The lump in my stomach...

You may have heard of the term, "A lump in my throat" when someone is nervous about a situation.

That's not what I've got.

I've got a lump in my stomach. Well... not actually IN my stomach... to be precise, it pokes out just above my belly button.

I noticed it last summer when I started running. It seemed to be more noticable after a run although once I found it, I was able to poke and prod to find it even when I was not out of breath from running.

I had a doctor check it out and they did a CT scan. The diagnosis is a "ventral hernia" or some thing similar and I have an appointment to see a specialist in March.

The reason I am bringing this up is that I just stumbled upon a book called "Body by Science: A Research Based Program to Get the Results You Want in 12 Minutes a Week" by John Little and Dr. Doug McGuff. It has some great ideas including their version of "High Intensity Training" (HIT) but the best part was their website and an article called "Internal Starvation".

In his article, Dr. McGuff explains the process whereby obese people's internal systems are damaged by years of high carbohydrate intake combined with little or no burning off of the glycogen (stored primarily in skeletal muscles). In essence, obese people become skinny, weak people trapped in a case of fat which can lead to the following ...

A ventral hernia is a defect in the abdominal wall that allows the viscera
to protrude through. Occasionally, the protruding intestines can become
entrapped and their blood supply can be strangulated, requiring emergency
surgery. These hernias were occurring because the very thin abdominal muscles
were being stretched beyond their capacity by the accumulation of
intra-abdominal fat.

This is a wake-up call for me and I have already begun to develop a weight-training program experimenting with some of the HIT concepts. I will be posting more on this as the program (and my use of it) develops.

Stay tuned !