The Waistline Chronicles

I have struggled with my weight my whole life. Growing up in a house with an Italian mother did not make maintaining a healthy weight easy. As a child I was always one of the heavier kids in my class. I was always active, playing rep hockey and soccer as well as taking swimming lessons and participating in whatever else was available to me. But no matter how many activities I was involved in, I was always a little round. In elementry school I remember being picked on because of my weight. I wanted a change and to make that change I started running the school track on my lunch break. This seemed to work. I lost weight and my self confidence went up. Although it was awesome that I had lost weight and in pretty great shape, high school was approaching and things were about to take a turn for the worst.

In high school I gained all that hard lost weight back, plus much more. Surrounding my high school were numerous fast food restaurants. I had a disposable income being a teen with no responsibilities and a part-time job. This made it easy for me to frequently join friends in going out for lunch. This, plus a huge lack of knowledge about calories in versus calories out was the source of me ballooning out to the heaviest I have ever been… 265 lbs. I was 265 lbs! I remember coming home after a hockey game in which I assume I looked slow, and my Dad told me to get on the scale. I got on the scale and it kept going up until 265. I remember him saying that if I wanted to get better I would need to loose weight. Being a Canadian kid, I wanted to be good at hockey and play at a higher level. So following that night, I started running again.

That summer I was feeling good. I had been running and I was getting into better shape. I asked my dad if I could enter into the Orillia Triathlon. I actually think I had to beg him to let me enter as I'm sure he thought I was going to struggle with it. Which, I did. I did the race and was one of the last finishers in a time of 2:22 (750m/33km/7km). I may have been one of the final finishers, but I had a blast! From this point I was hooked on the sport and I started training for triathlon. I swam, biked, and ran for the next few years and my waistline slowly disappeared... a bit. I still had no idea about calories in versus calories out. This would take me years to figure out and I am still fine tuning the details. There were many years that I would get into great shape and then all of a sudden, I would justify eating large amounts of unhealthy food because I thought “I’ll burn it off”. That didn’t happen. I would gain weight in race season because of the huge amount of food I was consuming. This obviously does not help in a sport where weight matters.

It took me many years to figure out how to maintain my weight. Last summer in preparation for Muskoka I started taking a protein supplement to help my body recover and rebuild. But in addition to helping my body recover, the protein helped regulate my appetite. No matter how hard I trained I never went into a period of craving food. The protein seemed to regulate my appetite and provide my body with the nutrients it needed.

Now I have struggled with my weight all my life and as much as protein helps, if I stopped training I gain weight and I gain it fast. However, I now am more aware of my body and can combat the weight gain through the different strategies that I have learned.

After Muskoka I took some time off to recuperate. During that time off I gained about 15 lbs. Now that I am back training I have started to drop weight again. I feel that I am better shape than I have ever been at this point in the season. I am weary that I may gain weight throughout the season but I believe that I have learned through my past experiences and that I can get to Kona in the best shape of my life and at a healthy weight.

#Nutrition