When Ted Spiker was creating headlines for the chapters of his book Down Size, one suggestion he made was “hippo-crite.”
“I’ve always had a problem up and down with weight issues, but I have all this background in writing about health and fitness,” he said. “I was writing about this stuff, then struggling with it.”
“Hippo-crite” didn’t make the final cut, but Spiker, a Newark, DE. native who is now an associate professor and interim chair in the department of journalism at the University of Florida, lays it all out – his struggles, triumphs and frustrations, especially around running – in Down Size. It’s a mix of his personal experience, science, psychology, and what other people have done not necessarily to get into model-worthy shape, but to take control of their bodies and their lives.
After graduating from the University of Delaware, Spiker worked at Delaware Today and then Men’s Health magazine. He also co-wrote about a dozen books, including those in the “You” series with Dr. Memhet C. Oz – books like You: The Owner’s Manual.
At the same time, he struggled. At his worst, in 2007, he weighed 297 pounds. He has since run a marathon and completed an Iron Man. But this isn’t a rah rah you can be perfect if you work hard enough kind of book, either. Spiker is honest about how he still struggles with his shape and isn’t quite where he wants to be (he hasn’t weighed himself in a year, but he’s guessing he weighs 210 pounds).
“I’m in a much better place and I feel like I’m stronger and better,” he said. “I’ve released this whole notion that as long as I’m not in terrible shape, why am I obsessing about 10 pounds?”
In 2012, Spiker, who also writes “The Big Guy Blog” at runnersworld.com, started “The Sub-30 Club.” It was “me reshaping what I wanted to do running wise while still battling the demons and feeling slow,” he said. So he wanted to create a group of like-minded runners with a goal of breaking 30 minutes in a 5k.
He expected to get maybe 20 people. One day after his post went live, he had 100. Today, the club’s Facebook group has over 3,100 members.
“It’s a place where we can share insecurities and where we can not be embarrassed if we run a 42-minute 5k,” he said, noting that the group now has plenty of members who are much faster than 30 minutes, and plenty of members who are not close to 30 but hope to be there someday. “We can take pride in being dead-freaking-last and in the fact that we got out there and we did it.” Spiker himself broke 30 minutes in late 2012.
The main message of the book, he says, is that you’re in the driver seat, and that it’s going to take some time to figure out what works. “There are a million things that can work and a million things that can go wrong,” he says. For example: every Friday, he and a group of his friends and their friends and friends of friends work out by doing things like flipping giant tires – yes tires. He loves it, and credits it with helping him stay in shape because it’s challenging, and fun.
“Once we take control of the fact that we don’t have to follow x plan, y plan, z mode of operation and we can cobble together what really works for our personality, to fit our genetics, to fit our lifestyles, we regain the ability to gain control of something we’ve lost control over.”
Shedding pounds and minutes is a big task
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