Why I Eat Fast Food at 120 Miles a Week

You are running 60, 70, 80 miles a week and the thing you are worried about is whether the burger was clean.

That is the wrong thing to worry about.

I run 120 miles a week. My RMR is tested, not guessed, and between that and the training I need 4,500 calories minimum, upwards of 7,000 on some days. There is no version of that where I hit the number eating only what looks good on camera. So once or twice a day I am at Chipotle or McDonald's. About 80% of my meals are clean, and the rest is whatever gets the calories in.

Do I think fast food is the best thing for my gut or my micronutrients? No. I am not pretending it is. But calories in, calories out is not a slogan, it is the constraint I train inside of. What actually costs me training is showing up under fueled and not recovering.

This is where the body image stuff does real damage. I keep watching runners get a stress fracture and blame the coach, blame the overtraining, blame the run app. Most of the time it is an energy deficiency. The IOC consensus on RED-S is clear on what happens when energy availability stays low: bone, hormones, and performance all go. And the accounts you are comparing yourself to, the ones claiming 2,800 to 3,800 calories with abs, are not the model. If those numbers were real, they would not be in a boot.

So eat. Pizza, cookies, a frappe before a long run. At your volume, those calories are not going to sink you. Missing them will.

Check your blood work. Know your RMR. Then hit the number every single day, whatever it takes to get there.

The unhealthy thing is not the fast food. The unhealthy thing is starving yourself and calling it discipline.

Running is you versus you, not you versus somebody online who is not eating.

Stop worrying about whether the burger was clean.