The Day I Stopped Tracking My Runs

Plus the menu for May 25-29th

May 22, 2026

I started running in college.

There was a beautiful park about ten minutes from my apartment. I wish I could remember the name of it now, but it was one of those places everyone seemed to gather: walkers, runners, moms with strollers, older couples moving slowly around the path. The loop was exactly two miles, and I still remember the feeling of reaching each milestone. First, I could make it around once without stopping. Then eventually twice. Later, it became part of my marathon training ground.

Back then, I wore one of the first smartwatches from Garmin…the massive Forerunner 305!

I think it tracked distance and made one wrist much stronger than the other…but not much else. No endless stream of metrics. No recovery scores, blood sugar data or alerts that I slept like crap last night.

When Movement Becomes Identity

My relationship to running and movement looks very different compared to those college and grad school years. There was a season of my life when exercise held far too much power over me. From the outside, it might have looked healthy (until it didn’t). And then even once it got healthy again…there was still a dependence I couldn’t fully see at the time…movement acting as reassurance, regulation, identity…even proof.

Today movement feels much more rooted in care and respect. I listen to my body. I rest. I don’t push too hard. I don’t run through pain. It mostly serves as a way to support my mental and physical health rather than something I unconsciously use to hold myself together.

The Run That Triggered Something

In a recent Love You More podcast episode, I discussed some digestive issues that had started interfering with my runs. Thankfully, most of that has been resolved (I cut back on 1/2 my coffee…) But last week, during a morning run, the symptoms cropped back around mile two.

I was SO annoyed. In fact, it was more like irrationally angry. I am grateful it was still dark outside because I am sure my mini tantrum was not one I would have wanted anyone to see.

But about ten minutes later, once the intensity passed, a question came:

Why am I so attached to figuring this out or getting this run done the way I expected?

The Gold Star Problem

To be fair, not one person in the entire world cares whether I completed that run. I am not training for a race. It would be fine to walk. There were plenty of perfectly okay options.

And yet something inside me felt deeply threatened by the idea that I might not. Something was gripping very tightly to needing the run to happen, needing the problem solved, needing the routine maintained.

But once that question started getting looked at from an honest place, the dominoes started falling.

I began looking more honestly at how running or hitting a certain number of steps each day had become information my brain used to feel okay. I started noticing how intertwined movement had become with identity. With body image. With being “a healthy person.” Even with being a “dietitian.”

And because movement is culturally praised, it’s easy to hide inside that praise without questioning your relationship to it.

The deeper I looked, the more I could see how something that once felt expansive and freeing had slowly become slightly micromanaged. Not in some dramatic way. I wasn’t spiraling if I missed a workout. But there was still this subtle ongoing orientation toward completion. If I got my run in early, the day felt more manageable. If I hit my step count, there was a small internal exhale. A quiet little gold star.

Twenty Years of Tracking

It was confronting to realize how many years I had spent managing myself in tiny ways to protect an identity.

And once you see something, you can’t really unsee it.

But awareness isn’t the finish line either. It just creates more opportunities to notice when the pattern reappears.

A few days later, while out on a walk, it occurred to me that maybe one small step was getting rid of my Garmin watch. I remember standing in the bathroom telling my husband I wanted to borrow his Swiss Army, a watch with one job: telling time. And nothing else.

I realized I hadn’t gone for a run without tracking it since those days around the park with that huge Garmin. Over 20 years of tracking runs.

To be fair, I roughly know my routes. I know what five or six miles feels like in my body. But there was still something deeply uncomfortable about not hearing the chime mile splits or not collecting evidence that the run had “counted.”

Even though I no longer care much about pace - I could still feel my brain reaching for measurement in subtler ways with no data watch.

In need of replacement, I found myself this new watch made of wood.

I loved the symbolism it offered: Things in nature don’t collect data to know how to grow. They simply lean toward light.

That’s what I want more of in my own life now. Less micromanaging. Less optimization disguised as wellness. More listening. More leaning into the wisdom of my body versus the brain.

I’m already noticing how much freer life feels around decisions that used to carry invisible weight.

What Freedom Actually Feels Like

Yesterday morning I woke up thinking about the strawberry ricotta jammy toast from Fiddlehead Fern Café. So I grabbed whichever boys wanted to come with me, and we went. I wish I could say I enjoyed each and every bite, but in reality, my 10-year old rushed me through the whole experience because he was “bored.”

Later that afternoon, one of my sons offered me a 100 Grand ice cream bar we had in the freezer, and I realized I didn’t really feel it.

What’s interesting is there wasn’t a mental debate attached to either decision. No “I already had something sweet today.” No mental chatter. No sense that I had already had “that” so I shouldn’t have “this.” Just noticing I could have that at another time.

And maybe that’s what freedom actually feels like.

Not the absence of structure or care, but the wisdom of internal signals overriding the pull of external ones.

Menu for the Week of 25th-29th

We’ve had a few new subscribers join this space recently, so I wanted to take a minute to share why there are always 5 recipes here each week!

This newsletter actually started over 10 years ago as a way to help both myself and my clients discover new recipes to try. Over time, it became a simple way to share meal inspiration and help people get out of the “what should I make?” rut.

I no longer write a full description for every recipe, but generally, something about them sounds good to me, and either I’ve tried it or I’d like to! Not every recipe will work for everyone, but if you ever find yourself stuck in a rut with menu ideas, this is for you.