Does Weight Matter?

Does weight matter? I ask myself this all the time. See I am a former chunky person (fat). It all seemed like it happened so fast. I was swimming in college, discovered beer, pizza, the original Chipolte, and golf. While I was still swimming, those things did not matter. I ate 3,000 – 5,000 calories a day, but swam 4 hours a day so no big deal.

Stop swimming, start working, golf in a cart becomes your exercise and before you know it 220 lbs on a 5′ 11″ frame. (Me above 1998).

When I started running back in 2000, I did not lose weight because I kept eating the same amount of food and probably more. I then figured out that if you eat less than you burn, you lose weight! This was real easy to achieve by eating a few slices of pizza and not the whole pie.
The first picture reminds me everyday of who I used to be.

It has been about 9 years to the day that I started to really focus on my weight. Not a lot has changed because I still watch the weight everyday.

As of now, my weight is 175. That seems to be the going average for me. I have seen as low as 166 and as high as 180 over the past 2 years. I do have a body fat scale and see 9 – 11 % on that whether I am 166 or 180 lbs.

I have posted good results at 169 lbs and qualified for Kona at 175 lbs. During the Houston Marathon, I actually gained weight during the race and they made me go to the med tent because I weighed 179 at the finish. (That brought back flashbacks of the old me from 1998).

So to answer my own question the answer is yes, it does matter. Not in lbs, but how I think about it. I will always watch my weight, but I will always look back at the first picture and realize that the race between myself and my weight is long over. I need to declare that race a victory and just enjoy how great I feel at 37 years of age.