I’ve spent an unnecessary amount of time this week thinking about my feet. I guess it’s not really surprising as I’m increasing my time spent on them, but for various reasons I have spent quite a lot of time considering them.
I’ve been back on my drill sessions this week, with a few foot twinges afterwards. I used to have high arches to my feet, but over the last few years for reasons likely relating to inactivity and weight gain I am now almost completely flat footed. My shoe size has also increased by about half a size so my feet are clearly now more like splayed frog flippers, except that unlike a frog I am a poor swimmer.
This does not bode well for someone who wants to up their time on their feet again: I read somewhere the army does not take people with flat feet as they’re unable to do long marches without injury due to the reduced springing of the foot (this is an unaccredited snippet of info and I will not vouch for its accuracy!). Medical websites suggest it improves in children, but is normally permanent in adults, other sites suggest you buy the seller’s shoes or insoles which ‘may give some improvement’.
I’m not sure about the reversibility of flat feet – whether its just that without work they won’t reverse and few people put the work in, or if it genuinely is something you can’t get back, but by deciding not to research further and therefore be proven wrong I have decided the arch is formed by a muscle and therefore I should be able to train something back. I haven’t yet figured out a good way to take feet-prints to chart my progress but I shall continue to give this some thought.
I’m making a conscious but unstructured effort to wiggle things – stand on tiptoes and heels (good for improving balance if nothing else), lift alternating big toe then other toes, smoosh feet against the floor into the shape I feel they should be and hope they magically remember. We’ll see if it does anything over the next few months. If nothing else, stronger flat feet should be less prone to pain and injury than floppy flat feet right?!
The splaying of my feet has become particularly obvious to me this week with the discovery that despite being about as far from athletic as one can be at the moment, I also have athlete’s foot which has resulted in a lovely split between my middle and ‘ring’ toes on one foot. So as well as spending a lot of time thinking about feet this week, I also get to spend extra time washing them and smearing anti-fungals about. This is a very sad time for a long-term sock lover.
The other prevalent topic on my brain this week is my weight, again for various reasons. I was browsing a local store I hadn’t been in before on Friday and this caught my eye as more or less summing things up!
Between last week’s flatlining during the week and then being full of cold over the weekend, I’d been taking more of a break from exercise trying to give myself a chance to recuperate. What’s I’ve noticed however is I have been back to ingesting all the high-carb snacky rubbish, despite often not being hungry. Previously, particularly when trying to survive through work, I’ve noticed I inhale things to compensate for a lack of rest: hoping to subsist on sugar for long enough to finish whatever blinking report I’m trying to wade through. This week, I’ve been trying to put a bit more focus into what I think is ‘lacking’ that I’m trying to fill with food: I’m not hungry, and while I have been tired I’ve also been napping as needed so rest doesn’t feel like quite the fit it previously has.
I am guilty, as many are, of judging others by their appearance and public persona and deciding they must have something right which I do not. As regards weight, I see people who are what I would deem a ‘healthy’ weight (please take this as a very broad brush) and think they must have their lives so much more in order than I do. I know there will be some who actively work (hard!) through diet and fitness to maintain their physical condition, but I dare to dream it is possible to have a relationship with food where it can be enjoyed but predominantly eaten for nutrition rather than taking over one’s life.
To achieve my ‘peak fitness’ weight again, I need to lose about 40lb. I don’t want to spend my life calorie-counting or beating myself up about cravings. I want to have a healthy relationship with food where I eat normally what I need to be able to live happily and strong enough to do whatever I want or need to.
I’ve noticed this week that I eat a lot more rubbish when I’m not exercising regularly, and about 3 days of exercise sessions (even 10 minutes Pilates on a day) makes it much easier to make good decisions for meals and not feel I’m missing anything by skipping the snacks – I wasn’t hungry when I was eating them anyway. I’ve even made some low-carb granola this week to shake up my breakfasts from an apple and two babybel (sometimes I have these with lunch instead!).
I find myself wondering if the breaks from physical tasks when recovering from fatigue symptoms are actually contributing to some of the negative symptoms: I eat rubbish, it upsets my gut, I gain weight, I drink less water, etc.. Certainly when I had a bit of a relapse the week before last it wasn’t the 2x 1.5hr walk sessions that made me feel wiped out afterwards; it was the social meeting call and the physio conversation that left me feeling drained. The tricky thing is fatigue symptoms for me sometimes don’t show until a day or two later.
I know someone else who had Long COVID a few years ago, and had many of the same symptoms as me. By his account he reached a point where his response to the constant tired/resting/flatness was to say “F*** it” and wipe himself out every day on an exercise bike, even knowing he would feel like garbage afterwards. I don’t know if this was all he did, but he did seem to be a lot closer to ‘normal’ in a much shorter time than I’m managing. He did have a much longer period doing a different work role as part of his convalescence, but he also ran the Great North Run last year and I am a million years off that!
I’m going to try and start pushing myself a bit more physically to make sure I do something every day. I want to lose some weight, I want to tone up, I want to trust my body to get me where I need to be and doing what I want to do. This may involve quite a few more naps, but I well at least have happy furrball company for them.
I’m trying to remind myself of the progress and the victories: I have done both my drill sessions this week. I have done a parkrun for the first time since August 2022 when I walked Durham (we thought we’d try Denton Dene as Saturday’s long run was 3M!), I have been to Costco and not bought any enormous boxes of chocolate. We’ll see how much change I can see before my next physio appointment in early April, and which way that change is going!
Blue Runnings 
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