Guest Post: Miranda from Miranda Runs

Today is jam packed with finals. In the past I only ever had one final per day but today I have two that are back to back. Tomorrow I plan on packing up some things so on Monday when my last final is over I can move out of the dorms for good. I'm stoked!

I mentioned earlier this week that I had two guest posts for you guys this week. Today's is from Miranda and she talks about a personal struggle with anorexia nervosa. If this topic is uncomfortable for you, if you have had/have this disorder, or if you don't agree with this topic then please move on and don't read this post. Thank you!




Hey guys! I’m Miranda and I’m a teenage blogger over at Miranda Runs dealing with graduating high school, training for my first half marathon, and all things in between! I’m guest posting for Danielle today while she’s busy with finals… Good luck girl! Rock those finals!

Danielle thought it would be interesting for me to do a post on eating disorders. A personal story. That being said, before I get into the dirt of this post, if you are struggling with an eating disorder or ever have and are triggered, PLEASE skip over this guest post. I don’t want you to slip any deeper or fall back into it. This post isn’t worth it!

Some of you may know that I struggled with anorexia nervosa for 2 years in high school.

This was taken August 2011, 10 pounds heavier than my lowest weight. Scary, right?

I’m super happy to say that I’ve physically recovered now and, although I’ll never be able to shake all of anorexia’s dwindling effects, I’m making progress every day. Anorexia had a pretty solid grasp on my life for years, and I did the same exact routine day after day. Buckle your seat belts… we’re going back in time! PS- please get the reference!

Date: school day in April 2011

6:15 am- Rise and shine! I would get out of bed, lift up my shirt and see how “huge” my stomach looked that day. I would get dressed, do my makeup, and head out to the kitchen for breakfast.

6:30 am- Breakfast time. 1 cup of skim milk + 1 tbsp fat-free vanilla creamer. What is this, 100 calories max? That was my limit for breakfast calories. I wanted to keep it low just incase I ate more later in the day. This “prevention technique” is something I’m still working on getting over.

7 am- Leave for school and obsess over food. calories, and exercise during school. A lot of anorexic’s grades slip because they are too hungry to focus on school. I avoided this, thankfully, but only because I trained my body to ignore hunger cues. It wasn’t until I was done with 4 months of recovery that I actually felt “hunger” or “fullness” again. 

11:30 am- Lunch time. I’m about 85% sure I didn’t eat lunch more than 5 times my whole sophomore year. People asked me why I didn’t have lunch and I’d tell them “I forgot”, “I’m not hungry”, “I had a big breakfast”. Lies. All lies. I got to be a fantastic liar… If I did bring lunch, it would be exactly 1 cup (measured) of Cheerios. And then I would have to burn an extra 100 calories at the gym later. 

2:10 pm- End of the school day! I would head straight to the gym and not eat a snack (in case you’re keeping track, I’ve probably eaten a total of 100 calories for the whole day)

2:45 pm- Start on the elliptical. Every single day I would go on the elliptical for 65 minutes and burn a minimum of 800 calories. I hadn’t started running yet and frankly if I had, I probably would have fainted (or worse) because my body couldn’t handle it. I found a 2011 calendar where for each day I wrote down the amount of calories I burned, and from that I realized I didn’t take a rest day for 3 months. If the gym was closed, I would run stairs at home or do something else to burn calories. I worked out on Thanksgiving, my 16th birthday, Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Years… Some people call this “dedication” but it was definitely an unhealthy obsession.

4 pm- Do the lat pull down and seated row machines. I just did this so I didn’t look so skinny- it gave me “muscle”. 

4:20 pm- Leave for home

4:30 pm- Take a shower and wait for dinner. No snack here either. I can remember looking at the clock and counting how many hours it had been since I had last eaten. 

5:30 pm- “Eat” dinner. This means taking a portion 1/3 of the size of a normal one. I wouldn’t eat bread, fats, cheese, and I loathed eating out.

For the rest of the evening, I would do homework, watch TV, hang out with my boyfriend, mess around on the computer… “normal” teenage stuff. I barely snacked, but if I did, I immediately felt self-hate. 

9:15 pm- Bed time.

I did this every single day. I’m ashamed of my life back then. Honestly, the best day of my life was when my boyfriend forced me to tell my mom about my anorexia because he was scared I was going to die (okay he never said this BUT I can read in between the lines…). My BMI was about 15.6 and I was in danger of my heart stopping at any time.
It’s been a long, hard road to where I am now.

But man oh man I’m so much happier and healthier. Sometimes I wish this had never happened to me… but it’s made me such a stronger, better person!

Starving yourself will not make you happier. Skinny does NOT equal beautiful. Society has brainwashed our society and anorexia is rearing its ugly head more and more. Ladies, love yourself! If you’re not going to take care of your body, who will? You only get one body!

I’m not usually this serious but a sad post calls for a not-my-normal-goofy tone. You can see my normal happy self at my blog Miranda Runs! Thank you so much for letting me guest post Danielle!

Question

What do you love about yourself? Does this story resonate with you?

Thanks for sharing your personal story, Miranda! We are all glad you are recovering and living a healthy life. Check out my post I wrote awhile back about the influences television and models have on young women.

Guest Post: Brittany from DulceVie

It's nearing the end of the semester which means it's time to start studying for all of my finals that are coming up. While I am away studying like a mad man I have two great guest posts in store for you this week! Both bloggers are students like myself. I know how hard it can be to manage a blog and go to school full time so I love when I meet other bloggers out there like myself!

Today I would like to welcome Brittany to the blog! Brittany is going to share her story about how she fell in love with running. Enjoy!

Hey guys! My name is Brittany over from DulceVie . For those of you who do not know me, I am a rower planning to row D1 this fall (I'm super excited). I currently live in Chicago, but I will moving out to California this fall for college!

How I fell in love with running

Running was never something that I did willingly. In fact, I hated running. So how did I fall in love with it?

Well, last year my family and I went on a trip to London and France. I was going to be missing practice and I knew that I would probably fall behind if I didn’t do something while on vacation. I also knew that there would be no rowing machines in the hotels, so I made the decision to run everyday while on vacation. 

As I walked into our hotel’s gym a thought entered my head. Rather than trying to run a certain distance or pace, why not just focus on running for about 30 minutes. I stepped onto the treadmill thinking that I would probably get tired and end up walking. I turned on the machine and began increasing the speed to a slow jog. The treadmill was set in km so I had no clue how far I was actually running. After 40 minutes of watching tv while jogging, I noticed that I had been running for 40 minutes. It was then that I realized that running was not so bad.

After running everyday, I came back to practice and was able to keep up all of my teammates. When my season ended, I decided to keep running. After running everyday, I actually began looking forward to my runs. I liked being able to run and have a little “me” time.  I also began feeling more confident about myself. I felt like a better athlete and clothes were beginning to fit me nicer (score!).

While discussing my running journey with my best friend, who is also beginning her own running journey, I realized that there are ways to enjoy running. Here is my advice to those of you who are trying to enjoy running:

•  Don’t stress about how fast or how far you can go. Just get out there and do something. Anything is better than nothing

•  Lie to yourself. Yes, you heard me! If you aren’t feeling motivated to go for a run, tell yourself that you are going for a walk. When you get yourself walking, tell yourself that you will just jog for a few minutes. After a few times of lying to yourself, you will find that it is easier to run.

•  Treat yourself to some awesome running shoes or a cute outfit. Getting new workout gear can make working out more exciting. So treat yourself to some new stuff!

•  Look at running as “me” time. Use it to take a break from those around you and enjoy the great outdoors, or hop on a treadmill and listen to some music.

Running began as a chore and has become a new passion for me. Running is great for your health, so go for a run!

Thank you so much Danielle for letting me guest post!

 

Double Digits

When I first signed up to run the Indy Mini-Marathon in May my dad had mentioned that one of his friends at work ran it every year and was interested in running it with me. I immediately agreed to it, having no idea how fast this guy ran and having never met him before. This weekend I had both the pleasure of meeting Lance and running with him.

I talked to him on the phone earlier last week about meeting up to go on a run and at first was a little nervous. He is in the Army so in my head I had pictured a big intimidating guy who would be pushing me the entire run yelling at me to run faster. I was so relieved when I  met him and he was quite the opposite. He was willing to run any pace that I wanted and didn't yell at me to hurry up once!

(I thought I would end up being like the guy on the right in this picture with an Army man pushing me to my limits. Thankfully that wasn't me on the run yesterday. Note: the guy on the left is my dad! Can you see why I imagined Lance to be a little intimidating?)

I met Lance at his house because he had a good 10 mile route planned out. We ended up running through a college campus and around a huge lake. The view was gorgeous and the weather was perfect.

Our splits are as follows:

We ended up finishing the 10 miles in 1 hour 35 minutes with an average pace of 9:33. Not bad for my first 10 miler! I felt some pain around mile 7 which is why we backed off our pace a little bit and today I'm feeling a little sore but after some rolling and spending time wearing my compression socks I'm feeling better! This week I plan to start tapering because the race day is in 11 days!

Question

Did you go on any runs over the weekend? Do you have a favorite route?