Eat and Run

I've definitely stepped up my commitment to my fitness regime in the last three months and finally I feel like I'm seeing some change and not just "feeling" stronger. I was getting frustrated with the actual results though as it seemed that none of my numbers were improving. Finally, last week I saw half an inch difference in my hip measurements. It's ridiculous, I know, but I needed to see something to assure me that I wasn't just imagining it all.

That same week I also came across a blog post by Lauren Fleshman, an Olympic hopeful in running. Lauren wrote about a fashion show she did during New York Fashion Week for her sponsor, Oiselle Running Apparel. Photos of her walking the runway were posted and she looked every bit like a champion.

But Lauren didn't feel these pictures were totally honest and wanted to set things straight.

"Out of the thousands of photos taken at the runway show after all that tanning and primping and posture-holding, one or two of them looked good. A lot of them looked pretty gnarly. Weird facial expressions, lumpy bits, zombie walks…but nobody would ever know…"

Lauren posted photos of herself taken later that week to prove her point. She showed pics of a soft belly hanging out and another one of her grabbing dimpled flesh on her inner thigh.

Thigh cheese on a world class runner

Lauren can run a 5k in under 15 minutes and was ranked 7th in the world in 2011 and sometimes her stomach sticks out. This gives me comfort followed by immediate discomfort for the fact that I need to be reassured that even fast running Olympic candidate athletes have chubby parts and wobbly bits. I think the way to break this vicious circle of comfort/discomfort is to eat a cookie. And then run. And then eat a chocolate bon bon. And then run.