Do feet keep growing or have shoe sizing standards changed?
I have heard, and at some time read, that some of your body continues to grow larger as you age. I can relate to some of that theory. For instance, my waist has gone from 28 inches in high school to 34-plus inches today. That is a gain of six inches over the years. Some photos of older individuals seem to get bigger ears. I thought the fact that mine got about one inch thicker from high school days is because of all those years of wrestling and getting cauliflower ears. So I am a good example of having some parts of my body grow in stature.
The one body part I started to question is when reports say that your feet also get a few sizes larger as you get older. Having recalled my shoe sizes over the years I thought this was a true statement. I can’t count my first pair of shoes as I am still trying to grow into them. In the ninth grade, I bought a hand-me-down pair of football cleats from a friend. They were a nice size 12 for my size-7 foot. I don’t think the front three cleats ever hit the turf that year. I look back and can imagine an elf with those curly-toed shoes with a football helmet on trying to run fast.
In the Army in 1963, I was given a nice pair of size-8 black boots. I walked many miles in those boots. I put so much polish on them that I can still see the shine on them in my closet. This week I happened to wear one of my first cowboy boots from 1974 and saw the size 8.5 D on the inside. I was slowly moving up in size with my feet. I guess I started running when the first Capital 10K was starting back in 1979 and I had a size 8.5 shoe. As I put in more miles a size 9-9.5 was more comfortable. Then as I neared the end of my running days I had a pair of running shoes that were size 10. That statement that your feet continue to grow seemed to be correct.
I thought maybe the increase of six inches in waist size and going from 152 pounds to 180 pounds might be the reason my feet were getting bigger. That extra weight might have been the reason my feet were increasing in size. And doing squats with over 400 pounds didn’t help any. The one thing that did not get larger was my height. Whether it is older age or heavy lifting I went from 5-foot-9 to a stretched out 5-foot-7. That was another report that was mentioned about getting older: you shrink.
I am not sure what started me questioning the accuracy of these changes as a person gets older. I think it was when I glanced at the size of that old cowboy boot and saw that 8.5 D size labeled on the inside of the boot. The boots still fit and felt very comfortable. I checked out several of my running shoes to see what size they were. One was a 9.5 and another one was a size 10. I checked a pair of cowboy boots I had purchased a couple of years ago and they were a size 9.5.
The one thing that started me questioning whether it was my feet increasing in shoe size was when I tried on my army boots. They still held a shine, the laces were all together, and the soles looked in good shape. I unlaced the boot and slipped my foot into the boot. Those size 8 boots still fit and felt like I could work in the yard with them. So when I saw that my foot still fit in a size 8 boot after 50-plus years, I wondered since my feet were still the same size. Maybe it is the fact that the standards of sizing shoes have changed. I tried to recall a pair of Reebok shoes I ran several marathons in and remembered the size was 8.5.
That theory of certain areas of the body continuing to grow as you get older made me wonder if the sizes on shoes and clothes might be the part that has changed. I can’t argue with a scale when I check my weight as the standard is still the number of pounds recorded on the dial. Some things are still getting heavier, bigger, and pants and slack sizes are getting larger. But my shoe sizes are being questioned now.
The point of this shoe size is that when you buy a new pair of running shoes the best method is to try them on, go for a short jog around the store, or better outside the store. Running on a carpet in the store versus pavement outside is very different. And so is trying on a shoe versus thinking you know your size and ordering them online. Different shoes have different sizes for you depending on the brand and model of the shoe. It might not be the feet getting bigger but the shoe is changing size standards.
