A Destructive Numbers Game
One season.
I thought it was just a numbers game. I thought it was just about having discipline and willpower. I thought it was running until you threw up, gritting your teeth, pushing through pain, just as I started to push through hunger.
I thought I was smarter than my body; that to lose my period and happiness was a worthy sacrifice.
I had one season.
I had one season where I accomplished the dreams I had set for myself for years. One season where I felt the wave of praise, admiration, and accomplishment, while each night I lay in bed thinking about the next meal I’d allow myself to eat.
I thought it was just a numbers game–calories in, calories out. That emotional eating was “bad,” and “wrong,” that I didn’t “want it bad enough” if I gave in too quickly to my emotional and physical cries. I had seen this occur so often in running; how would it not easily translate to how I lived outside of each run?