Eat and Run: How running helped me recover from an eating disorder

Sometimes it takes the threat of losing something to make a person fight like crazy to keep it. After ten years struggling with anorexia, I decided I’d rather keep running competitively than go through life starving.

The trauma of my boyfriend’s sudden death, at age 29, from a fall down a freight elevator shaft, triggered my eating disorder. My preoccupation with weight started a couple weeks later, when I realized that shock and grief had caused me to lose five pounds.