Olivia B Luchion
Jul 23, 2017 · 6 min read

I was obsessed with exercise in my 20s

Specifically during the year after I turned 23, while I was on vacation in London, England.

It was the winter of 1993/1994. In December (up until my vacation ended in early March) I started off by being a bit overweight … then I got the brilliant idea to walk very long distances. I would walk for hours to the different nightclubs in and around London only to dance for another 2 to 4 hours. I would take breaks from the dance floor. And I usually caught the Tube or the other Public Transit option of the train home, after all that dancing.

I had a copy of the A to Zed book. That book contains all the maps of the streets in London and was easy to come by, at the time.

And I also had a penchant for my Sony Walkman (a portable cassette player). There were some great mixed tapes that I listened to, which I made from a close friend of mine’s CD and record collections. My friend even had some 45s, if I remember correctly.

Geesh, if I can still find those mixed tapes. I’d be more than happy to start doing the stairs like I did back then. It was so much like a meditation … at the top of the stairs by the room that I was staying in at the house of one of my mother’s grown up friends (from when she younger). Just stepping up one or two steps and down the same amount of steps… over and over. The repetition was an easy one. I would just have to find a working cassette player with good enough speakers. Either that, or I could put the cassette player near the top of the stairs at our condo plugged into some older “computer” speakers.

I’ll have to list some of the songs I used to motivate me to exercise obsessively… later, perhaps in another note.

I suppose I could come up with some new playlists on Spotify or Pandora… with some great newer longish dance music and mashups. Or, I could make new playlists from those older songs,… that’s probably what will happen.

I went from my starting weight (somewhere around 177 pounds) to 10 stone. That’s an ending weight of 150 pounds. This was 1993, so the unit of measure for weight was still stones. That was a loss of about 27 pounds. Maybe more.

Part of my motivation for losing the weight was that I had a “crush” on that close friend of mine. And, I was pretty sure that being less overweight would be a big help in winning him over. In the long term though, my losing weight seemed to have no effect. My close friend remained a friend for a while, and then he moved to another state.

The other part of my exercising obsessively was doing push ups, sit ups, and mountain climbers. I can’t say my form was perfect, but I enjoyed the new clothes that I was able to purchase with the money from my part time job. (The job was part time, but the hours seemed to stretch on and on.) I worked in retail even way back then. I was able to take this extended vacation because I had a boss that sold items primarily for the “tourists” in the small town I lived in, in Washington state, and it was the slow season.

The Pacific Northwest, and Washington state didn’t have the same tourist spots it does now. There weren’t locations where the Twilight movies or any other current movies were filmed, because those movies didn’t exist yet. The most note worthy movie that had been filmed there at the time (in the town I grew up and lived in until I moved away to college) was An Officer and a Gentleman. I had even been friends with one of the extras in the movie for a while when I lived there.

But, I digress. Back to the topic at hand.

During that trip, I also started walking to a nearby bakery for fresh pastry. I’d walk all the way there, but only buy one pastry. And then I’d walk back to the house where I was staying and eat that pastry. If I wanted another pastry, it meant another long walk. You get the point. A few years later, around 1996/1997, I would walk to the convenience store nearby my apartment back in my home town, in order to lose weight. I would purchase a package of Twinkies — which was no substitute for the fresh pastries from England. I don’t have a sweet tooth, and I would probably reward myself with something more salty now, if I started walking to a nearby store as motivation to get more fit.

In fact, my current job is about a forty minute walk from our condo. Even at my fast clip. I think this is a little too far to walk… to get to work, so I usually take the bus. But come spring or summertime when the weather gets nicer and warmer, I anticipate wanting to walk home.

There was one other previous time when I lost weight by obsessing over exercise. That was about 1998 or so… I got down to about 128 pounds. I was able to go shopping at a great vintage dress store in West Seattle, near my then apartment. I was a size four or six in dresses then. I still have a picture taken, in my then boyfriend’s apartment, where I look very thin… nearly emaciated. I was actually too skinny — if you can believe it.

My comfortable weight, the one I tend to maintain easier, is between 140 and 145 pounds. When I weigh that much, being just five foot four is a blessing, and not a curse. *wicked grin* I tended to look a lot like a thinner version of what I looked like when I weighed my top weight in high school — about 149 pounds. I remember, I wore a size 10 dress to the prom. (I went “stag” — without a date to my senior prom.) It may not be exactly equivalent to a similar size 10 dress made to today’s proportions.

The pictures from that era (before 1989 — over 25 years ago) show me beaming. Of course, just after graduating high school I had good reason to smile.

Even in high school I liked sports and exercising. I was on the softball team for three years. First couple of years, I played more often. Mostly first or third base, sometime pitcher. My memory is not so great. I do remember though, that after that Softball Coach left, I was the DH, or designated hitter for a while. It was just okay. When the team took to the field, I sat on the bench.

After that year, I switched to Track and Field (for a spring and end of the school year sport). I did the Shot Put, the Discus, the Javelin and the Long Jump.

I also tried out for the volleyball team one winter. And of course, I tried out one winter for the basketball team, too.

I ended up on the Cross Country team for a few years. Junior and Senior year, maybe more. I have a few pictures of me running on the Cross Country course through Fort Worden during various meets. And there is the picture of the group of us on the team all dressed up in our fancy clothes (not our running gear) for a posed portrait in front of a great Victorian house. (The town I grew up in was a former and historically preserved Victorian Seaport, in Washington state.) Have you heard of running stairs? There is a good set of them linking the Uptown neighborhood to the Downtown neighborhood near the famous Haller Fountain (or Galatea). I want to get into good enough shape, that I could possibly run those stairs again, should I feel so inclined.

Since it is about 21 years later and, I’m planning to start to do that same type of exercising I did all those years ago… Wow! Nearly a lifetime has passed!

I can’t wait to start obsessing over a new aspect of staying and keeping healthy. In case you’re curious about my latest obsession, I’ll let you know how my current and future exercise regimen progresses. I hope to see some results sooner, rather than later. Bring on the good stuff!

Olivia B Luchion

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I have written my memoir. It is stories from my life, and Other Musings. I like a Firm handshake.