Jogaholism and Walkaholism

A couple nights ago, I had the most serious talk ever with myself about my jogging. I have had plenty of serious talks with myself about it, so this one was really serious. At last, I was completely honest with myself about it: I am a jogaholic. It’s early spring and I’m still somewhat aerobically challenged after the recent cold spell. So when a 52-year-old, partially out of shape female jogs six miles over extremely steep, long hills, her feet don’t hurt, and she feels like she hasn’t done much of anything, it starts to sound like an addiction. I jogged 4 ½ miles on Wednesday, 6 on Thursday, and 5 ½ on Friday. There are other signs that this is an addiction. For example, I WANT to lift weights. My excuse for not lifting weights usually comes down to jogging instead of lifting weights. I do need to lose a few pounds. I try to diet. I usually end up jogging instead of dieting! Another sign that I’m just an addicted jogger is that I can’t control my jogging. For example, I would like to become a certified personal trainer. So I’d like my jogging to be part of a fitness program I’ve designed to achieve optimal aerobic fitness, muscular strength, and flexibility in conjunction with a healthy diet designed to maintain an ideal weight. That’s what I’d do for my clients if I were a personal trainer. All this, of course, is impossible for me. I just want to go out and jog at my own pace, conquer the steep hills around here, give out treats to my favorite dogs, and enjoy the scenery. In addition to this, I would like to be able to enter certain races and finish them in a reasonable amount of time: 10K, 15K, half-marathons. I’m completely unable to maintain any kind of training regime. I’m just an out of control jogger!

I realized after my talk with myself that I’m just going to have to accept my addiction to a certain degree. I’m going to have to try to get in some weight lifting. But I’ve decided I’m going to just have to give up dieting and try to jog it off. I’m still going to try to avoid certain high-fat foods and stick to the lower calorie ones. I have learned a lot these last few months by lurking around the various Biggest Loser boards, which are populated by fans of NBC’s hit show. I’m not going to think about entering races and will just let it take care of itself. I’m going to give into my jogging addiction to some extent and just see where it takes me. I’m going to have to do it my way, since that’s all I can do, apparently.

You may wonder where I’d even get the idea this is an addiction. Well, if you’ve read some of the other posts on my blog, you’ve learned I had a bout with anorexia. I eat enough now and really am a bit overweight, so I’m no longer anorexic. I had thought I’d completely beat this, but at the time, I learned you never recover from an eating disorder, you just learn to deal with it. So I’m sure the jogging addiction is another manifestation of it. I’m not jogging enough to really interfere with my health, so it’s nothing to worry about right now. When I used to attend the large support group for people with eating disorders, I learned that anorexics are often walkaholics. I was certainly a walkaholic when I was anorexic. I would walk till my feet were so sore I couldn’t walk another step. I heard many tales at that group of anorexics who walked for hours upon hours for many many miles.

There is a school of thought that exercisaholics can actually be classified as bulimic. I would not consider myself anywhere near this group of people. To me, this would mean that a person binges on food and then exercises for many hours at an extreme pace in order to rid him or herself of the calories; i.e., he or she would do extreme exercise rather than vomiting or using laxatives. I don’t binge and I don’t consider myself to be jogging to the extreme. A person who did not binge but who exercised way too much to get rid of the calories would probably be classified as exercise-addicted or anorexic. But in any case, I’m just obsessed enough with it to admit that: My name is Theodosia and I am a jogaholic!