I’m 58 and in my forties I took up running as I was getting heavier than I wanted to be. I knew no different - if you want to lose weight you have to exercise, right? (that’s what I thought then)
What a waste of time - i now resent the hours and hours I spent on country roads pounding away, which I could have spent with my family. And of course the inevitability of weight gain followed after a small initial loss. And then injuries, and over time interest waned and eventually I gave up.
Two years ago I got to my heaviest (229), and felt I really needed to do something about it, so I entered a 10k with a view to training for it - which would help me lose weight, right? It was not a pleasant experience, knees and hips hurt, and I knew I didn’t look elegant. But I did the 10k - and hated it. It was a painful, hard experience. I had to stop and walk several times but eventually crossed the finish line in 1 hour, 14 and a half minutes. Did I lose weight? No.
In March last year I discovered Keto. I’m now 181 - the lightest I’ve been since my 20s. And on Friday I entered another 10k, just to put the last one behind me. I didn’t train for this one at all, yet I did it in an hour - 14 minutes faster than before. And I didn’t need to stop and walk at any point, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, chatting to a couple of ladies who were going the same pace as me all the way round.
The moral of the story is don’t run to lose weight, lose weight to run.