The following is the first in a series of posts by Steve Shipowitz, one of our new contributors here at MyFiveFingers.com.  Steve will be posting on a number of subject, including his recent weight loss that was assisted by wearing Vibram FiveFingers.  Be sure to follow Steve on Twitter:  @stevenshipo

About 7 months ago, I decided it was time to lose some weight and to lose it for good. My father had died from heart disease at age 67, his father had died from heart disease at age 50, and I made the decision that I was not going to follow in their footsteps.  In August of 2010, at age 46, , I stood 5 feet 10 inches and weighed 210 pounds. All weight charts will tell you that this is not a good ratio of height to weight. Most will state that I should be about 150 pounds. Let me tell you, I cannot remember the last time I was at 150 pounds. I played high school football and lacrosse and remember being about 175 pounds during those years. If you are wondering what this has to do with Vibram FiveFingers, I promise you, I am rapidly getting to that.

I have never been a fan of running. Let me restate that, I have always hated, abhorred, pick any word that means to dislike, and that is how I felt about running. I have an elliptical machine in my house and it is a great piece of equipment for losing weight and getting a cardio workout. The elliptical was getting boring, so I thought I would head outside and run. Yeah I know, what the h@$l was I thinking. I am overweight and hate running! The block next to mine in my neighborhood is almost exactly one half of a mile. My thought was to use it as a track, so I would know what my mileage was. Let’s just say that first run was awful. I couldn’t make it half way around without being completely out of breath and my bum knees were killing me.

Right around this point, my wife of 23 years tells me about some folks in her office who run in these crazy shoes called Vibram FiveFingers. I had never heard of them and pretty much blew her off. She also told me about a book they were all reading “Born to Run”. My “love” of running, insert sarcasm, is close to my love of reading.  After ignoring what she had said for a few weeks and having terrible runs, I decided to do some research on the shoes and the book. See, now it is my idea to do this, not hers, so of course I am doing it. After reading up on VFFs and seeing numerous comments about how people’s knee pain went away while running in them, I thought I would give them a try.  The book reviews for “Born to Run” were also great and I found out that I could get it on tape. Now I could combine both of them; I listened to the book while I ran in my Five Fingers.

Anyone who gets FiveFingers should know that you should NOT immediately go for a run in them when you first get them. I called Vibram directly; a very nice young lady implored me to walk in them for three to four weeks before my first run.  Let’s face it; going from wearing shoes for 46 years, to running barefoot all of a sudden cannot go well. You may have guessed, patience is not one of my strong suits, but I was determined to lose weight and try to use the shoes properly. I ordered the Bikila style from REI. If you are wondering why REI, it is because of their return policy. They said I could walk or run in them anywhere I pleased, and if I didn’t like them, no matter what shape they were in, I could return them.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series, where I did deeper into what I’ve done to lose the weight, including adopting a special diet and changing my viewpoint on running.  To be continued….

UPDATE:  You can read part 2 in this series here.