How Running Saved My Life: Going Beyond Physical Transformation

What if the toughest run of your life wasn't a marathon, but a personal journey of transformation? That's precisely the epic saga of my life as a former fashion model turned competitive runner. In this episode I uncover my struggle with disordered eating and alcohol abuse, and how I used running as a life-saving tool. My journey is a stark reminder that real success is not always reflected in glossy magazine covers but often lies hidden in the strenuous run of life.

My transformational journey is a testament to the power of human spirit and discipline. Come with my as I navigate through the challenging world of fashion modeling, battles her self-destructive habits, and discovers her salvation in running. My story navigates beyond physical transformation, delving into mental resilience and the art of setting goals. As I share valuable insights on living a healthy lifestyle and the transformative power of running, you'll be inspired and motivated to embark on your own journey towards a healthier, more fulfilling life. 

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/luciebeatrix/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Running saved my life. Running helped me heal from an eating disorder, recover from alcoholism and find a sense of purpose. My name is Lucy and I'm a runner. I was a fashion model for over a decade, and this is my story on how I used running as a tool to start over and basically take control of my life and live a more fulfilling life. So let's go back. I started modeling when I was 16 years old. I signed with a big agency and I started traveling right away to work in a highly competitive market for all of the big names that you know, from department stores to magazines, and I was living the dream or so it seemed. The porcelain veneer of success was my life of being on the covers of magazines, and I slowly but surely fell into the throes of getting obsessive about what I ate and how that looked, as well as resorting to using alcohol to numb out and basically having both disordered eating and an abusive relationship with alcohol. I was a hot mess. I woke up in my 30s, my early 30s, and I realized that this was not the life that I wanted, and so I got sober, cleaned up my act and I determined to get healthy Now, all the while kind of over the years, as I was modeling in my mid to late 20s I got really into running and at first I didn't know what I was doing because I was never an athlete growing up, and so I kind of stumbled into the sport, just running here and there and making little challenges for myself.

Speaker 1: 1:49

And if you've seen the video where I talk about running 10 miles a day for three years, that became how I got into running. So I had this goal of running 10 miles a day and I did that for three years and I managed to run 10 miles in under an hour, which is kind of a competitive pace. But I didn't even know what that time meant at the like when I was doing it. It was only until I started racing that I realized that I could actually use this running thing for more competitive reasons and enter races and try to compete. So back when I was modeling I tried really hard not to fall into the cliche of a fashion model with an eating disorder. But the reality was that the standards that I had to uphold and the internal struggles that just strengthened and got louder and louder, with thinking that my size was a direct reflection of my self worth really snowballed And with eating disorders, i find that it's a very slippery slope with descending into this headspace that your worth comes from, what size you are.

Speaker 1: 3:03

And for me, from the time I can remember signing my first contract, there was a standard with my hit measurement. That's kind of how agencies in modeling, the modeling world, works, as they measure your hip, the widest point of your hip, and they have a number that you basically you're either that number or you're not. And I was always told that I needed to be this one measurement And over time I just always felt like I was kind of trying to be just a little bit under that number so that I could stay in check. Like I felt like if I was just a little under, then I could have some wiggle room is what I called it where I'd be like okay, well, maybe I'm a little bit under, but that means that, like, if and when I do decide to eat more, it won't like totally derail me and get me in trouble or have it so that people are commenting on my weight And I remember getting really below that number.

Speaker 1: 4:01

It was in my early to mid twenties, i think it was about 24. And I got in such such a bad position with my weight. I was so so, so underweight, and in turn I used that low weight as like I would have this feeling of fear because I knew it was bad. I knew I was like too far gone, like this was not a healthy life. But in order to not have that sense of fear, i would just drink alcohol to be able to like go to bed at night or like not panic so much that I was hurting myself. And slowly but surely that just became this vicious cycle of under eating or not eating at all, and then drinking alcohol until I would go to sleep day after day after day after day, and to think that I did that to my body for so long, it's really scary.

Speaker 1: 4:52

So when I started getting into running out this is a very gradual process of like learning, like the ways of running and stuff I realized that if I was going to get out there and run the way that I wanted to every day, the way that I was treating my body with food and alcohol, wasn't going to work. Like I started to feel the direct negative return of drinking a couple of bottles of wine, to go to bed at night, waking up and trying to run just felt bad and that, like those 10 miles felt like just miserable. And I would be thinking I'm just trying to get myself back to normal and sweat it all out. And what if I just don't drink at all And I'd start from a different baseline of not like down here but like a moderate baseline, and then I feel even better when I finish. So with that kind of deductive reasoning, i kind of tricked myself into thinking okay, well, if I don't drink, then I'm going to run better. And sure enough, that worked And I could replace an unhealthy thing that I was doing of not drinking and under eating with something healthy.

Speaker 1: 5:59

And the reason that I know that running isn't an addiction I wasn't just replacing one addiction for another is that it is really easy to go drink a couple of bottles of wine. It's pretty easy to do that for me, but it's not easy to tie up my shoes at five in the morning, roll out of bed and start running. So I think that like having to do something hard to reach this sense of accomplishment and feeling good is very different than doing something very easy, like picking up a glass of wine to then feel good. So and then, ultimately, i realized that with drinking, i would drink and then feel terrible about myself, or I would be not eating for a few days and feel terrible about myself and just know that I'm doing something wrong and this isn't sustainable, whereas with running, it was more of like a gradual building towards something wonderful, to a better future me. So it's like these ideas of is this action that I'm doing right now making me better or is it making me worse, for me under fueling and drinking making me significantly worse, whereas running is making me better because it's the hard thing to do and it's hard for all of us. So I'm doing this achievement for a 244 marathoner to get out there every single day and just log miles.

Speaker 1: 7:17

So let me bring you to how I saw these results directly, with, like what it meant getting sober and then starting to eat properly, and then how that affected my running. So, as somebody who wasn't an athlete growing up, as I mentioned, i didn't know what my body was capable of. I had no idea, and so I started running and I realized that as I would run, i would get hungry or for certain kinds of foods and I started to replace like I would eat. I used to just like eat rice cakes like the eating disorder model me would just eat rice cakes and just little like no low calorie foods with little to nutrition, the little nutritional value, and what I started to do was crave things that had a lot of nutrients, so like things like beets and sweet potatoes and salmon. I would eat these things because I knew that I needed that sustenance to go hard and run fast the next day. So I think that that was kind of an interesting way to learn how to eat was to like use the food for fuel to go like run and perform strong. And I noticed too that if I ate these foods the next day, i would have these magnificent runs and break my PRs and run 10 miles an hour and be like, wow, that felt pretty good And it's because of what I ate the night before. And it also helped me not be afraid of food, because I think for a while it sounds kind of like silly to think I was afraid of certain foods because I thought that they were going to automatically make me gain weight And the reality was I needed to gain weight and I needed to have those foods like cushion my organs to be able to have the like, even mental clarity, to go do things. So, yeah, i think that was very important, but I also think that, like, what was really amazing as a as an end result to all of this, was starting to fuel my body.

Speaker 1: 9:16

To run then taught me that there was this whole new world out there of competitive running and how these times and these dreams that I never even knew I could have, like trying to go to the Olympic trials, were even possible. And so something that I say to people, especially people who are getting into running and are beginners, is there are no rules and you have no idea what you can do unless you get out there and just get started. And I think about myself and that first the first run or the first 10 mile run and thinking, man, that was so hard And I could hardly do a nine minute mile pace. And now to think that I've run an entire marathon at a six, 15 minute mile pace and I'm training to run one at a six flat minute mile pace, that I would have never even known that that's even possible if I didn't just start, just get started. So it's like the first run, and I even say before that when I was teaching my 60 something year old mom how to run, who had never run in six decades ever. I got her out there walking And I was like, just walk a mile, walk a mile a day. And that was the first step And before she knew it, she was running a mile at the pace that I was running my first miles at.

Speaker 1: 10:29

So just getting out there helped, helped me just open up this new potential And I think that, like anyone could just start with that, even if it's not for running, if it's about like writing or doing some kind of a hobby that you're interested in playing music these are two other things that I like to do. Playing music and writing, where it's like just doing it a little bit every single day, leads to something you didn't even know was possible. So, yeah, running saved my life. It helped me get over my relationship, my toxic, horrible relationship with food, thinking that it was going to make me overweight and have problems. It helped me to see the body that I was given is a lot stronger and can do a lot more things than I ever imagined, and it helped me just realize that I don't want to be dumping alcohol into it every day.

Speaker 1: 11:19

So, wherever you are on your journey, i really encourage you to just get started And I hope that my story somehow reached you and that you are watching this And you see that we have a lot in common. If that's you, because that was me and I was completely lost and I had no idea what I was doing, and now I'm training towards some really big dreams. So, thanks so much for listening. You can find me on Instagram, i'm at Lucy Beatrix, luci, eba TRIX. And until next time, just be fast, just win.