout’s face and concentrated on pushing more power into each step.

I passed the short dude with spiked hair with only two speeds: sprint and walk. I passed the woman who looked like she’d been training hard and was in great shape, but probably not an everyday runner. I passed these two women who could have been 50 or 70 with creaky, powerful, and surprisingly fast bodies. Whenever I thought I was gaining on them, they would speed disappear, but I finally pushed past.

I passed a few more when I came to the spouse of one of the fastest guys in town. Do you know that guy in your neighborhood who looks like he’s probably won a bronze medal? That guy. He was doubling back after finishing his own race to run with his wife. I’ll never beat him, but I could beat his wife, right? That’s probably not a super healthy way to think about it, but I passed her too.

Instead of letting us run to the finishing chute on the flat final kilometer, the course takes an unnecessary left onto a VERY steep bridge over some railroad tracks. It’s in the sun, next to the jail and the compost pile. The whole area is just hot and oppressive.

I sped down the other side of the bridge, past the arena parking lot, and pushed as fast as I could, past two more runners, and into the finishing chute, thinking, “These people are all about to watch me have a heart attack,” the entire time.

My kids were waiting at the finish with high fives. It was great. Everyone cheered their support. The Powerade was bountiful.

What a perfect way to see my city again. What a wonderful way to say goodbye.

I’m strong.

I’m fit.

And I’m fat.

The problem is, fat people aren’t welcomed in fitness communities.

We’re told to lose weight. That we’re a scourge of society. We’re derelict in our diets. We’re a sign of sloth. We’re medical money-pits.

I’ve had a lifelong battle with eating disorders, body image, and physical health.

But what if I told you that weight is an imperfect indicator of health?

What if I told you that weight isn’t even a good indicator of health? And even if weight could reliably predict health outcomes, shame is a terrible strategy for behavior change.

What if I told you shame kills more fat people than fat?

Spoiler alert: That’s what I’m here to tell you.

I’m devoting my experience, my story, my shame, my body, my wounds, and my research to changing this idea.

To start, let me share some of my story and wounds:

Rock Bottom

About two years ago, I broke. Mentally (bi-polar, anxiety, depression, trust). Physically (a sports hernia, smoker’s sinuses, and plantar fasciitis). Spiritually (I’d totally given up).

Years of bulimia and crash dieting left my digestive system ragged. Add onto that the booze I was pouring on top of body shame and hurt, and the cigarettes that fueled my late-night mania just trying to keep up.

And in repentance for all my shame, I would kneel on the cold bathroom tile after putting the kids to bed. In a pseudo-religious, self-mutilation ritual I purged my shame. It was really just bulimia. I stuck my fingers into my throat until there was nothing left inside my body.

I was mending my wounds with poison — mentally, physically, and socially.

Sometime in October 2020, my wife April sat me down and told me it was time to deal with my body issues. It was time to stop numbing with booze, filling holes with cigarette smoke, and letting bulimia run my life.

We doubled down on counseling, we hired a coach, and we had conversations about a lot of tough shit we were avoiding.

And I started running again. Not to punish my gut and lose weight, but to clear my mind and connect to my body.

I want to talk about this pain so that others will feel comfortable shining light on their own darkness.

Going on a fitness Journey

Here we are 16 months and more than 500 miles later. My cardio-respiratory fitness is nearly as high as it was when I was playing hockey and climbing mountains in high school. (I was fat then too).

This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you about all the weight I lost. But I didn’t lose any weight.

I was about 300 pounds when I started this journey, and I’m about 300 pounds now.

I run 20–25 kilometers each week (a little less after a recent COVID bout). And my wife is a nurse with a nutrition degree who makes regular trips to our organic farm stand. So I’m putting a healthy amount of healthy food in my body each week.

Plus there’s the yoga, the lifting, and the recovery workouts.

I think I’m probably just a 300-pound guy, and that’s the way it is.

Once I realized I was able to stare down my shame. And the people I love faced that shame with me — even though it meant looking into their dark corners.

I want to talk about this journey so that other people with “non-normative” bodies can join me in sharing their journeys.

Studying Shame

It wasn’t the fat that was making me less healthy, it was my shame responses. My self-destructive behaviors were destroying my self.

Turns out, that when society tells you a story about yourself, you start to believe it over time.

So when society told me I was a fat, worthless piece of shit, I began to mumble that under my breath. I still mutter that phrase in my darkest moments.

People who feel worthless don’t value their bodies. They don’t value their experiences. After all, what is the value of something that’s worthless?

St. Brené Brown has been telling us this for years.

Lucky for me, I’m a born researcher and storyteller — a master of communications sciences if you will (well, I will be in August after graduation).

And the University of Mississippi gives me access to all of the peer-reviewed research the world has to offer.

I’m capping my graduate studies off with a research project exploring the effects of shame on bodies of “non-normative” size and ability — but specifically fat bodies.

I want to share this research because writing helps me process, but more importantly, I’m super privileged in my access to this information. And I want to talk about this research so that everyone can join me in this conversation about shame.

Making “Non-Normative” the Norm

I’ve put “non-normative” in quotes this whole time because “normative” is a bullshit idea. For instance, the Center for Disease Control reported the obesity prevalence in the US in 2017–18 was 42%. Combine that with people in the overweight category, well over half of Americans are fat.

In fact, the BMI was developed by a mathematician (not someone with any advanced knowledge of the body) in the 19th century. Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet based his BMI categories on what he determined the average man to be.

Our universal measure of physical fitness is based on arbitrary numbers applied to a scale of what a 19th-century Belgian white man decided was average.

So overweight, by Quetelet’s definition, mean’s a person has an above-average weight. By that logic, the average American can’t be overweight.

An absolutely wild report under the heading, “Obesity is a common, serious, and costly disease,” the CDC warns:

“From 1999 –2000 through 2017 –2018, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 42.4%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%.”

During that time, the National Institutes of Health MOVED THE GOALPOSTS! That’s right, they changed the definition of fat, and millions of Americans became medically defined as fat overnight.

(For those of you who have never been “medically fat” in a doctor’s office, it sucks.)

There is no norm because no body is the same. Every body is different.

I want to talk about “Non-normative” so that all the “normies” and “non-normatives” alike will see there is no normal.

What Next?

• If this resonates with you, reach out, please.

• If you want to know what research I’m looking at lately, let me know. I’m happy to share.

• If this makes you angry, please consider reading some of the research I’ve linked to.