Back in the mid-1960’s Tuft’s University professor, Dr. Jean Mayer, coined a phrase of “creeping overweight.” The research he had done with nutrition and weight control demonstrated that as a person ages they tend to gain weight. I haven’t heard that term in many years, even when the latest research has shown that overweight and obesity amongst people has reached almost 70% of the population. This May issue of Nutrition Action had a brief paragraph on “Keeping the lungs young” that referred to problems with weight gain as a person gets older. The research involved 3,673 adults between the ages of 20 to 44 over a 20 year period. The finding showed that lung capacity dropped in adults whose weight gain was ‘moderate’ (up to two pounds) and ‘high’ (more than two pounds) per year than in those who stayed at a healthy weight. The last sentence in the paragraph stated, “Try to keep weight from creeping up over time.” There was Dr. Mayer’s “creeping overweight” being true even today.
I have been active in sports most of my life and started to recall the different sports and the role of weight in each of them. In wrestling there was always a weight class that you had to weigh in for competition. I wrestled at 157 pounds. I usually weighed about 165 pounds. Each day in practice I lost about eight pounds from sweat and exercise. At supper I drank lots of fluid, ate a healthy meal, and gained that eight pounds back. I lost eight pounds a day, every day, except it was the same eight pounds. The day before a meet I would not drink fluid or eat and weighed in at 157 pounds. A fellow wrestler I once knew was a bodybuilder and weighed 185 pounds at the start of the season. He also wrestled at 157 pounds. He went from a 32 inch waist size to 28 inches. After the season he went back to the gym and weights. He ate healthy meals and within three weeks he was back to 185 pounds. He had that weight control down to a science.
In college I always wanted to weigh 180 pounds as a running back. I worked out all summer and got up to 175 pounds. When I played football the practice of the day was, “Don’t drink water because you will get stomach cramps.” Practice in August hot weather with football pads on meant that a player lost a lot of weight from sweat. We were given a couple of salt tablets to replace the sodium we lost during practice. At supper it was a quart of milk to start with to quench the thirst. After filling up with all that milk I was not that hungry and did not eat a big meal. Within two weeks I was down to 160 pounds. An entire summer’s work was gone in two weeks.
When I ran marathons my best weight was between 152 and 155 pounds. Friends that knew me from my weight lifting size of around 165 pounds kept asking me, “Are you okay?” That skinny frame and drawn face from running 20+ miles on the weekend may have made me look like a sick person, but I was very healthy. You did not want to carry any extra pounds trying to run 26.2 miles. That lighter weight was what I needed for the sport.
