Still Fat
It’s 2026. Two years since Fat Nerd Revisited. Six years since Fat Nerd. I’m down another 15 pounds in those 2 years, and with 30-40 to go, it all feels flat. I run a 5k at least once a week now, and regularly run a 10k. I’m still slow… but I’m faster. And it’s more relaxed. Every 5k then was about proving myself. And now a 5k just means it’s probably Tuesday night.
I feel the burden and dissonance now of both being “that guy” and being still overweight. I run. I lift. I count macros. I pay special attention to protein (max it!) and carbs (contextual). My friends are mostly run group friends. The ones who are not I encourage to be. I’m not even sure I try to be healthy now. A week when I don’t run at least 5-10 miles feels crappy. I don’t get hot anymore unless I’m running. Even 100 is just warm.
But I’m not being honest if I don’t say: everything feels stalled. Like in the first Angry Fat Nerd post, I feel like I’m at the mercy of forces beyond my control. Hormones and stressors that fight my real goals. Cortisol. Ghrelin. Leptin. Work stress and family stress and money stress and caloric deficit stress and running and lifting stress. Sometimes I feel like a Communist commissar trying in vain to direct forces that are only under my control in legal fiction.
I used to resent my obligations because they pulled me away from computers and games and writing and books. Now I resent them pulling me away from exercise.
But that is still resentment.
I have triumphed and backslid so many times this almost feels like a Christian spiritual metaphor.
Will there be a marathon in Heaven? Will our Father’s house have a barbell? Will St Paul run a 5k and then share beers (brewed by St Arnold of course) at the finish line?
Right now, my peak is in 2025. I still hope this fall to best it. But sometime soon, that hope will be in vain.
That’s one more force outside my control pressing on this. I am getting older. Eventually the best-me and actual-me lines will meet, and I want that to be somewhere better than I am.
I want to run a marathon before I decline inexorably. Run it, not walk it. I don’t want to complete 5ks. I want to be competitive in my age bracket. I want to bench 225. I want to squat a number that I’m scared to even write down. And you say marathoners are not powerlifters.
I know. Who said this had to make sense?