How I Started Running Due To Anorexia

If you read my introduction (Who Am I and Other Basics), you already know that I give up fairly quickly, which essentialy means you might not have much to read on this blog soon. It was the same with running. I started running with my dad a couple of times and - you guessed it - gave up every time. So how did I decide to become more consistent?

The answer is quite simple with a slightly more complex explanation: I had mental health issues.

I will talk a bit more about this in separate posts, but here goes: I have anorexia. It peaked in May of this year. I was lying in bed all day, thinking about food, counting calories, perfecting information about food I'd eaten in a weight loss app, barely having the strength to do sixty prostrations - a Buddhist physical and mental exercise - when I can usually do over two hundred, my skin was breaking out in acne, I was dizzy all the damn time. And while I was rolling around pathetically on my double bed in Ostrava, ignoring my friends and wondering if I should go for a walk to burn off some calories and eat frozen fruit juice with no sugar added for dinner, my friend's text appeared on my phone. It read as follows: "In case you were sad or stuggling with life today, here are some cats for you, bro. Remember, you will always find a way". It also contained an inside joke - which I won't try to explain because you won't find it funny anyway and it will hurt my little fragile ego - and, as promised, fourteen pictures of funny cats. By this time I knew I was mentally and physically ill, but the thing about anorexia is that in a way I didn't really want to get better. I just felt "comfortable" in my sickness, like I had a control over my life.

I was on the phone with my mum the day before and she somehow (as mothers tend to) just knew I wasn't okay, even though I was laughing and joking with her. Then the girlfriend sensed that something was wrong because I was ignoring her. And after not being able to do all my prostrations, that was the final wake-up call. I decided enough was enough. The following day, we went on another hike to the Czech border with Poland and Slovakia with friends, one of those was M., who sent me the silly pictures of cats. We talked a lot and for the first time I felt that my illness was really understood. M. had had similar problems in the past, which essentially meant that we felt a new, special kind of connection. We were discussing our problems so loudly that everyone could hear us but we did not mind it at all. We realised that we both wanted to run a marathon, so we made plans. We ate lots of vegan pierogi. And we ran. We still run a couple of times a week and next year we are going to run at least the half marathon in Munich (I'm actually thinking of doing the whole thing).

I still struggle sometimes but you can't run marathons if you starve yourself.

And here are two related inside jokes worth explaining: When I lived in the Czech Republic, I dated a Czech bodybuilder for a while. He would often brag - bless his poor delusional soul - about how people in the gym would just look at him and think (not say it out loud, just think) that he was on steroids. The other thing he liked to say was: "I'm getting biiiiiiig" or "Fuck, I'm biiiiiiig". So me and M. sometimes, when one of us is struggling, we say to each other: "We have to eat so we'll get biiiiig and everyone will think we're on steroids".

The moral of the story is: EAT LOTS OF VEGAN PIEROGI.

Good day to you all!