Changes You Have Noticed Since Becoming A Barefooter

I generally just walk into store and warehouse businesses without even bothering to look at my feet. If I need to use a shopping cart, that sort of hides that I am barefoot, but I don't specifically hide my feet behind the cart.

Arches are still weak and flatten in the middle of almost every step, but there is still a lower arch when standing up. I don't think this will change even though there is more arch when the not standing up on the foot and when I scrunch the foot. Left arch is slightly lower than the right arch.

Soles haven't thickened all that much, but they do have a more leathery consistency under rougher calluses that catch when run along microfiber. Heat tolerance is a very high priority for me, since much of my summer barefooting ends up being in inland valleys and even during the hottest afternoon hours. Soles are much more burnable in that I can walk several minutes at a time on unshaded blacktop in 93 to 94 degrees F weather, even an hour into the hottest afternoon hours, and I can still stand for over 10 seconds longer than just soles fully on the ground as long as I keep rolling back and forth on the both soles to evenly distribute any painful burning that is occurring on any one part of the soles. That means I'm already well beyond parking lots being any sort of challenge even if I have to stop and stand to cross a larger lot.

I do keep the calluses rough using a handheld paddle cheese grater. Buy one of these at Walmart, it's a metal grater paddle with a handle. Grating up and against the natural grain of the soles (in other words, grate in the direction from heels to toes) makes those areas rougher. I use X-shaped patterns on parts of the soles to make new calluses, and use straight lines to maintain the calluses. Only one pass per section as large as the grater can grate. Harder more callused areas get only one extra grating pass. I only apply enough pressure to make very shallow etch lines when I do the X-shaped patterns for new calluses, so that only the very surface gets roughened rather than grating off more calluses. If I do straight lines to maintain calluses, I only glide the grater over the calluses with no pressure unless it sticks, and then only enough to make it no longer stuck.

The hotter it gets past 90 degrees F, the less grating I do. I'll grate once a week up to 95 degrees F, I'll grate once every other week when weather is consistently between 95 degrees F and 100 degrees F, and will do no grating when temperatures are consistently 100 degrees F or higher range (such as 105 degrees F) to keep the surface calluses as rough and heat tolerant as possible.

 

Another change I just noticed is that the arch of my foot looks slightly higher and more pronounced. I don't really have a before picture but here is my foot arch now.

 

Going barefoot makes me happier than going shod, even without socks.

 

The number of barefoot shoe styles available now. When I first developed foot pain and switched to barefoot footwear there wasn't such a wide range.

 

Barefoot footwear..... that's the best example of an oxymoron I have ever seen!!!

 

As summer is coming to an end (but not yet, there is still one more mid to high 90 degrees F heat wave in the next week or so!) my soles are much tougher because I put them through longer times of progressively hotter heat, enough that once I even got significant blisters and it will still take another month for the shallow holes left from removed blisters to fully heal.

But, they did not get significantly thicker despite becoming tougher. That disappoints me somewhat, since I thought they would thicken enough to notice it.

Since I do periodically grate the soles to maintain rougher calluses, whenever I can go barefoot the same day or the next day after the grating, it is taking more pressure to make the necessary grating lines on the soles. On the other hand, since I can use harder pressure, I can do deeper grating and make even rougher calluses without getting any cuts, even on the toe pads.

Right after grating is really noticeable on the heels. Mostly even diagonal lines are ideal. After wiping the soles with a hand wipe, the grating lines only become much more visible when the soles are dirty. These do go away as that roughness becomes more leathery, which is why periodic grating is necessary to keep the soles rough.

But, since I only want callused soles used to heat, I do not do any grating in colder weather. The heat tolerance does not need to be reduced any more than it already does during fall and winter, and grating during cold weather would grate away more heat tolerance.

 

I honestly have to say I don't understand why you grate the soles of your feet. At first I thought it was for more traction and now it seems to be about building up heat tolerance, but aren't you removing an extra heat tolerant layer every time and preventing your feet from ever building up a really thick bottom? Please exlain.

 

i wanted to last longer in bed, so i started grating my penis. as a bonus, now it's ribbed for her pleasure.

 

when I want to last longer in bed, I hit the snooze bar

 

Did you notice any chances over time?

 

Ribbed for her pleasure? I buy those condoms that say that - then turn them inside out half the time. Why should she have all the fun?

 

I'm reviving this thread because there are new this I'm noticing now that the weather has turned cold.

When I walk barefoot I the cold, I find it adjusts my body temperature better. Not that I am actually warmer, but cold feet seem to help. If I go for a walk with shoes on I find my neck and shoulder area gets very cold and I start to shiver, but if my feet are bare, they seem to be colder and nothing else bothers me. Cold feet seem much easier to deal with somehow.

 

How cold?

During NC's mild winter days, I find that I can usually get by okay with flip flops or other sandals. But if I try to go without them for as far as the mailbox at the end of my driveway, it feels like the pavement is literally sucking the life out of my entire body.

 

Well it's not the dead of winter yet. The temperature has been sitting around 0°c or slightly higher this past week.

 

I'm not a "barefooter"but I'll take wild guess about changes,
I'm gonna say dirtier feet.

 

No, not significantly different from wearing sandals, especially on unpaved surfaces.

 

I tried barefooting once and noticed an immediate drop in the amount of sharp objects on the floor. They were somehow magnetically drawn to my feet and stuck into my soles, between toes and even under my toenails.

 

^Somehow, sir, I sense that you are taking this thread less than seriously

Actually I agree with mattekat. Yesterday was a bright but autumnal day in UK. I was working in my father's garden and was wrapped up and in socks and trainers. There was a chill in the air and I started to sneeze and feel I was catching a cold. However after a while in the sunniest area I warmed up and got barefoot. I immediately felt much better and all the cold symptoms left. I agree that as long as you are appropriately dressed otherwise, bare feet are nearly always best.

 

they probably get dirtier with the sandals on, since sandals make your feet sweat and then you have dirt trapped between your sticky wet foot and the sandal.

 

Very true, but I didn't bring it up because Shoe Police people tend to find things like that hard to believe, for reasons I don't understand. I've been on hikes where every sandal strap left a black stripe behind, everywhere it touched. Also, dirt on bare soles wears off very quickly on pavement, because it's abrasive.