This is just to share my experience with weight loss and running, but obviously everyone is going to have different experiences.
I've always been on the larger side. I love food and hate exercise, and while my parents always emphasized eating healthy, they would let me eat unlimited amounts of nutritious which still led to me becoming overweight. I also hit my growth spurt early, so as a young girl, I felt huge. I really hated my body, but I always turned to food for comfort, which ended up forcing me into a cycle.
Senior year of high school, I learned about CICO and decided to count calories. I lost twenty pounds which I felt great about, but I was eating about 1100-1200 calories a day and I was terrified to go over my calorie limits. I was so miserable since I was too scared to get ice cream or dinner with my friends the summer before we all left for college. My mom made me a cake for my graduation but I only ate half a slice since I didn't know the calories and I could tell that hurt her, but I was terrified of overeating.
Then I went to college and I went in the complete other direction. I didn't bring a scale so I never knew how much I weighed and stopped counting calories, so the freshman fifteen really got to me. I knew I was gaining weight and while I hated it, I felt so out of control. But something good came out of going to college: I took up running. I hated running in my hometown, but I went to college in a city where a large part of the population was made up of runners, and I fell in love with running. I didn't really do it that much, maybe 2 miles three days a week, but it was better than nothing.
Since quarantine hit and I had to go home, I've been running so much more and I think it's actually changed my relationship with food so much. I decided to run more regularly and I've been running 5 days a week since March. This time a year ago, I couldn't even run a mile and now I run a 10k once or twice a week, and I hope to run 10 miles without stopping by the end of the year.
I still count calories, but I'm so much more forgiving to myself. I can actually eat food socially again and I'm so much happier than I was this time last year. Even if I overeat, I just consider it extra fuel for the run the next day, rather than hating myself or punishing myself for it. I weigh less now than I did when I left for college, but I feel like I need to work so much less for it. I think the biggest thing I've gotten out of running is the knowledge that my body is capable of so much, even if it doesn't look exactly the way I want it to. I still have weight to lose, but I'm so happy with what I am able to accomplish. I'm not going to win any races or anything, but it's an amazing feeling to know I can actually just go out and run for an hour straight, which I never thought would have been possible.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that while it's so true that you can't outrun a bad diet, running and exercise can definitely help your relationship with food and how you feel about yourself. I always focused my goals on being slim and attractive, but now my goals are centered around improving my body in order to see how much I can accomplish, and I am so much more forgiving of days where I'm not perfect.
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