New Beginnings, again and again

When I started this blog 5 years ago, I titled it "Fat Man Running" with a bit of a tongue in cheek sensibility because I was feeling great about the fact that I was on my way out.  I had turned my life around and was losing weight, running, and feeling happy.  Five years later and things are, well, different.  Not completely, I still run, I'm still a happy person, but the joy, the confidence that I had gained that allowed me to be deprecating enough to title my blog something about being a "fat man" has definitely changed.

In some sense the title is more appropriate than I could have known.  When I started running five years ago, simply put I was a fat man.  I was 6'0" and over 300lbs.  Fat man.  Over the year of 2009 I lost over 150lbs and at my lowest hit somewhere right around 180lbs.  Today I'm sitting squarely up around 210-215.  Lots of numbers, who cares.  What I do is go back to each of those points on the timeline and think about how I felt.  At over 300lbs, I was on a collision course with diabetes, heart disease, and who knows what else, what was worse is I knew and really didn't care.  The various gory details of why I was a depressed, fat slob (and I don't toss that term around flippantly) aren't necessary, but I did "change."  I started running, I started eating so I could run farther and faster and more.  I wanted nothing more than to run and run and run.  It got me down to 180lbs, it got me involved in new friends, it got me a new girlfriend (now wife), it got me a second chance at life.  Now here's what no one does know.  I was still fat. Fat in the head.  I would look at the minimal flab that I still had, either from being overweight, or just still being a larger guy, but I looked and saw a "fat guy."  I hid it, I masked it, and most of all I was able to tell myself that it was "so much better than I was."  It was true, and for a while it kept me satisfied.  I was new fat.  Healthier fat, skinnier fat, but still a fat guy in my own eyes.  Fast forward to now when I'm 30ish pounds heavier, I've run marathons, done Ironman Triathlons, raced, trained, coached runners, triathletes, I've totally immersed myself in the things that made me different, and guess what, I'm still a "fat guy."

I've been fighting myself for 5 years not to be a fat guy.  I've brooded, I've cried, I've pouted, I've run, I've won, I've lost, I'm winning, I'm loosing.  What I have to realize is this is a fight I'll never "win." I'm always going to be a fat guy because it isn't a matter of the number on a scale or on the waistband of my jeans for me, it's the fat in my brain.  I hate that I'm a fat guy, but I am, and the sooner I stop fighting him and start using his fat ass, the sooner I can be happier, more often.  I don't know what this means, I don't know if this is some kind of epiphany or if I'm just thinking, but I'm tired of fighting, but I think that's because I'm tired of losing.  So I need a new way to fight.  You know the old same behavior, different expectation scenario, it doesn't work.  So I'll keep working, and I'll still be fat, but maybe I won't have to always be losing.