BREAKDOWN. In a moment of weakness, I succumb to temptation.
ULTRA-RUNNER Brod. Carlo Bacalla brought me to my senses. He expressed puzzlement when we met—of all places at a fastfood line—why I gained weight since the last time we saw each other despite my increasing mileage.
“Ikaw ra man ang akong nahibaw-an nga runner nga nanambok (you’re the only runner I know who has become fat),” he said as I quickly decided, on the very spot, against ordering a double cheeseburger with extra-large fries.
That honest appraisal gave me the impetus to face something that I had been putting off from confronting for a long time: a creeping weight gain caused by a sense of entitlement to gorge on food just because I regularly run.
It’s true that by exercising, you are entitled to eat a little bit more. But like many runners, however, I thought I was entitled to the equivalent of a daily buffet. It is, as Time described it in an article I did not want to read, “ravenous compensatory eating.”