I USED to be able to run pretty fast. Eight and a half minutes for 2.4km. That’s about 85 seconds per lap around a 400m track for six laps. This was 25 years and 10kg ago. Then, like many of my friends, I went to university, stopped exercising as regularly, put on some weight, graduated, got a highly stressful job, stopped exercising, saw my metabolic rate slow down, ate too much to compensate for the long hours of work, and grew heavy and lazy. How heavy, you may ask? I tipped the scales at slightly over 90kg in the photo below, taken in 2004, just before I left for my PhD in the United States. At the height of my unfitness, I struggled to finish the same six laps in 13 minutes.
When I realized that my weight and lack of fitness was affecting not just my physical but my mental health as well, I decided to take drastic action. A strict diet followed by one and sometimes two runs a day of at least 5km. It was easier to make this lifestyle change as a graduate student with some flexibility in my schedule. I managed to go down to 73kg (2nd photo below) and could run 6 laps at just over 9 minutes.
Limited time offer:
Just RM5 per month.
