Running on empties
Bryony Gordon on how she went from being hooked on quick-fix pills and burgers to being a bona-fide distance runner
When people ask me now how I went from being someone who couldn’t run for a bus to someone who could do a marathon, my answer is that I didn’t. Nobody does. First I went from being someone who couldn’t run for a bus to someone who would jog very slowly for 15 to 20 minutes, then I went from being someone who could jog very slowly for 15 to 20 minutes to someone who spent an entire summer throwing up over themselves, and then I went from someone who spent an entire summer throwing up over themselves to someone who was packed off to a boot camp in Ibiza by a kindly editor who could see I might need some help.
I used to think that change, when it happened, was a sudden thing, a volcanic eruption or an earthquake that shook everything up as if from nowhere. If I read enough lifestyle magazines and started enough fad diets, then all I had to do was lie back and wait for it to drop into my lap, in the form of my dream job or my ideal man or the perfect penthouse suite. Change, when it finally came, would be sudden, sharp, speedy, a bolt from the blue that would make everything better. And in the meantime, I could just shuffle on through my life without actually, well, changing.
In the dictionary, change is described as an act or process through which something becomes different, but in my mind I had confused it for an act or process through which something becomes fixed. It was halfway through the 13-mile hike up an Ibizan hill that took place towards the end of the Body Camp when I realised that I had never actually been interested in the concept of change. All I had ever wanted was a cure-all, a magic panacea that would solve all of life’s ills – when I was depressed I wanted the psychiatrist to make it better by upping my dose of antidepressants; when my mind felt like it was on an intensive washing cycle, I hoped that a 20-minute run would switch it off. I wasn’t a bad person for wanting these things. I was just an ill one who desperately wanted to feel well again, even if my attempts at wellness were fickle and fleeting and got dropped the moment I felt better.
I don’t think I was ever alone in this. Exhausted by the seemingly neverending battle with mental illness, who doesn’t yearn for the quick fix, the diazepam that blots out the anxiety, the burger full of calories, but most importantly comfort? It had never really occurred to me that food had served as toxic a purpose in my life as cocaine or bad men, that I had alternately picked it up and put it
All I had ever wanted was a cure-all, a magic panacea that would solve all of life’s ills
down as a way of getting high – not until my control over it got taken away from me that week in Ibiza. But attempting to clamber up that hill, my body fuelled only by goodness, my mind was suddenly clear and focused. I knew that change, if it was going to last, if it was going to really make a proper difference, was going to have to be an intricate and ongoing process.
It was not going to be as simple as visiting the Body Camp for a week and returning a completely different woman. Sudden change, I realised, is as precarious as an ill-thought-out attempt to overthrow a government. One minute all the signs are there for a fresh start; the next you’re back to being beaten black and blue by the old regime. Standing there, my heart hammering in my chest and my lungs feeling as if they were going to collapse, I knew very suddenly that I had a long way to go – both literally and metaphorically – if I was to even get to the London Marathon start line. While my fellow Body Campers had happily forged ahead and were now atop the hill eating their mid-morning protein snack, I was crying somewhere near the bottom with Jo, who had taken pity on me and was doing her best to motivate me beyond the tears.
“Everyone is rooting for you,” she said, and while I knew she meant it to sound encouraging, I could only hear it as patronising. I felt humiliated and pathetic. I was seven miles into a bloody walk and already I was ready to give up. How was I going to make it through an entire marathon? It was then that I had my epiphany. I realised I didn’t have to make it through an entire marathon – at least not that day. All I had to do was make it to the tree five metres to my left, and then to the boulder five metres after that. I just had to get to mile eight, and then to mile nine, and so on and so on.
It didn’t matter if it took me all day – I had my trusty Camelbak, and if that failed I had Jo’s enthusiasm to get me through. I took a deep breath and started climbing. All I had to do was put one foot in front of the other, and remember not to look down. Two hours later we were back at the villa and I was in a hot bath counting the blisters on my feet. Eight in total, nine if you counted the one that had evidently burst somewhere around mile 10. I had done it, that was all that mattered, and now I was on the home run. Indeed, one round of boxing and two swimming races later I leapt on to the machine that could see everything except for the insides of your soul, where I discovered that I had lost eight pounds in weight, gained significant muscle mass and gone down one point on the visceral fat scale.
My metabolic age was still 51, but I figured you’re only ever as old as the girl who is helping you into your sports bra, and as Jo’s metabolic age was closer to 19, there was still hope.
At Heathrow airport, I expected my husband and daughter not to recognise me; I fancied that Harry would faint in shock at the sight of his newly hot wife. But he just said, “You look well,” followed by “Pub tonight?”, and then Edie told me we were going to Nando’s for lunch. I may still have looked like a chubby caterpillar to them, but it didn’t matter. What did was that I knew that inside, there was a beautiful butterfly waiting to come out.
For a full review of ‘Eat, Drink, Run’ see Books page 23
Extracted from Eat, Drink, Run: How I Got Fit Without Going Too Mad by Bryony Gordon, published by the Headline Publishing Group (rrp £16.99). To order your copy for £14.99 plus p&p call 0844 871 1514 or visit books. telegraph.co.uk