THE DANGEROUS LIE OF THE Perfect Running Weight

To run stronger, happier, and healthier, stop chasing an arbitrary number on the scale.

- CHRISTINE BYRNE

Paige Roberts knows exactly where her toxic relationship with weight began. As a high school sophomore, she qualified for the one- and two-mile races at the Colorado state track championships. Based on her performance, her coach, a math teacher with no formal training in exercise physiology or sports nutrition, decided that she was at her “optimal running weight” and cautioned her against getting heavier. He even discouraged her and other teammates from joining the swim team in the off-season, she recalls, telling them that it would make their thighs too big.

Although weight gain is typically part of healthy physical development at that age, her coach’s words left her terrified of it. Over the next months, Roberts drastically restricted her food intake and was ultimately diagnosed with an eating disorder. She cut out all but a few foods and ran 10 to 15 miles a day. When she developed painful shin splints, she pushed through them. During a race later in her sophomore year, a stress fracture in her fibula turned into a full break. She wore a cast for six weeks, but that wasn’t the wake-up call it should have been. Her leg healed in time for the next season, and she jumped right back into high-volume training, weighing herself at least twice a day and purging after meals if she ever crept above her so-called “optimal running weight.” Her shin splints became so painful that she ended up sitting out her senior year in an effort to fully recover before competing in college. She also began seeing an eating disorder counselor, although her fixation on weight remained.