Body weight can be a touchy subject but it is an important part of my journey to triathlon, so I’m going there.

I came to the sport of triathlon from a running background.  When I say a running background, I mean three years of running!  So what got me into running almost six years ago?  The simple answer is that I was overweight and didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. 

Back in 2013 before I started running, I went on a diet and that worked really well. I lost a lot of weight but it wasn’t sustainable and before long I was creeping back up towards my original weight.  I needed to do something more, so I made the decision to start running. 

This was January 2014 and I set myself the goal of one day running a marathon.  I decided that I would start with a half marathon and it would be the Pittsburgh Half Marathon that May.  My journey to that race is something I’ll cover later, but I started running and haven’t stopped since.

Having started running however, I quickly discovered that just running didn’t impact my weight at all.  I was getting aerobically fitter but my weight was totally controlled by what I put in my mouth!  This is a lesson I keep having to learn, but these days I am a lot better at it.

The chart above tracks my weight from the first time I got on the scales in January 2013.  I weigh myself every day and every Sunday, I record my average weight over the previous seven days.  I do it this way to take out some of the day to day variation, caused by things like hydration level.

That chart is a huge motivation to me.  It reminds me where I came from and more importantly, when it starts to track upwards, I get that reminder to watch what I eat.  It’s important to know that I don’t obsess about it (you can see I regularly gain weight about this time of the year) but it does stop things getting out of control. 

I would agree that body weight is a touchy subject but I’m human and I care about it.  I would love to hear your thoughts?  Is this subject taboo?