Why I started running
When you feel fat, your life starts to suck. That’s the reason I started running in 2010. I gained 40 pounds during my second pregnancy, and a year later I was still carrying most of it around. I felt large, unattractive, and unhappy. And I was 26, which is just a weird time in a woman’s life, anyway
When I started running, I could barely make it down my street. My house is perfectly positioned, it’s half a mile from a busy highway, and it’s exactly a mile from my house to the edge of town and back again. Easy to track, and no room for excuses.
For the first month, it took me 20 minutes to cover one mile. I was wogging (a shuffling, gasping, almost dying form of jogging melded with walking). Every step was a struggle – staying motivated was hard. My motivation to “not be fat” weighed on me more than the pressure on my lungs and legs.
So I stuck with it and slowly started getting a little faster. After three or four months, I was down to 12 minutes miles. The weight started to fall off, and getting around my neighborhood started to get easier.
I lost 20 pounds over the course of a year and dropped from a size 14 to a size 11 (that’s right, I was proud of that half size!). The more I ran, the more the weight came off.
Until it didn’t. I hit a plateau that lasted for about 6 months. I didn’t gain anything back, but the scale wouldn’t budge. It was really frustrating. I couldn’t figure it out – I was putting in the work but I felt like wasn’t getting anything out of it.
When I finally figured out what the problem was, it was a cliché, life-changing, moment. It really was insanely simple. At the risk of sounding like a New Age quack, I had to do was change my mindset. When I decided that I was going to do this for more reasons than, “I want to fit in a bikini,” it was like a light switch in my head.
It really comes down to living, and living a healthier life all around. I joined a group of women at work who became great friends and “accountabilibuddies.” We started running together on our lunch breaks, and sometimes after work. We signed up for 5ks together, then half marathons, and most recently, a 50k in April 2015.
My friends inspired me with their healthy lifestyles. I started changing how I ate, eating more vegetables and less junk. I started thinking of my body as a machine – you can’t run a Porsche on fryer grease, so why would you run your body on Cheetos?
Perhaps the best bit of advice they gave me was this: “Mariah, you’re a grown-ass woman. You choose what you eat, what you put in your body. You can eat broccoli for breakfast if you want to. Or ice cream. It’s your decision.”
That was so telling for me. I was a wife and mother, and I was in control of that. But I wasn’t really in control of my own health.
I eat and run for my health now, not my appearance. I eat what makes me feel better – for me that’s mostly vegetables, fruit, eggs, and fish (with a healthy dose of Fireball or Busch Light on the weekends, of course). I stay active because it’s good for me, for my mental clarity, for my heart, and for my own sense of personal accomplishment.
My daughter and son need me to do this because it’s my job as their mom to set a good example of what a strong healthy adult should do. They need to see their dad supporting me in something I’m passionate about. They need to join me so we can share fun, healthy moments together, unplugged, away from devices, and in nature.
And as a bonus… I fit in that bikini this year. And I felt pretty damn good about it.